told them we Sikhs would eat them alive. Yes, sahib; not once, but
many times.

The journey was slow, for the line ahead of us was choked with
supply trains, some of which were needed at the front as badly as
ourselves. Now and then trains waited on sidings to let us by, and
by that means we became separated from the other troop trains, our
regiment leading all the others in the end by almost half a day. The
din of engine whistles became so constant that we no longer noticed
it.

But there was another din that did not grow familiar. Along the line
next ours there came hurrying in the opposite direction train after
train of wounded, traveling at great speed, each leaving a smell in
its wake that set us all to spitting. And once in so often there
came a train filled full of the sound of screaming. The first time,
and the second time we believed it was ungreased axles, but after
the third time we understood.

Then our officers came walking along the footboards, speaking to us
through the windows and pretending to point out characteristics of
the scenery; and we took great interest in the scenery, asking them
the names of places and the purposes of things, for it is not good
that one's officers should be other than arrogantly confident.

We were a night and a day, and a night and a part of a day on the
journey, and men told us later we had done well to cross the length
of France in that time, considering conditions. On the morning of
the last day we began almost before it was light to hear the firing
of great guns and the bursting of shells--like the thunder of the