and the horses swung down the side street. "Do you speak English?" he
called back, as if, in happier times, we might have been friends, and,
without waiting for an answer, trotted on into the growing dusk.

They were but one of hundreds of such squads of light cavalry--uhlans
for the most part--ranging all over western Belgium as far as Ostend, a
dozen or so men in hostile country, prepared to be cut to pieces if they
found the enemy they were looking for, or to be caught from ambush at
any time by some squad of civic guards. But as one watched them
disappear down their long road to France they grew into something more
than that. And in the twilight of the quiet countryside these stern
shapes that rode on without turning, lances upstanding from tired
shoulders, became strange, grotesque, pathetic--again the Germans,
legions of the War Lord, come too late into a world which must crush
them at last, Knights of the Frightful Adventure, riding to their death.




Chapter II

Paris At Bay



The Calais and Boulogne routes were already closed. Dieppe and Havre
might at any moment follow. You must go now, people said in London, if
you want to get there at all.

And yet the boat was crowded as it left Folkstone. In bright afternoon