We shot out of drizzling rain into brief spells of winter sunshine, and then into a snow blizzard which all but whipped the skin from our faces.

And always before us the long road unrolled, with somewhere at the end of it two armies clinched in a death-grapple.
That night we looked for no lodging.

We ate a sort of meal in the car with the hood up, and felt our way on in the darkness, for the headlights were in perfect order.

Then we turned off the road for four hours' sleep, and I had a go at the map.

Before dawn we started again, and came over a pass into the vale of a big river.