m. Farther on was a tattered woman in a heap on a doorstep; the
hand that hung over her knee was gashed and bled down her rusty brown
dress, and a smashed magnum of champagne formed a pool across the
pavement. She seemed asleep, but she was dead.

The farther I penetrated into London, the profounder grew the
stillness. But it was not so much the stillness of death--it was the
stillness of suspense, of expectation. At any time the destruction
that had already singed the northwestern borders of the metropolis,
and had annihilated Ealing and Kilburn, might strike among these
houses and leave them smoking ruins. It was a city condemned and
derelict. . . .

In South Kensington the streets were clear of dead and of black
powder. It was near South Kensington that I first heard the howling.
It crept almost imperceptibly upon my senses. It was a sobbing
alternation of two notes, "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," keeping on
perpetually. When I passed streets that ran northward it grew in
volume, and houses and buildings seemed to deaden and cut it off
again. It came in a full tide down Exhibition Road. I stopped,
staring towards Kensington Gardens, wondering at this strange, remote
wailing. It was as if that mighty desert of houses had found a voice
for its fear and solitude.

"Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," wailed that superhuman note--great waves
of sound sweeping down the broad, sunlit roadway, between the tall
buildings on each side. I turned northwards, marvelling, towards the
iron gates of Hyde Park. I had half a mind to break into the Natural
History Museum and find my way up to the summits of the towers, in
order to see across the park. But I decided to keep to the ground,
where quick hiding was possible, and so went on up the Exhibition
Road. All the large mansions on each side of the road were empty and
still, and my footsteps echoed against the sides of the houses. At
the top, near the park gate, I came upon a strange sight--a bus
overturned, and the skeleton of a horse picked clean. I puzzled over
this for a time, and then went on to the bridge over the Serpentine.
The voice grew stronger and stronger, though I could see nothing above
the housetops on the north side of the park, save a haze of smoke to
the northwest.

"Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," cried the voice, coming, as it seemed to
me, from the district about Regent's Park. The desolating cry worked
upon my mind. The mood that had sustained me passed. The