The news spreads like wild-fire that the Legations have had their orders countermanded early in the morning.
They are to wait further instructions. Something has happened. THE ENGLISH ARE COMING!
CHAPTER XXVIII
MONDAY
A golden, laughing day is this 5th of October.
As I fly along in my car I soon sense a new current, vivid and electric, flowing along with the stream of Belgian life.
Oh, the change in the sad, hollow-eyed Belgian officers and men! They felt that help was coming at last. All this time they had fought alone, unaided. There was no one who could come to them, no one free to help them. And the weeks passed into months, and Liège, and Louvain, and Brussels, and Aerschot, and Namur, and Malines, and Termonde have all fallen, one by one. And high hopes have been blighted, and the enemy in its terrific strength has swept on and on, held back continually by the ardour and valour of the little Belgian Army which is still indomitable at heart, but tired, very tired. Haggard, hollow-eyed, exhausted, craving the rest they may not have, these glorious heroes revive as if by magic under the knowledge that other troops are coming to help theirs in this gargantuan struggle for Antwerp. The yellow khaki seems to sweep along with the blue uniforms like sunlight. But the gentle-faced, slow-speaking English are humble and modest enough, God knows!
"It's the high-explosive shells that we mind most," says a Belgian Lieutenant to an English Tommy.
"P'raps we'll mind them too," says Tommy humbly. "We ain't seen them yet!"