y had no mercy on the few remaining
noncombatants.

The intelligence officer's baggage delayed us a long time. When we
got up nearly as far as Fort St. Philippe, we separated. We saw a
barge anchored in the river and he had an idea it would leave about
seven o'clock, and that we might be able to get on it. I gave him my
knapsack containing my gold belt, which, in the confusion, I had not
had time to strap on, and started to make a dash back to the
Queen's, because I considered that I ought to let the other fellows
know what had happened to us.

I had fifteen minutes to cover the distance.

I ran. The shells, at that time, were falling at a rate, I should
judge, of five a minute. Opposite the Castle Steen I had a narrow
escape--just concussion, I suppose. Directly above me came a crash of
thunder. A few moments later I found myself lying in the street, head
pointing north--dazed. A bomb crashed through the eaves and tore a hole
as big as a small cellar in the street directly before the old castle,
bursting with the concussion of a tornado. For a few moments I sat on
the street feeling weak in the legs and unable to move.

Again I started back to the Queen's. Two hundred yards east of the
bridge some soldiers held me up.

"Get back!" they shouted, believing that I was making for the pontoon.
They turned me back, and I hesitated a moment. A terrible explosion,
louder than anything I had yet heard, rocked the city to its
foundations. For a moment the walls of the houses trembled and every
window on the waterfront was broken. The retreating Belgian army had
blown up that pontoon bridge and with it what then seemed the last hope
of escape for the few remaining survivors. For a few moments wreckage
writhed in midstream like a great sea creature in agony of death.

Past me rushed groups of Belgian soldiers, the remainder of a few
hundred who had been left to cover the British and Belgian retreat, fire
the last shots from the forts, and spike the guns as the Germans
approached. Pitiable was the terror of these fellows when they saw the
bridge gone. Many of them were out of their heads through exposure and
exhaustion; not a few of them wept. One sergeant tore off his uniform
and fatigue cap and tried to exchange them for my citizen's clothes.

The worst fire of the entire bombardment was concentrated during these
moments; the racket was stupendous. Because gunboats, barges, lighters,
tenders, rowboats, w