Meanwhile the flight of shells continued, a dozen or more fires could be seen from the upper windows of the hotel, and billows of red flame from the burning petrol-tanks rolled up the southern sky.  It had been what might be called a rather full day, and the wail of approaching projectiles began to get on one’s nerves.  One started at the slamming of a door, took every dull thump for a distant explosion; and when we finally turned in I carried the mattress from my room, which faced the south, over to the other side of the building, and laid it on the floor beside another man’s bed.  Before a shell could reach me it would have to traverse at least three partitions and possibly him as well.

After midnight the bombardment quieted, but shells continued to visit us from time to time all night.  All night the Belgians were retreating across the pontoon bridge, and once—­it must have been about two or three o’clock—­I heard a sound which meant that all was over.  It was the crisp tramp—­different from the Belgian shuffle—­of British soldiers, and up from the street came an English voice, “Best foot forward, boys!” and a little farther on:  “Look alive, men; they’ve just picked up our range!”

I went to the window and watched them tramp by—­the same men we had seen that morning.  The petrol fire was still flaming across the south, a steamer of some sort was burning at her wharf beside the bridge—­ Napoleon’s veterans retreating from Moscow could scarcely have left behind a more complete picture of war than did those young recruits.

Morning came dragging up out of that dreadful night, smoky, damp, and chill.  It was almost a London fog that lay over the abandoned town.  I had just packed up and was walking through one of the upper halls when there was a crash that shook the whole building, the sound of falling glass, and out in the river a geyser of water shot up, timbers and boards flew from the bridge, and there were dozens of smaller splashes as if from a shower of shot.  I thought that the hotel was hit at last and that the Germans, having let civilians escape over the bridge, were turning everything loose, determined to make an end of the business.  It was, as a matter of fact, the Belgians blowing up the bridge to cover their retreat.  In any case it seemed useless to stay longer, and within an hour, on a tug jammed with the last refugees, we were starting down-stream.

Behind us, up the river, a vast curtain of lead-colored smoke from the petrol-tanks had climbed up the sky and spread out mushroomwise, as smoke and ashes sometimes spread out from a volcano.  This smoke, merging with the fog and the smoke from the Antwerp fires, seemed to cover the whole sky.  And under that sullen mantle the dark flames of the petrol still glowed; to the right, as we looked back, was the blazing skeleton of the ship, and on the left Antwerp itself, the rich, old, beautiful, comfortable city, all but hidden, and now and then sending forth the boom of an exploding shell like a groan.