fire. But we
noticed there were lights in every one of the cottages. Inside were the
same fishermen who were so apathetic about the fight off-shore.

[Sidenote: Battle of the sand dunes.]

[Sidenote: Red flashing of the contact shells.]

The view from the sand dunes was what the war artists on English
illustrated weeklies try so hard to show. The French batteries were
using shrapnel on the German trenches, the shrapnel leaving puffs of
white smoke in long, uneven lines; and the Germans were keeping up their
steady pounding of contact shells, with a short red flash after each
explosion. The firing of the guns on both sides gave the effect of
continuous summer lightning.

Into the panorama the fleet off-shore kept up a new attack on the German
batteries in the sand dunes just beyond Nieuport-les-Bains. As it was
dark now we could see where they were only by the streaks of fire from
their guns. These flashes came and went like the strokes of a dagger, as
if they were stabbing the dark.

[Sidenote: French soldiers.]

We went back along the beach to avoid being questioned, turning around
constantly to watch the fleet. At Coxyde a whole company of French
soldiers was standing along the edge of the water, jumping back in
surprise when the little waves advanced on them. They told us they were
from the centre of France and had never seen salt water before.

The shore there is lined with new villas made of light colored bricks.
One of these had been dynamited, because it belonged to a German and was
suspected of having a concrete floor for siege guns. I had heard of
cases of this kind before, but I had never had an opportunity to examine
one.

[Sidenote: Concrete foundations.]

My private thought was that the villa had probably been built by a
German with a passion for solidity, but, examining it under a half-full
moon, I could see the foundations were brick walls two feet thick
covered with mosaic backed by reinforced concrete about a foot thick. It
seemed like something more than Teutonic thoroughness.

A little later in La Panne I was shown a concrete tennis court belonging
to a German which had been punched full of holes. It was in no place
thick enough, however, to give cause for suspicion that its real
purpose was in any way sinister.

By the time we regained La Panne I was hardly able to walk as I had been
going hard all day, a good deal of the way through soft sand. But even
if I had been much more tired I w