The road lay between double rows of once noble trees, centuries old, with the first delicate green of spring softening their bare outlines. Now, splintered, twisted, broken, their wounds showing white in the darkening light through the delicate green, they stood silently eloquent of the terrific force of the H. E. shell.
As they went speeding along the shell-marked road they came upon a huge trunk of a mighty elm, broken clear from its stump, lying partially cross their track, which soldiers were already busy clearing away. Without an instant's pause, the driver wheeled his car off the 'pave', crashed through the broken treetops, and continued on his way.
Barry looked upon the huge trunk with amazement.
“Did a single shell break that tree off like that?” he asked.
“You bet,” was the reply, “and all these you see along here. It's the great transport road for our front line, and the boches shell it regularly. Here comes one now,” he added, casually.
There was a soft woolly “whoof” far away, a high, thin whine, as from a vicious insect overhead, with every fractional second coming nearer and yet nearer, ever deepening in tone, ever increasing in volume, until, like an express train, with an overwhelming sense of speed and power, and with an appalling roar, it crashed upon them. In the field on their left, there leaped fifty yards into the air a huge mass of earth and smoke. Then a stunning detonation.
Insensibly Barry and Cameron both crouched down in the car, but the driver held his wheel, without the apparent quiver of a muscle.
“There'll be three more, presently, I guess,” he said, putting on full speed.
His guess proved right. Again that distant woolly “whoof,” the long-drawn whine, deepening to a scream, the appalling roar and crash, and a second shell fell in the road behind them.
“Two,” said the driver coolly. “There will be a couple more.”