ntangles itself with difficulty from the baggage wagons, and is
wedged tighter still among the troops. But the troops are moving, though
by inches at a time. We get our front wheels on to the bridge. Packed in
among the troops, but moving steadily as they move, we cross the
Scheldt. On our right the sharp bows and on our left the blunt sterns of
the boats. Boat after boat pressed close, gunwale to gunwale, our
roadway goes across their breasts. Their breasts are taut as the breasts
of gymnasts under the tramping of the regiments. They vibrate like the
breasts of living things as they bear us up.

No heaving of any beautiful and beloved ship, no crossing of any sea, no
sight of any city that has the sea at her feet, not New York City nor
Venice, no coming into any foreign land, ever thrilled me as that
coming into Antwerp with the Belgian army over that bridge of boats.

At twilight, from the river, with its lamps lit and all its waters
shining, Antwerp looked beautiful as Venice and as safe and still. For
the dykes are her defences on this side. But for the trudging regiments
you would not have guessed that on the land side the outer ramparts were
being shelled incessantly.

It was a struggle up the slope from the river bank to the quay, a
struggle in which we engaged with commissariat and ammunition wagons and
troops and refugees in carts, all trying to get away from the city over
the bridge of boats. The ascent was so steep and slippery that you felt
as though at any moment the car might hurl itself down backwards on the
top of the processions struggling behind it.

At last we landed. I have no vivid recollection[12] of our passage
through the town. Except that I know we actually were in Antwerp I could
not say whether I really saw certain winding streets and old houses with
steep gables or whether I dreamed them. There was one great street of
white houses and gilded signs that stood shimmering somewhere in the
twilight; but I cannot tell you what street it was. And there were some
modern boulevards, and the whole place was very silent. It had the
silence and half darkness of dreams, and the beauty and magic and
sinister sadness of dreams. And in that silence and sadness our car,
with its backings and turnings and its snorts, and our own voices as we
asked our way (for we were more or less lost in Antwerp) seemed to be
making an appalling and inappropriate and impious noise.

Antwerp seems to me to have been all h