However, a certain friction was engendered that was later evidenced on both sides.  The American ambulance was no longer favored on its trips to the front, pointed preference being given the English and French Red Cross Emergency Corps.  This resulted in few wounded being taken to the Arabella, as the Americans confined their work largely to assisting the injured on the field of battle.  The girls were not to be daunted in their determined efforts to aid the unfortunate and every day one of them visited the trenches to assist the two doctors in rendering first aid to the wounded.

The work was no longer arduous, for often entire days would pass without a single casualty demanding their attention.  The cold weather resulted in much sickness among the soldiers, however, and Gys found during this period of military inactivity that his medicine chest was more in demand than his case of surgical instruments.

A slight diversion was created by Clarette, who came to the ship to demand her husband from the Americans.  It seemed almost impossible to convince her that Maurie was not hidden somewhere aboard, but at last they made the woman understand he had escaped with the German to Ostend.  They learned from her that Maurie—­or Henri, as she insisted he was named—­had several times escaped from her house at night, while she was asleep, and returned at daybreak in the morning, and this information led them to suspect he had managed to have several secret conferences with Lieutenant Elbl previous to their flight.  Clarette announced her determination to follow her husband to Ostend, and perhaps she did so, as they did not see her again.

It was on Sunday, the twentieth of December, that the Battle of the Dunes began and the flames of war burst out afresh.  The dunes lay between the North Sea and the Yser River in West Flanders and consisted of a stretch of sandy hillocks reaching from Coxyde to Nieuport les Bains.  The Belgians had entrenched these dunes in an elaborate and clever manner, shoveling the sand into a series of high lateral ridges, with alternate hollows, which reached for miles along the coast.  The hollows were from six to eight feet deep, affording protection to the soldiers, who could nevertheless fire upon the enemy by creeping up the sloping embankments until their heads projected sufficiently to allow them to aim, when they could drop back to safety.

In order to connect the hollows one with another, that an advance or retreat might be made under cover, narrow trenches had been cut at intervals diagonally through the raised mounds of sand.  Military experts considered this series of novel fortifications to be practically impregnable, for should the enemy defile through one of the cross passages into a hollow where the Allies were gathered, they could be picked off one by one, as they appeared, and be absolutely annihilated.