or often entire days would pass without
a single casualty demanding their attention. The cold weather resulted
in much sickness among the soldiers, however, and Gys found during this
period of military inactivity that his medicine chest was more in demand
than his case of surgical instruments.

A slight diversion was created by Clarette, who came to the ship to
demand her husband from the Americans. It seemed almost impossible to
convince her that Maurie was not hidden somewhere aboard, but at last
they made the woman understand he had escaped with the German to
Ostend. They learned from her that Maurie--or Henri, as she insisted he
was named--had several times escaped from her house at night, while she
was asleep, and returned at daybreak in the morning, and this
information led them to suspect he had managed to have several secret
conferences with Lieutenant Elbl previous to their flight. Clarette
announced her determination to follow her husband to Ostend, and perhaps
she did so, as they did not see her again.

It was on Sunday, the twentieth of December, that the Battle of the
Dunes began and the flames of war burst out afresh. The dunes lay
between the North Sea and the Yser River in West Flanders and consisted
of a stretch of sandy hillocks reaching from Coxyde to Nieuport les
Bains. The Belgians had entrenched these dunes in an elaborate and
clever manner, shoveling the sand into a series of high lateral ridges,
with alternate hollows, which reached for miles along the coast. The
hollows were from six to eight feet deep, affording protection to the
soldiers, who could nevertheless fire upon the enemy by creeping up the
sloping embankments until their heads projected sufficiently to allow
them to aim, when they could drop back to safety.

In order to connect the hollows one with another, that an advance or
retreat might be made under cover, narrow trenches had been cut at
intervals diagonally through the raised mounds of sand. Military experts
considered this series of novel fortifications to be practically
impregnable, for should the enemy defile through one of the cross
passages into a hollow where the Allies were gathered, they could be
picked off one by one, as they appeared, and be absolutely annihilated.

Realizing this, the Germans had not risked an attack, but after long
study of the defences had decided that by means of artillery they might
shell the Belgians, who held the dunes, and destroy them as th