elgian officers were there, gathered round a
table on which was a candle stuck in a glass. They were having their
after-dinner liqueurs and talking of many things. No one spoke of what
was happening outside. I was given a corner, as being out of the
draft.

The explosion were incessant now. With each one the landlady
downstairs screamed. As they came closer, cries and French adjectives
came up the staircase beside me in a nerve-destroying staccato of
terror.

At nine-thirty, when the aeroplanes had been overhead for
three-quarters of an hour, there came a period of silence. There were
no more explosions.

"It is over," said one of the Belgian officers, smiling. "It is over,
and madame lives!"

But it was not over.

I took advantage of the respite to do the forbidden thing and look out
through one of the windows. The moon had come up and the square was
flooded with light. All around were silent houses. No ray of light
filtered through their closed and shuttered windows. The street lamps
were out. Not an automobile was to be seen, not a hurrying human
figure, not a dog. No night prowler disturbed that ghastly silence.
The town lay dead under the clear and peaceful light of the moon. The
white paving stones of the square gleamed, and in the centre,
saturnine and defiant, stood uninjured the statue of Jean Bart,
privateer and private of Dunkirk.

Crash again! It was not over. The attack commenced with redoubled
fury. If sound were destructive the little town of Dunkirk would be
off the map of Northern France to-day. Sixty-seven bombs were dropped
in the hour or so that the Germans were overhead.

The bombardment continued. My feet were very cold, my head hot. The
lady manager was silent; perhaps she had fainted. But Emil reappeared
for a moment, his round white face protruding above the staircase
well, to say that a Zeppelin was reported on the way.

Then at last silence, broken soon by the rumble of ambulances as they
started on their quest for the dead and the wounded. And Emil was
wrong. There was no Zeppelin. The night raid on Dunkirk was history.

The lights did not come on again. From that time on for several weeks
Dunkirk lay at night in darkness. Houses showing a light were fined by
the police. Automobiles were forbidden the use of lamps. One crept
along the streets and the roads surrounding the town in a mysterious
and nerve-racking blackness broken only by the shaded lanterns of the
sentries as they s