The war was beginning to close round us.

* * * * *

The next day (Wednesday) he announced that he was going to Zele; but he didn’t, he really didn’t want me to take Viola there.  I could go by myself, of course, if I liked, though he didn’t care about her being left.

But we did go.  Viola’s blood was up, after what she called Jimmy’s meanness, and there was no keeping her back.

We were a little uncertain of our way, for following Jimmy as we did, or rather, following the direction Colville swore he had seen him start in, took us much too far to the north.  We found ourselves on the Antwerp road, jammed in the traffic, and caught by a stream of refugees.  We were obliged to turn back to Ghent to get our bearings, but the business of transporting women and children kept us on the Antwerp road all morning, and it was past two o’clock before we started for Zele.

I remember this particular chase after Jimmy for many reasons.  First, we lost our way and never got to Zele at all.

Down in the south-east on the sky-line we saw a fleet of little clouds that seemed to be anchored to the earth, and every cloud of the fleet was the smoke from a burning village.  West of the fleet was an enormous cloud blown by the wind across miles of sky.

Viola was certain that the big cloud was Zele being burned to the ground, and that Jimmy would be burned with it.

When I told her that it wasn’t likely that Jimmy would stay in Zele when it was burning she said that I didn’t know Jimmy, and anyhow it was there that she was going.

Suddenly Viola sat up very straight.

“Furny, is that guns I hear, or thunder?”

I said it was guns.  A deep and solemn booming came from before and behind us and on either side, east and west.  We had rushed bang between the French and German batteries.

The big cloud turned out to be smoke from a factory that the Belgians had set fire to themselves, and in following it we had gone miles from Zele.  Now we followed the guns.

We turned east and struck off south and found ourselves in the village of Baerlere.  The lines of fire seemed suddenly to narrow in on us here.

There was a clean path down the centre of the street, for men and horses stood back close under the housewalls on each side.  The place was full of soldiers.  One of them told us that we could get to Zele by going east through the village, but as the road was being shelled, he didn’t advise us to try.

We went down that clean middle of the street.  We were safe enough as long as we ran between the houses; but the village very soon came to an end, and then, in the open road, we were in for it.

The fields dropped away from us on each side, leaving us as naked to the German batteries as if we were running on a raised causeway.  At the bottom of the fields to our right there was a line of willows, beyond the willows there was the river, and behind the river bank, on the further side, were the German lines.