For miles and miles nothing living was to be seen, neither animal, nor
motor, nor living man; only the stray fires of the Chinese fluttered
here and there like blue and red marsh fires a mile or so back from the
main road. Once as she flew along she shied like a horse and twisted the
wheel as a wild screaming and twittering rose at the side of the car,
and glancing back she saw three figures wriggle and laugh in mockery and
astonishment. They had risen round the embers of a dead fire, and stood
swaying on their feet and showing white teeth in orange faces. One had
the long hair of a woman flapping about his ears.

They reached Etain, and turned the sharp corner in the street lined with
hollow houses, passed under a tunnel of thick camouflage, leafy as an
arbour, mouldy as the rags upon a corpse, and came on the first
pill-boxes of the Hindenburg line.

Another twelve miles and the twin towers of Verdun appeared over the
brow of a hill.

"I thought it but dust!" exclaimed the Russian. "I thought it a ruin; it
is a town!"

"Wait, wait till you get nearer...."

Then down the last long hill and over the paved Route d'Etain into the
suburbs of Verdun. As they neared it the town began to show its awful
frailty--its appearance of preservation was a mockery. Verdun stood
upright as by a miracle, a coarse lace of masonry--not one house
was whole.