Page:The Marne (Wharton 1918).djvu/124

116 broken globe. Sick and infirm people were dragged and sboved along by the older children: a goitred idiot sat in a wheel-barrow pushed by a girl, and laughed and pulled its tongue.

In among the throng Troy began to see the torn blue uniforms of wounded soldiers limping on bandaged legs. Others too, not wounded, elderly haggard territorials, with powder-black faces, bristling beards, and the horror of the shell-roar in their eyes. One of them stopped near Troy, and in a thick voice begged for a drink just a drop of anything, for God's sake. Others followed, pleading for food and drink. "Gas, gas " a young artilleryman gasped at him through distorted lips. The Germans were over the Marne, they told him, the Germans were coming. It was hell back there, no one could stand it.

Troy ransacked the ambulance, found