the 'citizens'
crouched behind under the rattle of bullets."

"This is going to be good," he went on in high enthusiasm. The soldiers
were rolling heavy barrels to the gutter, and knocking off the heads.
The barrels were packed with fish, about six inches long, with scales
that went blue and white in the fresh morning light. The fish slithered
over the cobbles, and the soldiers stumbled on their slippery bodies.
They set the barrels on end, side by side, and heaped the cracks between
and the face with sods of earth, thick-packed clods, with grass growing.
The grass was bright green, unwilted. A couple of peasant hand-carts
were tilted on end, and the flooring sodded like the barrels.

"Look who's coming," pointed Rossiter, swiveling his lens sharply
around.

Steaming gently into our narrow street from the Grand Place came a great
Sava mitrailleuse--big steel turret, painted lead blue, three men
sitting behind the swinging turret. One of the men, taller by a head
than his fellows, had a white rag bound round his head, where a bullet
had clipped off a piece of his forehead the week before. His face was
set and pale. Sitting on high, in the grim machine, with his bandage
worn as a plume, he looked like the presiding spirit of the fracas.

"It's worth the trip," muttered Romeyn, grinding away on his crank.

There was something silent and efficient in the look of the big man and
the big car, with its slim-waisted, bright brass gun shoving through.

"Here, have a cigarette," said Rossiter, as the powerful thing glided
by.

He passed up a box to the three gunners.

"_Bonne chance_," said the big man, as he puffed out rings and fondled
the trim bronze body of his Lady of Death. They let the car slide down
the street to the left end of the barricade, where it came to rest.

Over the canal, out from the smoke-misted houses, came a peasant
running. In his arms he carried a little girl. Her hair was light as
flax, and crested with a knot of very bright red ribbon. Hair and gay
ribbon caught the eye, as soon as they were borne out of the doomed
houses. The father carried the little one to the bridge at the foot of
our street, and began crossing towards us. The barbed wire looked angry
in the morning sun. He had to weave his way patiently, with the child
held flat to his shoulder. Any hasty motion would have torn her face on
the barbs. Shrapnel was sailing high overhead between the two forces,
and there, thirty feet under