However, seeing one tired French dragoon was not seeing the war; and we
chafed that night at the delay which kept us penned as prisoners in this
handsome, outwardly quiet city. As we figured it we might be housed up
here for days or weeks and miss all the operations in the field. When
morning came, though, we discovered that the bars were down again, and
that certificates signed by the American consul would be sufficient to
carry us as far as the outlying suburbs at least.
Securing these precious papers, then, without delay we chartered a
rickety red taxicab for the day; and piling in we told the driver to
take us eastward as far as he could go before the outposts turned us
back. He took us, therefore, at a buzzing clip through the Bois, along
one flank of the magnificent Forest of Soigne, with its miles of green-
trunked beech trees, and by way of the royal park of Tervueren. From
the edge of the thickly settled district onward we passed barricade
after barricade--some built of newly felled trees; some of street cars
drawn across the road in double rows; some of street cobbles chinked
with turf; and some of barbed wire--all of them, even to our
inexperienced eyes, seeming but flimsy defenses to interpose against a
force of any size or determination.
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