day.  A woman who was awakened by the first explosion and leaned from her window to see what was happening had her head blown off.  In all ten people were killed, six of whom were women, and upwards of forty wounded, two of them so terribly that they afterwards died.  There is very little doubt that a deliberate attempt was made to kill the royal family, the General Staff and the members of the Government, one shell bursting within a hundred yards of the royal palace, where the King and Queen were sleeping, and another within two hundred yards of staff headquarters and the Hotel St. Antoine.

As a result of this night of horror, Antwerp, to use an inelegant but descriptive expression, developed a violent case of the jim-jams.  The next night and every night thereafter until the Germans came in and took the city, she thought she saw things; not green rats and pink snakes, but large, sausage-shaped balloons with bombs dropping from them.  The military authorities—­for the city was under martial law—­screwed down the lid so tight that even the most rabid prohibitionists and social reformers murmured.  As a result of the precautionary measures which were taken, Antwerp, with its four hundred thousand inhabitants, became about as cheerful a place of residence as a country cemetery on a rainy evening.  At eight o’clock every street light was turned off, every shop and restaurant and cafe closed, every window darkened.  If a light was seen in a window after eight o’clock the person who occupied that room was in grave danger of being arrested for signalling to the enemy.  My room, which was on the third floor of the hotel, was so situated that its windows could not be seen from the street, and hence I was not as particular about lowering the shades as I should have been.  The second night after the Zeppelin raid the manager came bursting into my room.  “Quick, Mr. Powell,” he called, excitedly, “pull down your shade.  The observers in the cathedral tower have just sent word that your windows are lighted and the police are downstairs to find out what it means.”

The darkness of London and Paris was a joke beside the darkness of Antwerp.  It was so dark in the narrow, winding streets, bordered by ancient houses, that when, as was my custom, I went to the telegraph office with my dispatches after dinner, I had to feel my way with a cane, like a blind man.  To make conditions more intolerable, if such a thing were possible, cordons of sentries were thrown around those buildings under whose roofs the members of the Government slept, so that if one returned after nightfall he was greeted by a harsh command to halt, and a sentry held a rifle-muzzle against his breast while another sentry, by means of a dark lantern, scrutinized his papers.  Save for the sentries, the streets were deserted, for, as the places of amusement and the eating-places and drinking-places were closed, there was no place for the people to go except to bed.  I was reminded of the man who told his wife that he came home because all the other places were closed.