Faster and faster the flaming aeroplane plunged toward the earth, trailing behind it a tail of sparks like the tail of a comet.
The shells ceased bursting high in the air. The glow of the fallen aeroplane was swallowed up in the flashes of the trench guns. The squadron had passed behind the French battleline.
But somewhere on that No-Man's-Land between the trenches, the wreck of the bombarding machine and the aviators who accompanied it were being devoured by the flames.
The girl hurried along the road, shuddering and fearful. When she arrived at the hospital there was an air of excitement and expectancy that she had never seen there before. It was communicated to the restless patients in her ward. The little wooden hut shook and rattled to the roar of the guns.
"A great day has begun, Mademoiselle," chirped the harelipped Erard, bustling about, doing unnecessary things, setting the whole ward "by the ears," until Marius swore at him.
"Dirty little rabbit-mouth!" declared the irritable blessé. "He will never learn. And with that broken foot dragging, dragging, like a child's toy cart. Mon Dieu! What a useless beggar!"
"Hush, Marius," the girl said. "Poor Erard is very kind to me."
"Sale embusqué! Why is he not kind to me?" growled Marius.
It was scarcely light—gray dawn of a cloudy fall day—when the ambulances began to trundle in at the gateway of the hospital enclosure with their burdens of wounded.
Belinda was called to the operating ward to help. Piles of clothing lay here and there on the floor—filthy, muddy, blood-soaked; torn or cut from the broken bodies on the beds. The brancardiers stepped on these heaps, or kicked them aside, as they lifted the stripped wounded, one by one, to the brown canvas stretchers, and carried them, walking carefully out of step, to the operating room.