Or they may have reached the lines of
the Allies, to the south and westward, toward the French frontier. One
guess would be as good as the other.
One of the puzzling things about the early mid-August stages of the war
was the almost instantaneous rapidity with which the Belgian army, as an
army, disintegrated and vanished. To-day it was here, giving a good
account of itself against tremendous odds, spending itself in driblets
to give the Allies a chance to get up. To-morrow it was utterly gone.
Still without being halted or delayed we went briskly on. We had topped
the next rise commanding the next valley, and--except for a few
stragglers and some skirmishers--the Belgians were quite out of sight,
when our driver stopped with an abruptness which piled his four
passengers in a heap and pointed off to the northwest, a queer,
startled, frightened look on his broad Flemish face. There was smoke
there along the horizon--much smoke, both white and dark; and, even as
the throb of the motor died away to a purr, the sound of big guns came
to us in a faint rumbling, borne from a long way off by the breeze.
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