Suddenly I had a thought which seemed to me so dazzlingly, brilliantly simple that I knew why neither he nor I had foreseen it. With a fatuous joy I kicked hard with both feet simultaneously at the bird’s sides. I heard its bark and it started sidling. I had time to kick it once more, so that it reared nervously because it couldn’t dash forward owing to the thickness of the crowd before it. The General with a shout gave both hands, still holding mine, to the reins. I wrenched mine free and jumped.

My hands caught the stone of the bridge I had seen above us.

It seemed unbearably rough and gritty.

I heaved myself up but I’m not acrobatic and my thudding heart and my panting almost split me in two. Sweat had started out on my forehead and my fingers were sliding before they’d groped the few inches up to the balustrade-edge.

Would the desperation of my need give me unusual strength?

That thought did it. I slipped and, with a gurgle behind my stuffed mouth, clutching frantically at nothing—I fell—

I landed on something harsh and prickly but soft enough to break my fall. This was a big, jolting straw-cart on to whose immense high-piled load I had fallen.

As I looked up in amazement at the fatal grey-stone bridge-thoroughfare spanning the road, I saw Zerd on foot race on to it. How quickly he must have seen my jump, leaped from his bird and up the steps on to the bridge as he saw me clambering on to it. But he was in quite the wrong place, wasn’t he? I saw him shoulder his way through the townspeople crammed on the bridge to watch the army’s passing, and his dark face turning swiftly and concentratedly here and there. Even in this while I was busily removing the black linen sweat-rag from my mouth. The pungent taste it left seemed bitterer when struck by air than when the thing itself had been there. I shook my head with my mouth hanging open, to dry out the taste, and looked down about me at the carts and the Golds marching, ahead. At this moment I heard a shout. Zerd was leaning over the parapet. He had seen me. The great General turned and disappeared into the crowd up there. The cart lurched on.

Well, what to do now?

Breathlessly safe, but for how long?

He knew this cart now, and wouldn’t I be abler on my feet dodging through this multitude?

I scrambled across the hay to its edge. The load was very high. The closely-packed heads beneath seemed very far away, the invisible ground therefore even farther.