The stars came out and night fell--night rent and tortured, darkness assaulted and broken by a myriad new lights of death, but still merciful, reassuring darkness. The moment for the retreat had come. It was a never-ending business, a stumbling, bewildering business. The guns roared on, holding open indefatigably, without cessation, the way of their escape. Much later they got away themselves, dashing blindly in the wake of their exhausted little army, ready to turn at command and hold again, and escape again, and once more hold the unending blue lines, with their unnumbered guns, unwinding like an endless serpent in their rear. The morning showed them still retreating. Sometimes they were miles ahead and could see nothing but the strangely different barred and shivering villages, small settlements of terror, in an untroubled land. There were no flowers flung upon them now, only hurried gasping questions, "Are they coming?" "How far are they behind you?" Sometimes they were halted for half an hour at a time, and sat in hedges and ate, or meant to eat, and slept between the bites. Occasionally they surprised small bands of wandering Uhlans, and if there was time took them prisoners, and if there was no time, shot them in rows against white walls. Once they met a troop out of one of their own divisions, led by a solitary subaltern of nineteen, with queer fixed eyes, who didn't know who he was. All he could say, "I brought them out." Despatch riders hurled themselves upon the Staff with orders; very often they had conflicting orders; and they always had dust, trouble with horses, trouble with motor ambulances, trouble with transport. Enraged heroic surgeons achieving hourly physical miracles, implored with tears to be given impossible things like time. Of course they couldn't have time. Then in the midst of chaos, orders would come to hold. The guns unlimbered, the transports tore madly ahead. Everything that could be cleared off down the road was cleared off, more rough trenches were dug, more hot and sullen hours of waiting followed, and then once more the noise, the helpless slaughter, the steady dogged line gripping the shallow earth, and the unnumbered horde of locusts came on again, eating up the fields of France.