There was a terrific crash of wood far behind.  Resmith chuckled.

“One of those G.S. wagons has knocked down the Automobile Club ‘Cross-Roads’ sign,” he said.  “Good thing it wasn’t a lamp-post!  You see, with their eyes right, they can’t look where they’re going, and the whip touches up the horses, and before you can say knife they’re into something.  Jolly glad it’s only the Am.  Col.  Jones will hear of this.”  He chuckled again.  Jones was the Captain commanding the Ammunition Column.

The order ran down the line: 

“Eyes—­front.”

Soon afterwards they came to some policemen, and two girls in very gay frocks with bicycles, and the cross-roads.  The Battery swung into the great high road whose sign-post said, ‘To Ewell and Epsom.’  Another unit had been halted to let the Artillery pass into its definitive place in the vast trek.  It was about this time that George began to notice the dust.  Rain had fallen before dawn and made the roads perfect; but now either all the moisture had evaporated in the blazing sun, or the Battery had reached a zone where rain had not fallen.  At first the dust rose only in a shallow sea to the height of fetlocks; but gradually it ascended and made clouds, and deposited a layer on the face and on the tongue and in the throat.  And the surface itself of the road, exasperated by innumerable hoofs and wheels, seemed to be in a kind of crawling fermentation.  The smell of humanity and horses was strong.  The men were less inclined to sing.

“Left!” yelled a voice.

And another: 

“Left!”

And still another, very close on the second one: 

“LEFT!”

“Keep your distances there!” Resmith shouted violently.

A horn sounded, and the next moment a motor-car, apparently full of red-hats, rushed past the Battery, overtaking it, in a blinding storm of dust.  It was gone, like a ghost.

“That’s the Almighty himself,” Resmith explained, with unconscious awe and devotion in his powerful voice.  “Gramstone, Major-General.”

George, profoundly impressed (he knew not why), noticed in his brain a tiny embryo of a thought that it might be agreeable to ride in a car.

A hand went up, and the Battery stopped.  It was the first halt.

“Look at your watch,” said Resmith, smiling.

“Ten to, exactly.”

“That’s right.  We have ten minutes in each hour.”

All dismounted, examined horses for galls, and looked at their shoes, took pulls at water-bottles, lit cigarettes, expectorated, coughed, flicked at flies with handkerchiefs.  The party also went past, and shortly afterwards returned with the stretcher laden.

VI

It was after the long halt at midday that the weather changed.  The horses, martyrized by insects, had been elaborately watered and fed with immense labour; officers and men had eaten rations and dust from their haversacks, and for the most part emptied their water-bottles; and the march had been resumed in a temper captious and somewhat exacerbated.