Everyone knows how
at a picnic the car is sent round another way, with clear directions to
go to a perfectly familiar spot, a place where the host says he has made
his chauffeur meet him a dozen times before, and to wait there. Yet the
rendezvous when you reach it always turns out to be absolutely vacant
and bereft, not only of the car but of any signs of human life whatever.
No desert looks so forlorn as a place where one expects to meet somebody
and does not meet them. This was exactly our case. Happily there were no
signs of the car having been destroyed, and therefore our anxiety for
the chauffeur's safety was relieved.
To cut a long story short, we wandered about till we found and
commandeered another car, and drove up the main road. There we soon
found the errant car, wailing behind a shed and some trees. It appeared
that the chauffeur had found the rendezvous too hot for him, after two
shells burst not a dozen yards away from the car, and he retreated
therefore to a safe corner, where we found him talking to a fellow-
soldier. He was very properly reprimanded for having moved from the
place where he was told to wait, but all the same I was glad there was
no accident.
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