Page:Ballads of a Bohemian.djvu/172

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170
PRISCILLA

With both arms broken, a car to drive?
Thunder of God! it’s queer.”


Same little blessé makes a spiel;
Says he: “When I saw our driver reel,
A Strange Shape leapt to the driving wheel
And sped us safe through the night.”
But Jerry, he says in his drawling tone:
“Rats! Why, Priscilla came in on her own.
Bless her, she did it alone, alone.…”
Hanged if I know who’s right.

As I am sitting down to my midday meal an orderly gives me a telegram:

Hill 71. Two couchés. Send car at once.

The uptilted country-side is a checker-board of green and gray, and, except where groves of trees rise like islands, cultivated to the last acre. But as we near the firing-line all efforts to till the land cease, and the ungathered beets of last year have grown to seed. Amid rank unkempt fields I race over a road that is pitted with obus-holes; I pass a line of guns painted like snakes, and drawn by horses dyed khaki-color; then soldiers coming from the trenches, mud-caked and ineffably weary; then a race over a bit of road that is exposed; then, buried in the hill-side, the dressing station.

The two wounded are put into my car. From hip to heel one is swathed in bandages; the other has a great white turban on his head, with a red patch on it that spreads and spreads. They stare dully, but make no sound. As I crank the car there is a shrill screaming noise. About thirty