The orderlies came to the open door, one man mounted within, and the top stretcher from one side was slipped along its grooves and disappeared, tilted into the night. The boy on the top stretcher the other side turned his head languidly and watched--I could see a pale cheek, foreshortened from where I sat, a sweep of long dark eyelashes, the curve of the drooping upper lip. His turn came, and, passive, he too was slid out, then the two men below were carried away and up into the train. The ambulance was empty. We turned in a circle over the muddy yard and started off again, stopping again by the sergeant to get our orders. "Number 4," said the sergeant, and we swung, once more at a good pace, along the heavy roads, took fresh turnings about and about in the city of hospital huts, and drew up at Number 4. Again we were loaded, and again we crept back along the roads where we had a few minutes before gone so swiftly, meeting empty cars, keeping in line behind those laden like ourselves. Again we slowed down by the waiting sergeant to say, "Two stretchers and two sitters from Four." He echoed us, and we crept on to the appointed carriage and stopped. So it went on through a couple of hours, ambulance after ambulance swiftly leaving the station, slowly coming back, all drawing up gently by the train, each, opened, making a faint square of light in the velvet darkness. And then, at last, when it was all over, the return, swift again, towards the camp. We bumped along the road, the dim pines falling away into the shadows behind, a very mild funnel of light showing us a scrap of the way before us and of hedge on either side, the twigs of it perpetually springing out palely to die away once more. The wind was behind us and the screen clear; far ahead of us on the road was an empty ambulance with its curtains drawn back, bare but for its empty stretchers and dark blankets, which made, in the pale glow of the white-painted interior, a sinister Face--two hollow eyes and a wide mouth--that fled through the night, always keeping the same distance ahead, grimacing at me, like an image of the Death's Head of War.... I was glad when it swung round a turning and was lost to us. We drove into the unrelieved darkness of the convoy park and drew up with precision in our place, I wrestled again with the flap, and we got out into the wet sleet, half-snow, half-rain. My driver covered up the bonnet with tarpaulin, turned off the lights, and we went across to the kitchen. It was half-past three, and we were the first to come back; we asked for bowls of soup and stood sipping them and munching sandwiches that lay ready cut in piles upon the table.