You see, it was a good scheme."
"What happened?" I asked.
"It happened thuswise," he answered, breaking out into fresh
eloquence, with fantastic similes and expressions of which I can give
only the spirit. "Leaving a Pozieres, which, as you doubtless know,
unless you are a bloody staff-officer, is a place where the devil goes
about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, where he leaves
his victims' entrails hanging on to barbed wire, and where the bodies
of your friends and mine lie decomposing in muddy holes--you know the
place?--I put my legs across the colonel's horse, which was in the
wagonlines, and set forth for Amiens. That horse knew that I had
pinched him--forgive my slang. I should have said it in the French
language, vole--and resented me. Thrice was I nearly thrown from his
back. Twice did he entangle himself in barbed wire deliberately. Once
did I have to coerce him with many stripes to pass a tank. Then the
heavens opened upon us and it rained. It rained until I was wet to the
skin, in spite of sheltering beneath a tree, one branch of which,
owing to the stubborn temper of my steed, struck me a stinging blow
across the face.
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