After that they turned for home, without a word to one another, not running but hastening with flushed faces as though some one were behind them.
They came to the trench and to their surprise found it absolutely deserted.

Then, plunging on, they arrived at the two wagons, climbed on to one of them, leaving Trenchard alone with the driver on the other.

"I tell you," he remarked to me afterwards, "I sank into that wagon as though into my grave.

I don't know that ever before or since in my life have I felt such exhaustion.

It was reaction, I suppose--a miserable, wretched exhaustion that left me well enough aware that I was the most unhappy of men and simply forced me, without a protest, to accept that condition.