The excitement of the pursuit had taken me far from my starting-point, and with the reaction that set in when I was alone in the wood, with all its memories and its ghastly memorials of the carnage, I found it required all my strength of nerve to push me on. I had to plough through open spaces, two feet and more deep in snow, through undergrowth, not knowing at what moment I might stumble across some unseen thing. Above all, I had but the barest recollection of my direction. It seemed many hours before I regained my stump of wall and found my skis lying just where I had cast them off. It was a race against time, too, for dusk was falling, and I knew that it would be impossible to get out of St. Dié by any conveyance after dark. I had the luck to find a man with a sledge, who was returning to a distant village, some way behind the war zone, and he agreed for a substantial consideration to take me. We drove for many hours through the night, and it was very late when at last, in a peasant's cottage, I flung myself fully dressed on a sofa, for there was no spare bed, and slept like a log for several hours. It was by many odd conveyances that I made my way to Besançon, and thence to Dijon. I had managed to clean myself up, and looked less like an escaped convict than I had done; but I was very wary all the way to Paris, where I communicated with headquarters, and received orders to rush the films across to London as fast as ever I could. Having overcome the perils of the land, I had to face those of the sea, for the German submarines were just beginning their campaign against merchant shipping, and cross-Channel steamers were an almost certain mark. So the boat service was suspended for a day or two, and there was I stranded in Dieppe with my precious films, as utterly shut off from London as the German army. I was held up there for three days, during which time I secured pictures of the steamer _Dinorah_, which limped into port after being torpedoed, of a sailing vessel which had struck a mine, and some interesting scenes on board French torpedo boat destroyers as they returned from patrolling the Channel. I spent most of my time hanging around the docks, ready to rush on board any steamer that touched at an English port. At last I heard of one that would start at midnight. My films were all packed in tins, sealed with rubber solution to make them absolutely watertight, and the tins were strung together, so that in the event of the ship going down I could have slipped them round my waist. If they went to the bottom I should go too, but if I was saved I was determined not to reach London without them. As it happened, my adventures were at an end. We saw nothing of any under-water pirates, and my trip to the fighting line ended in a prosaic taxi-cab through London streets that seemed to know nothing of war. PART II CHAPTER I HOW I CAME TO MAKE OFFICIAL WAR PICTURES