our last chance of leaving, and only two went.

The guns boom by day as well as by night, and as each one is heard one
thinks of more bleeding, shattered men. It is calm, nice autumn weather;
the trees are yellow in the garden and the sky is blue, yet all the time
one listens to the cries of men in pain. To-night I meant to go out for
a little, but a nurse stopped me and asked me to sit by a dying man.
Poor fellow, he was twenty-one, and looked like some brigand chief, and
he smiled as he was dying. The horror of these two days will last
always, and there are many more such days to come. Everyone is behaving
well, and that is all I care about.

_7 October._--It is a glorious morning: they will see well to kill each
other to-day.

The guns go all day and all night. They are so close that the earth
shakes with them. Last night in the infernal darkness we were turning
wounded men away from the door. There was no room for them even on the
floor. The Belgians scream terribly. Our own men suffer quite quietly.
One of them died to-day.

Day and night a stream of vehicles passes the gate. It never ceases.
Nearly all are motors, driven at a furious pace, and they sound horns
all the time. These are met by a stream of carts and old-fashioned
vehicles bringing in country people, who are flying to the coast. In
Antwerp to-day it was "sauve qui peut"! Nearly all the men are
going--Mr. ----, who has helped us, and Mr. ----, they are going to
bicycle into Holland. A surgeon (Belgian) has fled from his hospital,
leaving seven hundred beds, and there seem to be a great many deserters
from the trenches.