I walked down to the quayside, and there I came across many wounded soldiers, who had been unable to get away in the hospital boat.  On the quay piles of equipment had been abandoned; broken-down motor cars, kit-bags, helmets, rifles, knapsacks were littered in heaps.  Ammunition had been dumped there and rendered useless.  The Belgians had evidently attempted to set fire to the whole lot.  A pile of stuff was still smoldering.  I waited there for half an hour, and during that time hundreds of Belgian soldiers passed in retreat, the last contingent leaving at about 6:30 A.M.

I went again to the Queen’s Hotel to inquire what had become of the American newspaper men, and it was just about this time that the pontoon bridge which had been the way of the Belgian retreat was blown up to prevent pursuit by the Germans.  The boats and woodwork of the superstructure burnt fiercely and in less than twenty minutes the whole affair was demolished.

Safe exit from the city was now cut off.  A Red Cross officer whom I met when standing by the quay had been a spectator of the blowing up of the bridge.

“My God!” he said, running toward me, “it is awful!”

“How are you going to get out?” I asked him.

“I’m going to stay here and look after my wounded,” he replied.

In further talk with him I learned that the greater part of the second line of forts had fallen at midday the previous day and that there was nothing then to stop the Germans entering the city save a handful of Belgian soldiers in three or four forts.  At 8 o’clock a shell struck the Town Hall.

Fox had now joined me, and we took refuge in the cellars beneath the Town Hall.  So far as I could gather, the remaining inhabitants of Antwerp must have assembled about this neighborhood, groups taking refuge in small and stuffy cellars, where developments were anxiously awaited.  There must have been hundreds of people sheltered underground, and they included the Mexican and Dominican Consuls.  Why these stayed I do not know, as none of their people were left behind.  They were the only Consuls remaining in Antwerp.

About 8:15 o’clock another shell struck the Town Hall, shattering the upper story and breaking every window in the place.  That was the German way of telling the Burgomaster to hurry up.  There was a tense feeling as we waited for tidings of some sort or other.  A quarter of an hour later M. De Vos went out in his motor car toward the German line to discuss conditions on which the city should be surrendered.

Another shell struck a furrier’s shop opposite the Town Hall and the place burst into flames.  Several of the gendarmes who had stayed behind were occupants of cellars, and two of them immediately rushed out to force a way into the shop in order that they might extinguish the fire.  They found the door locked.  It took them ten minutes to force an entrance.  By this time the fire was burning fiercely, and at great personal risk one of the gendarmes made his way to the top floor of the premises, and there he endeavored to beat out the flames with a piece of timber torn from the roof.  His efforts were futile, and he called for water.  Soon a Flemish woman brought him two pailfuls, which Fox had carried to the house, and after half an hour’s labor the fire was extinguished.