So we started with the first ambulance through those frightful streets again and out into the road to the country.  “Very hot!” said one of the men—­I think it was the chauffeur.  Somebody else asked if we should get through with luck.  Nobody answered the question.  The wounded men with us were very quiet; I thought they were dead.  There was only an incessant cannonade and the crashing of buildings.  The mitrailleuses were at work now, spitting out bullets.  It was a worse sound than that of the shells; it seemed more deadly in its rattle.  I started back behind the car and saw the other ambulance in our wake.  I did not see the motor car.

Along the country roads the fields were still being plowed by shells which burst over our heads.  We came to a halt again in a place where soldiers were crouched under cottage walls.  There were few walls now, and inside some of the remaining cottages were many wounded men.  Their comrades were giving them first aid and wiping the blood out of their eyes.  We managed to take some of these on board.  They were less quiet than the others we had, and groaned in a heartrending way.

A little later we made a painful discovery—­Lieut. de Broqueville, our gallant young leader, was missing.  By some horrible mischance he had not taken his place in either of the ambulances or the motor cars.  None of us had the least idea what had happened to him; we had all imagined that he had scrambled up like the rest of us, after giving the order to get away.

There was only one thing to do—­to get back in search of him.  Even in the half hour since we had left the town Dixmude had burst into flames and was a great blazing torch.  If de Broqueville were left in that hell he would not have a chance of life.

It was Mr. Gleeson and Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett who, with great gallantry, volunteered to go back and search for our leader.  They took the light car and sped back toward the burning town.  The ambulances went on with their cargo of wounded, and Lady Dorothie Feilding and I were left alone for a little time in one of the cars.  We drove back along the road toward Dixmude, and rescued another wounded man left in a wayside cottage.

By this time there were five towns blazing in the darkness, and in spite of the awful suspense which we were now suffering we could not help staring at the fiendish splendor of that sight.

Dr. Munro joined us again, and after consultation we decided to get as near to Dixmude as we could, in case our friends had to come out without their car or had been wounded.

The German bombardment was now terrific.  All the guns were concentrated upon Dixmude and the surrounding trenches.  In the darkness under a stable wall I stood listening to the great crashes for an hour, when I had not expected such a lease of life.  Inside the stable soldiers were sleeping in the straw, careless that at any moment a shell might burst through upon them.  The hour seemed a night; then we saw the gleam of headlights, and an English voice called out.