sses." "Well, I call that
damned inhospitable," said Thompson, and Roos and I heartily
agreed with him. There was nothing else for it, therefore, but to
make a dash for the car. We had left it standing in front of a convent
over which a Red Cross flag was flying on the assumption that there
it would be perfectly safe. But we found that we were mistaken. The
Red Cross flag did not spell protection by any means. As we came
within sight of the car a shell burst within thirty feet of it, a fragment
of the projectile burying itself in the door. I never knew of a car
taking so long to crank. Though it was really probably only a matter
of seconds before the engine started it seemed to us, standing in
that shell-swept road, like hours.

Darkness had now fallen. A torrential rain had set in. The car slid
from one side of the road to the other like a Scotchman coming
home from celebrating Bobbie Burns's birthday and repeatedly
threatened to capsize in the ditch. The mud was ankle-deep and the
road back to Malines was now in the possession of the Germans, so
we were compelled to make a detour through a deserted country-
side, running through the inky blackness without lights so as not to
invite a visit from a shell. It was long after midnight when, cold, wet
and famished, we called the password to the sentry at the gateway
through the barbed-wire entanglements which encircled Antwerp
and he let us in. It was a very lively day for every one concerned
and there were a few minutes when I thought that I would never see
the Statue of Liberty again.

VII. The Coming Of The British

Imagine, if you please, a professional heavy-weight prize-fighter,
with an abnormally long reach, holding an amateur bantam-weight
boxer at arm's length with one hand and hitting him when and where
he pleased with the other. The fact that the little man was not in the
least afraid of his burly antagonist and that he got in a vicious kick or
jab whenever he saw an opening would not, of course, have any
effect on the outcome of the unequal contest. Now that is almost
precisely what happened when the Germans besieged Antwerp, the
enormously superior range and calibre of their siege-guns enabling
them to pound the city's defences to pieces at their leisure without
the defenders being able to offer any effective resistance.

Though Antwerp was to all intents and purposes a besieged city for
many weeks prior to its capture, it was not until the beginni