By the time our battery had been loaded, another battery was waiting to move on to the platform. Our captain went down the length of the train examining the halter straps in the horse cars and assuring himself of the correct apportionment of men in each car. Then we moved out on what developed to be a wild night ride. The horse has been described as man's friend and no one questions that a horse and a man, if placed out in any large open space, are capable of getting along to their mutual comfort. But when army regulations and the requirements of military transportation place eight horses and four men in the same toy French box car and then pat all twelve of them figuratively on the neck and tell them to lie down together and sleep through an indefinite night's ride, it is not only probable, but it is certain, that the legendary comradeship of the man and the horse ceases. The described condition does not encompass the best understood relation of the two as travelling companions. On our military trains in France, the reservations of space for the human and dumb occupants of the same car were something as follows: Four horses occupied the forward half of the car. Four more horses occupied the rear half of the car. Four men occupied the remaining space. The eight four-footed animals are packed in lengthwise with their heads towards the central space between the two side doors. The central space is reserved for the four two-footed animals. Then the train moves. If the movement is forward and sudden, as it usually is, the four horses in the forward end of the car involuntarily obey the rules of inertia and slide into the central space. If the movement of the train is backward and equally sudden, the four horses in the rear end of the car obey the same rule and plunge forward into the central space. On the whole, night life for the men in the straw on the floor of the central space is a lively existence, while "riding the rattlers with a horse outfit." Our battery found it so. I rode a number of miles that night sitting with four artillerymen in the central space between the side doors which had been closed upon orders. From the roof of the car, immediately above our heads, an oil lantern swung and swayed with every jolt of the wheels and cast a feeble light down upon our conference in the straw. We occupied a small square area which we had attempted to particularise by roping it off. On either side were the blank surfaces of the closed doors. To either end were the heads of four nervous animals, eight ponderous hulks of steel-shod horseflesh, high strung and fidgety, verging almost on panic under the unusual conditions they were enduring, and subject at any minute to new fits of excitement. We sat at their feet as we rattled along. I recalled the scene of the loose cannon plunging about the crowded deck of a rolling vessel at sea and related Hugo's thrilling description to my companions.