these places, and any bombardment or firing was, as it were,
thrown in. He did not go out deliberately to seek it, for its own sake,
and find it infallibly, which is the War Correspondent's way. So that if
Mr. L. says there is going to be a bombardment, we shall probably get
somewhere nearer to it than thirty kilometres.

We took the main road to Zele. I don't know whether it was really a
continuation of the south-east road that runs under the Hospital
windows; anyhow, we left it very soon, striking southwards to the right
to find what Mr. L. believed to be a short cut. Thus we never got to
Zele at all. We came out on a good straight road that would no doubt
have led us there in time, but that we allowed ourselves to be lured by
the smoke of the great factory at Schoonard burning away to the south.

For a long time I could not believe that it was smoke we saw and not an
enormous cloud blown by the wind across miles of sky. We seemed to run
for miles with that terrible banner streaming on our right to the south,
apparently in the same place, as far off as ever. East of it, on the
sky-line, was a whole fleet of little clouds that hung low over the
earth; that rose from it; rose and were never lifted, but as they were
shredded away, scattered and vanished, were perpetually renewed. This
movement of their death and re-birth had a horrible sinister pulse in
it.

Each cloud of this fleet of clouds was the smoke from a burning village.

At last, after an endless flanking pursuit of the great cloud that
continued steadily on our right, piling itself on itself and mounting
incessantly, we struck into a side lane that seemed to lead straight to
the factory on fire. But in this direct advance the cloud eluded us at
every turn of the lane. Now it was rising straight in front of us in the
south, now it was streaming away somewhere to the west of our track.
When we went west it went east. When we went east it went west. And
wherever we went we met refugees from the burning villages. They were
trudging along slowly, very tired, very miserable, but with no panic and
no violent grief. We passed through villages and hamlets, untouched
still, but waiting quietly, and a little breathlessly, on the edge of
their doom.

At the end of one lane, where it turned straight to the east round the
square of a field we came upon a great lake ringed with trees and set in
a green place of the most serene and vivid beauty. It seemed incredible
that