Among our many good friends in Antwerp there were few whom we valued more than the Baron d’O.  He was always ready to undertake any service for us, from the most difficult to the most trivial.  A man of birth and of fortune, he stood high in the service of the Belgian Government, and he was often able to do much to facilitate our arrangements with them.  So when he asked us to take him out in one of our cars to see the chateau of one of his greatest friends, we were glad to be in a position to repay him in a small way for his kindness.  The chateau had been occupied by the Germans, who had now retired—­though only temporarily, alas!—­and he was anxious to see what damage had been done and to make arrangements for putting it in order again if it should be possible.

A perfect autumn afternoon found us tearing southwards on the road to Boom in Mrs. W.’s powerful Minerva.  We were going to a point rather close to the German lines, and our safety might depend on a fast car and a cool hand on the wheel.  We had both, for though the hand was a lady’s, its owner had earned the reputation of being the most dangerous and the safest driver in Antwerp, and that is no mean achievement.  We called, as was our custom, at the Croix Rouge stations we passed, and at one of them we were told that there were some wounded in Termonde, and that, as the Germans were attacking it, they were in great danger.  So we turned off to the right, and jolted for the next twenty minutes over a deplorable paved road.

The roar of artillery fire gradually grew louder and louder, and we were soon watching an interesting little duel between the forts of Termonde, under whose shelter we were creeping along, on the one side, and the Germans on the other.  The latter were endeavouring to destroy one of the bridges which span the Scheldt at this point, one for the railway and one for the road; but so far they had not succeeded in hitting either.  It was a week since our last visit to Termonde, and it seemed even more desolate and forsaken than before.  The Germans had shelled it again, and most of the remaining walls had been knocked down, so that the streets were blocked at many points and the whole town was little more than a heap of bricks and mortar.  There was not a living creature to be seen, and even the birds had gone.  The only sound that broke the utter silence was the shriek of the shells and the crash of their explosion.  We were constantly checked by piles of fallen debris, and from one street we had to back the car out and go round by another way.  At the end of a long street of ruined houses, many bearing the inscription of some braggart, “I did this,” we found our wounded men.  They were in a monastery near the bridge at which the Germans were directing their shells, several of which had already fallen into the building.  There had been four wounded men there, but two of them, badly hurt, were so terrified at the bombardment that they had crawled away in the night.  The priest thought