We had fasted for many hours, and while we were doing our part in unpacking the small store of food which we had brought with us, Madame, with her usual genius, had discovered on the outskirts of Poperinghe an obscure cafe, where for a small sum the proprietor allowed us to use his kitchen.  There we were presently all seated round three tables, drinking coffee such as we had rarely tasted, and eating a curiously nondescript, but altogether delightful, meal.  There were two little rooms, one containing a bar and a stove, the other only a table.  Over the stove presided a lady whose novels we have all read, cooking bacon, and when I say that she writes novels as well as she cooks bacon it is very high praise indeed—­at least we thought so at the time.  Some genius had discovered a naval store in the town, and had persuaded the officer in charge to give us cheese and jam and a whole side of bacon, so that we fed like the gods.  There was one cloud over the scene, for the terrible discovery was made that we had left behind in Furnes a large box of sausages, over the fate of which it is well to draw a veil; but Madame was not to be defeated even by that, and a wonderful salad made of biscuits and vinegar and oil went far to console us.  And that reminds me of a curious episode in Furnes.  For several days the huge store bottle of castor oil was lost.  It was ultimately discovered in the kitchen, where, as the label was in English, it had done duty for days as salad oil!  What is there in a name after all?

We had not been able to bring with us all our stores, and as some of these were wanted two of us started back to Furnes late at night to fetch them.  It was a glorious night, and one had the advantage of a clear road.  We were driving northwards, and the sky was lit up by the flashes of the guns at Nieuport and Dixmude, whilst we could hear their dull roar in the distance.  All along the road were encamped the Turcos, and their camp-fires, with the dark forms huddled around them, gave a picturesque touch to the scene.  Half-way to Furnes the road was lit up by a motor-car which had caught fire, and which stood blazing in the middle of the road.  We had some little difficulty in passing it, but when we returned it was only a mass of twisted iron by the roadside.  There was no moon, but the stars shone out all the more brilliantly as we spun along on the great Ypres road.  It was long after midnight when we reached the hospital, and it was not a little uncanny groping through its wards in the darkness.  There is some influence which seems to haunt the empty places where men once lived, but it broods in redoubled force over the places where men have died.  In those wards, now so dark and silent, we had worked for all the past days amid sights which human eyes should never have seen, and the groans of suffering we had heard seemed to echo through the darkness.  We were glad when we had collected the stores we required and were again in the car on our way back to Poperinghe.