at Nieuport-les-Bains
and Westende, there were Belgian soldiers bathing in the shallow water.
Some of them, cavalrymen, were riding naked into the deeper water, and
this, mind you, was late October. They were even playing jokes on one
another, and did not seem to be paying any attention to the fifteen
English and French cruisers and gunboats which were standing off the
shore almost opposite them, keeping up a steady stream of fire obliquely
along the beach at the sand dunes just beyond the pier at
Nieuport-les-Bains. In these dunes, _five_ miles away, big German guns
were hidden.

[Sidenote: Fishermen unconcerned.]

Farther on, and even right up to the pier at Nieuport, we passed, along
the beach behind the shrimp fishermen, who seemed even less interested
in the novel fight on land and sea. The barelegged men and women were as
industriously taking advantage of the low-tide as if nothing at all were
happening. The French and English warships were directly opposite them,
and, by this time, they were drawing the German fire. German shells,
probably from siege guns, were plumping down into the water all around
them only a couple of miles off-shore, but, though the shrimpers looked
up occasionally when the explosion of a shell fairly shook the face of
the ocean, their attention would be directed again to their work before
the column of water raised by the shell had had time to fall again. The
shelling kept up about an hour, but none of the warships was struck.
They kept moving at full-speed in an uneven line, making it impossible
to get their range.

[Sidenote: A panorama of battle.]

[Sidenote: Germans try to cross the Yser.]

Just before we reached the pier heavy cannonading began inland. We
climbed the sand dunes and there we came suddenly upon a perfect
panoramic view of the battle all the way from the dunes across the
inundated fields to Dixmude in the distance. The whole line of battle
for ten miles was in the midst of a German attack, covered by a terrific
artillery fire. Over the white, red-tiled cottages of the fishermen,
almost lost among the lesser sand dunes, we could make out the Belgian
line by the fire of their rifle and machine guns. At two points we could
see the Yser Canal and at one of these the Germans were trying to throw
across a pontoon bridge.

We could see it only through the smoke of breaking shells, but it was
the most exciting event I have ever witnessed. At three miles or more,
though,