midday
We spent the night in a sort of hotel , where all four crowded into one little bedroom , and next morning I had my work cut out getting a motor-car . It took four hours , and the use of every great name in the Turkish Empire , to raise a dingy sort of Studebaker , and another two to get the petrol and spare tyres . As for a chauffeur , love or money could n't find him , and I was compelled to drive the thing myself . We left just after midday and swung out into bare bleak downs patched with scrubby woodlands . There was no snow here , but a wind was blowing from the east which searched the marrow . Presently we climbed up into hills , and the road , though not badly engineered to begin with , grew as rough as the channel of a stream . No wonder , for the traffic was like what one saw on that awful stretch between Cassel and Ypres , and there were no gangs of Belgian roadmakers to mend it up .