iously
enough we could barely hear the cannonading, for the wind was keen in
the opposite direction, yet we could, as the minutes crept by and the
air cleared, see distinctly the flashes from the boats and the flashes
in the city.

After about fifteen minutes there was a cessation, or perhaps a
hesitation, that lasted two minutes; then the flashes continued. Ten
minutes more and the boats began to move again. One cruiser disappeared
completely from sight, sailing south by east. The other two rushed, like
fast trains, north again, again close to our cliffs; and in another half
hour we heard all too plainly the cannonading which had almost escaped
our ears from Scarborough. We thought it was Robin Hood's Bay, as far
north of us as Scarborough is south; but afterward we learned that the
boats omitted this pretty red-roofed town and concentrated their
remaining energy on Whithy, fifteen miles north; the wind blowing
toward us brought us the vibrating boom.

We drove to Scarborough. We had not gone one mile of the distance when
we began to meet people coming in the opposite direction. A small
white-faced boy in a milk cart that early every morning makes its
Scarborough rounds showed us a piece of shell he had picked up and said
it had first struck a man a few yards from him and killed the man. A
woman carrying a basket told us, with trembling lips, that men and women
were lying about the streets dead. The postman assured us that
Scarborough was in flames. A road worker told us we should be turned
back, and another man warned us to beware of a big hole in the road
further along, large enough to swallow our horse and trap; yet we could
certainly see no flames issuing from Scarborough, which now lay directly
before us.

We put up the horse at a stable on the very edge of the city and walked
up the steep hill. The hotelkeeper and his wife, we were told, were
already "refugees."

Scarborough is a sprawling town that stretches a length of about three
miles from the extreme north end to the extreme south. Inland about a
mile and a half is a wireless station, and on the cliff, 300 feet high,
stands the ruined castle and its walled-in grounds, in the midst of
which is--or was, for it was yesterday blown clean away--a signal
station. Although there are barracks the town is unfortified. A seaside
resort of considerable importance, its population varies by many
thousands in Winter and Summer, with a stationary population of 45,000.