Just now I'm too excited to sleep, even if there were no especial reason for keeping awake." There was something so wonderful, so weird that it was almost ghostly, about that ride in its beginning.

Behind them was the din of the heavy fighting between them and Gumbinnen.

The sky was streaked with the flashes of searchlights, and the vibration of the cannon beat against their ears incessantly.

Yet the road before them, as it lay like a white ribbon in the path of the great headlight, was absolutely empty.
They passed houses, went through villages.

And in none of the houses was there a light or a sign of life.