"Fall in outside at once!"
Another aeroplane sails over. It hovers for a moment over the Scottish Borderers in their trenches. A trail of black smoke drops down, and instinctively the men cower below the parapet. Slowly it falls. Nothing more. The men raise their heads.
"Eh, man, but a thocht yon werre one o' thae——"
A sudden, odd hum in the air, and then—crash!
The Scots corporal slowly and painfully drags himself out from the pile of earth and debris and looks round. There is a curious numb feeling in his right arm. He sits up with a dazed gasp. There is a hand by him on the ground. His? He looks at his arm, and realises. Near by five of his pals are laid out. He seems to have escaped.
"The Lord ha' maircy—but the regiment's fair blooded this day," and he falls back in a faint.
More aeroplanes, more trails of smoke; and, wherever they fall, within twenty odd seconds a German shell bursts fair and true.
All down the line there springs the crack of rifles. Beyond the canal the outposts of the Lincolns, Royal Scots and others are coming in at the double. A curtain of shell-fire is lowered behind them as the British batteries come into action. A curtain of fire rolls down before them as the German guns take the range.
It is now close upon one o'clock, and enemy shells have begun to creep nearer and nearer in from the suburbs upon Mons itself. The good curé and his words are forgotten, for what living things can remain? And so there begins that pitiable exodus of old men, women and children which streamed steadily southwards, ever increasing as it crowded through the villages and towns.
But there is no time to-day to think of them. They must go, or stay and perish—anything so long as they do not interfere with the great game of War.