Armoured cars were parked in the centre of the square, a corps of
military cyclists had propped their machines against gun wagons and
forage carts, out of the black shadows under high walls poked the
snouts of guns, wafts of scented hay came from carts with their
shafts down in the gutters, sentries with bayonets which caught the
light of old lanterns paced up and down below the Town Hall steps,
Belgian soldiers caked in the mud of the trenches slouched wearily in
the side streets, and staff officers in motor-cars with glaring headlights
and shrieking horns threaded their way between the wagons and the
guns. From beyond the town dull shocks of noise grumbled, like
distant thunder-claps, and through the tremulous dusk of the sky
there came an irregular repetition of faint flashes.
As the twilight deepened and the shadows merged into a general
darkness I could see candles being lit through the bull's-eye windows
of small shops, and the rank smell of paraffin lamps came from
vaulted cellars, into which one descended by steps from the roadway,
where soldiers were drinking cups of coffee or cheap wine in a
flickering light which etched Rembrandt pictures upon one's vision.
A number of staff officers came down the steps of the Town Hall and
stood at the foot of the steps as though waiting for some one.
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