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There must have been ten thousand of them--cavalry,
foot, artillery, baggage trains, and all. Quite near us was ranged a
battery of small rapid-fire guns; and the big rawboned dogs that had
hauled them there were lying under the wicked-looking little pieces. We
had heard a lot about the dog-drawn guns of the Belgians, but these were
the first of them we had seen.
Lines of cavalrymen were skirting crosswise over the low hill at the
other side of the valley, and against the sky line the figures of horses
and men stood out clear and fine. It all seemed a splendid martial
sight; but afterward, comparing this force with the army into whose
front we were to blunder unwittingly, we thought of it as a little
handful of toy soldiers playing at war. We never heard what became of
those Belgians. Presumably at the advance of the Germans coming down on
them countlessly, like an Old Testament locust plague, they fell back
and, going round Brussels, went northward toward Antwerp, to join the
main body of their own troops.


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