whole Prussian Guard. For prisoners disappear and cannot always be shown
to prove the tale. The car was an [Greek: aei ktêma].

In the morning we rode down into Sermoise for the motor-cycles. Sermoise
had been shelled to pieces, but I shall never forget a brave and
obstinate inhabitant who, when a shell had gone through his roof and
demolished the interior of his house, began to patch his roof with
bully-tins and biscuit-tins that he might at least have shelter from the
rain.

Elated with our capture of the car we scented greater victories. We
heard of a motor-boat on the river near Missy, and were filled with
visions of an armoured motor-boat, stuffed with machine-guns, plying up
and down the Aisne. Huggie and another made the excursion. The boat was
in an exposed and altogether unhealthy position, but they examined it,
and found that there was no starting-handle. In the village forge, which
was very completely fitted up, they made one that did not fit, and then
another, but however much they coaxed, the engine would not start. So
regretfully they left it.

To these adventures there was a quiet background of uncomfortable but
pleasant existence. Life on the Aisne was like a "reading party"--only
instead of working at our books we worked at soldiering.

The night that Huggie and I slept down at Ciry, the rest of the despatch
riders, certain that we were taken, encamped at Ferme d'Epitaphe, for
the flooded roads were impassable. There we found them in the morning,
and discovered they had prepared the most gorgeous stew of all my
recollection.