sound of the guns. On Sunday about forty shells came into Furnes, but I
was at Dunkirk. This morning about five dropped on to the station.

[Page Heading: NIEUPORT]

To-day I went out to Nieuport. It is like some town one sees in a
horrible nightmare. Hardly a house is left standing, but that does not
describe the scene. Nothing can fitly describe it except perhaps such a
pen as Victor Hugo's. The cathedral at Nieuport has two outer walls left
standing. The front leans forward helplessly, the aisles are gone. The
trees round about are burnt up and shot away. In the roadway are great
holes which shells have made. The very cobbles of the street are
scattered by them. Not a window remains in the place; all are shattered
and many hang from their frames. The fronts of the houses have fallen
out, and one sees glimpses of wretched domestic life: a baby's cradle
hangs in mid-air, some tin boxes have fallen through from the box-room
in the attic to the ground floor. Shops are shivered and their contents
strewn on all sides; the interiors of other houses have been hollowed
out by fire. There is a toy-shop with dolls grinning vacantly at the
ruins or bobbing brightly on elastic strings.

In a wretched cottage some soldiers are having breakfast at a
fine-carved table. In one house, surrounded by a very devastation of
wreckage, some cheap ornaments stand intact on a mantelpiece. From
another a little ginger-coloured cat strolls out unconcernedly! The
bedsteads hanging midway between floors look twisted and thrawn--nothing
stands up straight. Like the wounded, the town has been rendered
inefficient by war.

_6 November._--Furnes always seems to me a weird tragic place. I cannot