We turned in a circle over the muddy yard and started off again, stopping again by the sergeant to get our orders.
"Number 4," said the sergeant, and we swung, once more at a good pace, along the heavy roads, took fresh turnings about and about in the city of hospital huts, and drew up at Number 4.
Again we were loaded, and again we crept back along the roads where we had a few minutes before gone so swiftly, meeting empty cars, keeping in line behind those laden like ourselves. Again we slowed down by the waiting sergeant to say, "Two stretchers and two sitters from Four." He echoed us, and we crept on to the appointed carriage and stopped. So it went on through a couple of hours, ambulance after ambulance swiftly leaving the station, slowly coming back, all drawing up gently by the train, each, opened, making a faint square of light in the velvet darkness. And then, at last, when it was all over, the return, swift again, towards the camp.
We bumped along the road, the dim pines falling away into the shadows behind, a very mild funnel of light showing us a scrap of the way before us and of hedge on either side, the twigs of it perpetually springing out palely to die away once more. The wind was behind us and the screen clear; far ahead of us on the road was an empty ambulance with its curtains drawn back, bare but for its empty stretchers and dark blankets, which made, in the pale glow of the white-painted interior, a sinister Face—two hollow eyes and a wide mouth—that fled through the night, always keeping the same distance ahead, grimacing at me, like an image of the Death's Head of War.... I was glad when it swung round a turning and was lost to us.
We drove into the unrelieved darkness of the convoy park and drew up with precision in our place, I wrestled again with the flap, and we got out into the wet sleet, half-snow, half-rain. My driver covered up the bonnet with tarpaulin, turned off the lights, and we went across to the kitchen. It was half-past three, and we were the first to come back; we asked for bowls of soup and stood sipping them and munching sandwiches that lay ready cut in piles upon the table.
Then, one after another, the drivers entered ... pulling off their great gloves as they came, stamping the snow from their boots. They stood about, drinking from their steaming bowls, bright-eyed, apparently untired, throwing little quick scraps of talk to each other—about the slowness of "St. John's" on this particular night, who hadn't their cases ready and kept one or two ambulances "simply ages"; or the engine trouble developed by one car which still kept it out somewhere on the road. And I stood and listened and watched them, and I received an impression of extraordinary beauty.
These girls, with their leather caps coming down to their brows and over their ears, looked like splendid young airmen, their clear, bold faces coming out from between the leather flaps. They were not pretty, they were touched with something finer, some quality of radiance only increased by their utter unconsciousness of it. Each girl, with her clear face, her round, close head, her stamping feet and strong, cold hands, seemed so intensely alive within the dark globe of the night, that her life was heightened to a point not earthly, as though she were a visitant from the snows or fields I had not seen, fields Olympian.... And as each came swinging in—"vera incessu patuit dea...."
I could have wished them there for ever, like some sculptured frieze, so lovely was the rightness and the inspiration of it.
But I went to my bed, and one of the goddesses insisted on refilling my hot-water bag, though I assured her it would be quite well as it was, and I was unwound from my swaddling clothes and left to dream.