Purves, very affairé, came trotting up to the Colonel. “Don’t we turn off to the right here, sir?”
“We do, my Purves, we do.” They rolled off the main street into a quiet square; threaded their way southwards out of the town, through market gardens, into flat cultivated country.
“Where are you bound for?” asked Francis.
Peter pulled out his map, pointed to a little green patch, “Batteries are going to that wood. We’re marching up by daylight to Annequin. See that little house at the end of the railway, just under Fosse Nine? That’s us.”
“Square F 25?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I must be getting back,” said Francis. “I’ll come and look you up one afternoon.”
“Why not come to dinner the day after tomorrow,” invited the Colonel.
“I’d like to very much, sir. About half-past seven. Very good, sir. Good-bye, sir. So long, Peter”; and Captain Francis Gordon, wheeling his horse, trotted back into the town.
Headquarters marched on, dropping the batteries outside Verquigneul; till they came to the hundred-foot slag-cone of Fosse Six; and on, across yet another railway. Now they saw, for the first time, their own sausage balloons, hanging directly above them, and—very far away and tiny—the flash and slow puff of anti-aircraft shell bursting round an invisible ’plane. The men, newcomers all, pointed to the marvel, chattered about it. “Wonder if they got him. Not they. There he goes.” The few old soldiers by the roadside took no notice.