Part 3 (1/2)

”'Jour,” growled the face as though it hated to say it, then pointed to the food and cognac. This was Monsieur le Conducteur, s.h.i.+p's cook, barkeeper, and collector of fares.

In the center of a dark cabin, littered with charts, pails, and Flemish newspapers, was a kitchen table. Now and then a smoking oil lamp flared up to throw a light on the faces of my fellow-pa.s.sengers, five of them in addition to the captain and Mons. le Conducteur. They were, as I discovered later, Mons. A. Albrecht, a leading alderman of Antwerp and a friend of Mons. Vos, the burgomaster; a light-haired Belgian piano salesman who could speak five languages; Mile.

Blanche Ravinet, of looks beautiful and occupation unknown; and two others. From the suddenness with which the conversation stopped, I judged they had been discussing ”ze American.” They were welcome to say what they liked barring the word ”spion.”

For hours we chugged steadily along, catching a fair tide on the lower Meuse, and sliding past the neat little towns of Dordrecht, Papendrecht, and Willemstad, through the Hollandische Diep and the Krammer Volkerak. After that the Telegraaf III worried through the ca.n.a.ls and systems of locks which virtually cut the neck of Tholen from the mainland, and, when the last of these had been accomplished, splashed into the great basin of the East Scheldt. A Dutch gunboat cut across our bows, signaling us to halt. An officer boarded us to study the freight invoices.

Farther upstream a launch came alongside, making fast fore and aft, while two Belgian river sentries, in long blue coats and faded drab trousers, poked their bearded heads above the rail. This, then, was what the captain meant by the border patrol.

Now, as luck would have it, the day was cold: we were the first boat to come through the locks for some hours, and apparently the river sentries had had no breakfast. So they dove into the fo'castle, where Mons. le Conducteur produced bread and cognac. I at once ordered Mons. le Conducteur to get a second round of liquid refreshment for our military guests. Conversation flowed. The soldiers drummed on the table to keep their hands warm and in a moment of inspiration I showed them how the darkies in our country warm their feet.

”Clog dance,” I explained.

”Encore,” shouted the piano salesman. ”That is splendid.”

”Pleaz again! Oh, pleaz!” echoed Mile. Blanche. ”See, every one, ze grand American foot game.”

The fat-faced conducteur, with whom I had suddenly grown in favor, repeated the cognac treatment on the sentries. Before I knew it, they had me alongside the table, one hand steadied against a thwart of the swaying cabin, my head in the smoke of the oil lamp, my feet pounding and kicking, as it seemed, at the very door of Antwerp. The piano salesman shouted rag-time, Mile. Blanche drummed time on the bench, and the river sentries pounded time with their rifle b.u.t.ts.

”Encore!” they shouted when I sat down with aching legs.

All at once the launch alongside gave an angry toot, for the officer wanted his men back: there were other boats to be examined. The sentries glanced quickly at our papers, not reading, I am sure, a word of mine, speedily cast off ropes, and disappeared guiltily and somewhat unsteadily over the larboard rail.

An hour later the Telegraaf III took the river's turn, swinging past Fort St. Philippe, until we could see the gray-blue spire of the Cathedral of Notre Dame with its intricate network of stone silhouetted against the autumn sunset. Mr. Diederick was not at the pier to meet me, nor was there a military pa.s.sport from General de Guise.

”Stay by me,” said Alderman Albrecht. As each of the pier sentries saluted him he said a whispered word, and apparently his word was good, for the American ”foot game” artist was allowed to pa.s.s.

Perhaps Alderman Albrecht had decided that German spies don't clog-dance.

Though not officially admitted to the besieged city, I went at once to my old stand, the Hotel St. Antoine, now converted into British Staff Headquarters. At sundown a mist crept up from the river, and through it we heard a roar of welcome and the rumble of heavy artillery.

Charging down the Avenue de Keyser came a hundred London motor-busses, Piccadilly signs and all, some filled, some half-filled, with a wet-looking bunch of Tommies, followed by armored mitrailleuses, a few 6.7 naval guns, officers' machines, commissary and ammunition carriages--the first brigade of Winston Churchill's army of relief, which for five days was destined to make so valiant, but so short, a fight against the overwhelming German army.

Chapter V

The Bombardment Of Antwerp

There was something typically British in the way those Englishmen went about the defense of Antwerp. In the streets and barracks, and more especially at the Hotel St. Antoine, British Staff Headquarters, where I stayed until its doors were closed, I saw them at close range during that week of horror. Once when I was eating with a company of marines near their temporary barracks, they gave me the pa.s.sword to the trenches, and, although I only got out as far as the inner line of forts on that day, it gave me an opportunity to observe the work of the men under long-range firing. At the St. Antoine, ten or a dozen officers were quartered; others clanked in and out for hurried conferences in the corridors or disappeared into the smoking-room, whose heavy doors with the sign, ”Reservee pour la Gouvernement Anglaise,” hid Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the English Admiralty, and his portmanteau of war maps.

Here was Belgium's last stronghold on the verge of downfall: the outer line of forts had already fallen; Forts Wavre, St. Catherine, Waelham, and Lierre were already prey to the Krupp mortars; the German hosts were swarming across the River Nethe, six miles to the city's south, and the cowering populace in their flight made the streets terrible to look upon.

Yet at the St. Antoine there was no particular flurry--so far, at least, as the officers were concerned. At night they worked over their war maps; in the daytime they went out to the forts. They would get up in the morning, an hour or two earlier than the average business man, have a comfortable breakfast, smoke a cigar for half an hour or so, and talk things over. Then their military automobiles came trembling and sputtering to the doorsteps, and in groups of fours and fives they went out to the firing line. If only two or three of a group returned, you would naturally have to draw your own conclusions as to the fate of the rest.

Those English gentlemen went about their jobs of life and death with the same detached coolness as if their hunters were being saddled, or they were waiting for the referee's whistle in Rugby football. Their att.i.tude was infernally exasperating; yet you couldn't help taking off your hat to their sublime nerve and indifference.

I overheard a typical remark when matters were in this critical state. It came from a handsome, curly-headed officer, noticeable not only for his apparent efficiency, but because he didn't let the game of war interfere with his attentions to the little Princess de Ligne. The latter was nursing her brother, who had been shot through the back of the neck during a raid through German lines. She was a princess in rank, and a queen in looks. Thirty hours before the first sh.e.l.l burst into the Place Verte--Monday morning, it was--this fellow rapped at my door. He had wandered into the wrong pew, for his words were obviously intended to hurry up a brother officer with whom he was to take the morning ride to the firing line. Sticking his curly, sunburnt head around the corner he drawled in inimitable British intonation:-

”I say, old chap, do hurry along; this is no ORDINARY occasion, you know.”