color of chalk, and one
or two dismounted for a moment, subject to the physical effects of
fear. I have seen men tremble before important physical contests:
Jeffries, stepping into the prize ring at Reno, Nevada, ready for the
beating of his life and the loss of reputation. I have seen murderers
condemned to death. Charles Becker, as I watched him taking his
death sentence that evening in the Criminal Courts Building, did not
give one the same uncanny feeling as this handful of Belgian scouts
pedaling out to meet the German fire. I do not intend to say the
Belgians were not brave men, for this was an isolated instance. And
indeed there was something gruesome about that little company
offered for the slaughter, simply for the purpose of locating the
German batteries. The men understood the meaning of the order and
appreciated the odds against them.

The mitrailleuses pointed down the road we were headed on, and the
Belgian gun-captain told us they were going to clean things up as soon
as their own scouts drew fire and the first Teuton helmet appeared above
the crest. Naturally we were ordered back. Had we continued on this
road we should have been between the Belgian fire behind and the German
fire in front, for the Germans would undoubtedly have mistaken us for a
scouting party in an armored car. As it was, Luther jumped to the wheel
and insisted on seeing the thing through. We went ahead for about half
a mile. I told him that if the shrapnel began to burst too close he
would find me tucked safely underneath the car examining the gasoline
tanks or in the nearest farmhouse cellar, and I believe he would have.
But nothing came close to us on that occasion. My real "baptism" was
reserved for another day, because Van Hee suddenly wrenched the wheel
from Luther and turned our machine down a side road. It was a case of
out of the firing line into the frying-pan, for the side road led us
into a trap from which there was no turning back--the territory
patrolled by the burly pickets of the Ninth German Army Corps, forming
part of the Kaiser's army of occupation in Brussels.

Out of earshot, and certainly out of sight of that skirmish, we were
speeding at a great rate along a level, lonely road flanked by
beet-fields and long lines of graceful elms that shook hands overhead,
when:

"HALT! WOHIN? WO GEHEN SIE?" rang suddenly out of the darkness
as two figures jumped from behind a farmhouse and leveled their
rifles