One of the corporals shouted out:
"Now then, get on, can't you?"
Get on!... As if he could! The driver, without leaving hold of the wheel which he was preventing from going backwards, turned a distracted face towards us, almost crying with baffled rage.
"Get on? How am I to get on?"
We lent him a hand and succeeded in pushing his wagon into the field so that we could pass.
It was about two o'clock in the afternoon, and the heat was stifling. The battle seemed to have come to an end, and the only gun-shots audible came from far away on the left, near Virton and St. Mard.
The column stretched out in a long black line on the hill-side as we crawled upwards through the woods crowning the summit in order to find a road by which we might gain the plateau. The horizon gradually opened out before us. Suddenly, from the direction of Latour, a machine-gun began to crackle; I hurriedly lifted my hand to my ear like one who drives away a buzzing wasp.