XV. East of Lemberg: Through Austria-Hungary to the Galician Front
XVI. In the Dust of the Russian Retreat



Chapter I

The Germans Are Coming!



The Germans had already entered Brussels, their scouts were reported on
the outskirts of Ghent; a little farther now, over behind the horizon
wind-mills, and we might at any moment come on them.

For more than a fortnight we had been hurrying eastward, hearing,
through cable despatches and wireless, the far-off thunder of that vast
gray tide rumbling down to France. The first news had come drifting in,
four thousand miles away, to the little Wisconsin lake where I was
fishing. A strange herd of us, all drawn in one way or another by the
war, had caught the first American ship, the old St. Paul, and, with
decks crowded with trunks and mail-bags from half a dozen ships, steamed
eastward on the all but empty ocean. There were reservists hurrying to
the colors, correspondents, men going to rescue wives and sisters. Some
were hit through their pocketbooks, some through their imaginations--
like the young women hoping to be Red Cross nurses, or to help in some
way, they weren't sure how.

One had a steamer chair next mine--a pale, Broadway tomboy sort of girl
in a boyish sailor suit, who looked as if she needed sleep. Without