In the sun-baked, dusty streets the roar of traffic no longer sounded, but up and down the principal thoroughfares of the City and the West End the people prowled, lean and hungry—emaciated victims of this awful struggle between nations—seeking vainly for food to satisfy the terrible pangs consuming them. The hollow cheek, the thin, sharp nose, the dark-ringed glassy eye of one and all, told too plainly of the widespread suffering, and little surprise was felt at the great mortality in every quarter.
In Kensington and Belgravia the distress was quite as keen as in Whitechapel and Hackney, and both rich and poor mingled in the gloomy, dismal streets, wandering aimlessly over the great Modern Babylon, which the enemy were now plotting to destroy.
The horrors of those intensely anxious days of terror were unspeakable. The whole machinery of life in the Great City had been disorganised, and now London lay like an octopus, with her long arms extended in every direction, north and south of the Thames, inert, helpless, trembling. Over the gigantic Capital of the World hung the dark Shadow of Death. By day and by night its ghastly presence could be felt; its hideous realities crushed the heart from those who would face the situation with smiling countenance. London's wealth availed her not in this critical hour.
Grim, spectral, unseen, the Destroying Angel held the sword over her, ready to strike!
CHAPTER XXXIV.
LOOTING IN THE SUBURBS.
hile famished men crept into Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens and there expired under the trees of absolute hunger, and starving women with babes at their breasts sank upon doorsteps and died, the more robust Londoners had, on hearing of the enemy's march on the metropolis, gone south to augment the second line of defence. For several weeks huge barricades had been thrown up in the principal roads approaching London from the south. The strongest of these were opposite the Convalescent Home on Kingston Hill, in Coombe Lane close to Raynes Park Station, in the Morden Road at Merton Abbey, opposite Lynwood in the Tooting Road; while nearer London, on the same road, there was a strong one with machine guns on the crest of Balham Hill, and another in Clapham Road. At Streatham Hill, about one hundred yards from the hospital, earthworks had been thrown up, and several guns brought into position; while at Beulah Hill, Norwood, opposite the Post Office at Upper Sydenham, at the Half Moon at Herne Hill, and in many of the roads between Honor Oak and Denmark Hill, barricades had been constructed and banked up with bags and baskets filled with earth.