recognized _officiers anglais_ wandering helplessly up and down,
supported with their sticks; French lieutenants talking to each other
here and there; the extraordinary sense-bereft station master at a
distance looking like a cross between a jumping-jack and a goblin; knots
of _permissionaires_ cursing wearily or joking hopelessly with one
another or stalking back and forth with imprecatory gesticulations. "It's
a joke, too, you know, there are no more trains?"--"The conductor is
dead. I know his sister."--"Old chap, I am all in."--"Say, we are all
lost."--"What time is it?"--"My dear fellow, there is no more time, the
French Government forbids it." Suddenly burst out of the loquacious
opacity a dozen handfuls of Algeriens, their feet swaggering with
fatigue, their eyes burning, apparently by themselves--faceless in the
equally black mist. By threes and fives they assaulted the goblin who
wailed and shook his withered fist in their faces. There was no train. It
had been taken away by the French Government. "How do I know how the
poilus can get back to their regiments on time? Of course you'll all of
you be deserters, but is it my fault?" (I thought of my friend, the
Belgian, at this moment lying in a pen at the prison which I had just
quitted by some miracle.) ... One of these fine people from uncivilized,
ignorant, unwarlike Algeria was drunk and knew it, as did two of his very
fine friends who announced that as there was no train he should have a
good sleep at a farmhouse hard by, which farmhouse one of them claimed to
espy through the impenetrable night. The drunk was accordingly escorted
into the dark, his friends' abrupt steps correcting his own large
slovenly procedure out of earshot.... Some of the Black People sat down
near me and smoked. Their enormous faces, wads of vital darkness, swooned
with fatigue. Their vast gentle hands lay noisily about their knees.

The departed _gendarme_ returned, with a bump, out of the mist. The train
for Paris would arrive _de suite_. We were just in time, our movement had