On they went.  Night came down upon them and seemed to crush the spirit out of them.  As they emerged from the wood, the moon rose and flooded the broad plain with weird, phosphorescent light.  They struggled on, swaying with sleep, past the ghostly outlines of poplars and hayricks, past quiet, deserted cottages and empty stables.  There was something almost unearthly about that march in the moonlight.  The accumulated fatigue of a long and hot day, the want of food and the repressing influence of a summer night, all these things joined in producing a state of mental listlessness that destroyed the impression of reality which things have in the daytime.  They were drifting down a slow-moving stream; the scenery glided by, but the sensation was by no means pleasant.  The brain was constantly at war with the lazy feet, striving to keep them from stumbling and the eyelids from closing.  Sound was peculiarly muffled, as if darkness repressed and shut it in.  The brain was not commanding the limbs with the instantaneous co-ordination of the daytime.  The sensation that this produced—­it is very difficult to give any definite idea of it—­was an impression of physical and mental incompetence and uncertainty.  And all the time every ounce of the body was crying out to the mind to let it lie down and rest.

That night many men were lost.

* * * * *

It was not until ten o’clock that they arrived at a village where they found the “cookers” and regimental transport.  The Subaltern could not help admiring the skill which was constantly being shown by the Staff not only in the strategical dispositions of the retreat, but in comparatively minute details such as this.  The Brigade transport had been guided and collected to a spot where it could safely be of service to the battalions.  Moreover, when the men arrived they found tea waiting for them already brewed.  Apparently the hour of the men’s arrival had been timed to such a nicety that the meal was just ready for them.  Assuming the truth of Napoleon’s maxim about an army marching on its belly, one can easily see from these pages that if Staff work had in any way failed, or if the Army Service Corps had broken down, the Great Retreat would have ended in disaster.  It was these faultless arrangements of the Army Service Corps that served to keep the sorely tried army at any rate on its legs.

A fire had been lighted, and, grateful for its warmth, the five Officers of the Company were soon clustering round it, sipping out of their mess tins filled with strong, sweet tea, without milk but very strongly flavoured with rum.  Soon the worries and painful memories of the day were dispelled.  A feeling almost of contentment stole over them.  There is something so particularly adventurous and at the same time soothing about a camp fire.  They had all read books at school full of camp fires and fighting and prairies, and they had all more or less envied such a life.  Here it was.  But the adventure part of it was so minute, and the drudgery and nerve strain so great that the most adventurous soul among them had long since admitted that “if this was Active Service, it was not the life for him!”