Knowing that it would be impossible to pass before the whole long line had gone by, I crossed over and now saw that the Scots Grays would soon find friends.  I called Leon and pulling out a card, told him to pedal back and dig out a bottle of champagne I had hidden in our hay cart, and to present it to our soldier friends as a bracer and a souvenir.  And then we pushed ahead.

Two minutes later, to my utter surprise, a heavy motor horn tooted on the road behind me and looking back, I saw a private car emerge from behind one of the English motors, and whirl down in our direction.  It was a four-seater affair with but two occupants, a chauffeur and a woman wearing a streaming white veil.

“Quick!” I shrieked, grabbing the reins and pulling our cart full into the middle of the road.  “They’ve got to take me and the boy to Melun!”

Seeing his deliverance so near, my old friend obeyed at once.

The motor, stupefied by our actions, slowed down.

“Get out of the way!” yelled the chauffeur.  “Are you crazy!  Out or I’ll run you down!”

“Never!  Look here.  I don’t care where you’re bound for, but you’ve got to make room for me and a dying man in your machine.  It’s Melun—­or nothing!”

“Wounded!  Heaven, the Germans!  We’re caught!  Go on, quick, quick, I say!” shrieked the woman.

The chauffeur made a movement as though to skid past us.

“No, you don’t,” I said, once again producing my trusty Browning.

The woman hid her face in her hands.

“Now then, either you can make room for us or I’ll blow off your tires and you’ll have to get down and walk like all the rest of us!”

My gray-headed driver was jubilant.

“That’s right, Madame, you’ve hit it!” he encouraged.

There just wasn’t any choice.  The chauffeur got down and began piling the gasoline cans behind on the back seat to one side.  Then, each of us grabbing a corner of the mattress, we hoisted the sufferer onto the machine, covering him with a sheet.  Try as we would, though, we could not get him to bend his knees, and in consequence all during the trip the poor chauffeur received constant kicks from the agonized soul we were rushing towards surgical aid.

“Now then,” I said, turning to my old driver.  “Thank you for your cart, and bon voyage to Coulommiers.  George, tell my people to meet me in Melun.”

And hatless, coatless, with but one golden louis in my pocket (I had confided my bag to Julie when the wounded man had arrived at Jouy), I started on our record-breaking trip to Melun.

VII