"Yes, fresh batches of waggons are going on, and we are to escort them, and if we reach Springfield by to-morrow night we may think ourselves lucky, for some of the officers who went with the first lot have come back, and say that the roads are simply awful--there are dongas to be passed where the waggons sink up to their axles--and that at one point ninety oxen were fastened to a single waggon and could not pull it out from a hole in which it was sunk, and there it would be now if one of the Woolwich traction engines hadn't got hold of it and drawn it out. They are doing splendid work, and if the War Office authorities can but take a lesson to heart, the next war we go into we shall have five hundred of them and not a single transport animal. They would cost money, no doubt, but they would eat nothing and drink nothing; they would only require to be oiled and cleaned occasionally to keep them in order, and when they were wanted they would do the work without our having to hunt the world over for transport animals. They would save their cost in one war; there would be a thousand drivers and stokers instead of twenty thousand camp followers; it would not matter whether the country was burnt up dry or deep in grass, they would drag their fuel with them; and would save the artillery horses by dragging the guns till they were in the neighbourhood of an enemy. It might not look so pretty or picturesque as the present system, but it would be enormously more useful, and in the long run vastly more economical. I should like to see Kitchener put at the War Office with authority to sweep it out; Hercules in the Augean stable would be nothing to it." Chris laughed at the earnestness and vehemence with which the commander spoke.