and if he told us to go, to get sufficient transport.  And then arose a scene which will always live in my mind.  We had impressed into consultation a retired officer of distinction to whose help we owed much, and now owe far more, and whom I shall call our Friend.  Perhaps he wished to give us confidence—­I have always suspected that he had an ulterior motive —­but he concluded the discussion by saying that he felt hungry and would have something to eat before he started, and from his haversack he produced an enormous German sausage and a large loaf of bread, which he offered to us all round, and he said he would like a cup of tea!  The shells could do what they liked outside, and if one of them was rude enough to intrude, it could not be helped.  We must show them that we could pay no attention to anything so vulgar and noisy.  At any rate, the effect on us was electrical.  The contrast between the German shells and the German sausage was too much for us, and the meeting broke up in positive confusion.  Alas that sausage, the unparalleled trophy of an incomparable moment, was left behind on the table, and I fear the Germans got it.

General Paris had been obliged to shift his headquarters to the Pilotage, on the docks and at the farthest end of the city from us.  He was very considerate, and after some discussion said that we had better leave Antwerp, and sent Colonel Farquharson with us to get six buses.  The Pilotage is at the extreme north end of the Avenue des Arts, which extends the whole length of Antwerp, and the buses were on the quay by the Arsenal at the extreme south end, so that we had to drive the whole length of this, the most magnificent street of Antwerp, and a distance of about three miles.  It was an extraordinary drive.  In the whole length of that Avenue I do not think that we passed a single individual.  It was utterly deserted.  All around were signs of the bombardment—­tops of houses blown off, and scattered about the street, trees knocked down, holes in the roadway where shells had struck.  On the left stood the great Palais de Justice, with most of its windows broken and part of the roof blown away, and just beyond this three houses in a row blazing from cellar to chimney, the front wall gone, and all that remained of the rooms exposed.  As I said, only small shells had been used, and the damage was nothing at all to that which we afterwards saw at Ypres; but it gave one an impression of dreariness and utter desolation that could scarcely be surpassed.  Think of driving from Hyde Park Corner down the Strand to the Bank, not meeting a soul on the way, passing a few clubs in Piccadilly burning comfortably, the Cecil a blazing furnace, and the Law Courts lying in little bits about the street, and you will get some idea of what it looked like.  The scream of the shells and the crash when they fell near by formed quite a suitable if somewhat Futurist accompaniment.