He knew now that he must go forward and secure a French force for rescue.
But no matter how much he urged himself on, a great power was pulling at him, and it was Julie Lannes, a prisoner of the Germans in the chateau.
Often he stopped and looked back, always in the same direction.

Twice more he saw shells burst in the neighborhood of the house, and then his heart would beat hard, but after brief hesitation he would always pursue his course once more toward the French army.
He did not know the time, but he believed it to be well past midnight.
He had his watch, but his immersion in the fish pond had caused it to stop.

Still, the feel of the air made him believe that he was in the morning hours.

Shells continued to pass over his head, and now they came from many points.

He had seen or heard so much firing in the last eight or ten days that the world, he felt, must be turned into a huge ammunition factory to feed all the guns.