STORM-WRACK FROM VERDUN
I
"The French are evacuating some villages near Verdun, and I hear there
are a number of refugees at the Marché Couvert to-night," one of the
coterie remarked as she came in one evening from her rounds. It seemed
a little odd that villages should be evacuated by the _French_ just
then, but we had long since ceased to be surprised at anything. In the
War Zone everything is possible and the unexpected is the probable, so
we piled on waterproofs and goloshes and woollies, for it was a cold,
wet night, and set forth in all our panoply of ugliness for the Covered
Market.
The streets were as dark as the pit, only a pale cold gleam showing
where the river lay. The sky was heavily overcast, a keen wind cut
down from the north. The pavement on the quay was broken and rough,
we splashed into pools, we jolted into crevasses, we bent our heads
to the whistling storm, we reached the market at last. The wide gates
were open, and the vast floor, with its rows of empty stalls, loomed
like a vault before us. The heavy, sickly odour of stale vegetables,
of sausage and of meat, of unaired space where humanity throngs on
several days a week clutched at us as we went in. We were to become
very familiar with it in the weeks that followed--weeks during which
it daily grew heavier, sicklier, more nauseating, more horrible.
On the left of the market as you enter from the quay there is a broad
wooden staircase which leads to a still broader wooden gallery that
runs right round the building. At the top we turned to the right. The
gallery was dimly lighted, dark figures huddled on it here and there;
we crossed the lower end and found ourselves in a wide space, really a
large unenclosed room which had been hastily improvised as a kitchen. A
short counter divided it into two very unequal portions, in the smaller
being some old _armoires_, two large steamers or boilers, a table piled
with plates, dishes and small and handleless bowls, used instead of
cups. Another littered with glasses, and in the corner a big barrel of
wine.
Two or three women were probing the contents of the boilers; men
rushed excitedly about, one was chopping bread, another filling jugs
with wine, a _garde-champêtre_ with a hoarse voice was shouting
unintelligible orders, a gendarme or two hung about getting in
everybody's way, and in the outer space seethed a mob of men, women
and children in every condition of dishevelment, mud, misery and
distress. Five or six long tables with benches of the light garden-seat
variety crossed this space. Seated as tightly as they could be squeezed
together were more refugees devouring a steaming soup. Everything wore
an air of confusion; the light was bad, one paraffin lamp swaying
dimly over the scene. We saw a door, guarded by two officials,
_garde-champêtres_, or something of the kind; we passed through, and
there we saw a sight which I am convinced no one of us will ever
forget.
Picture an enormous room, like a barrack dormitory. There are
windows--some five or six--on each side. Half-way down and opposite
one another there are two stoves in which good fires are burning. The
glow from the open doors falls on the gloom and throws into relief the
stooped figures, broken with fatigue, that cluster dejectedly round
them. A lamp throws fitful shadows. The air is brown. Perhaps you think
this an absurd thing to say, but it was so. It hung like a pale brown
veil over the room, and as weeks went by the colour deepened, and in
breathing it one had the sensation of drawing something solid into
one's lungs. It smelt, too, with an indescribable smell that became
intensified every day, until at last a time came when it required a
definite effort to penetrate it. It seemed to hurl you back from the
doorway; you began to think it must be sentient. It was certainly
stifling, poisonous, fœtid, and as I write I seem to feel it in my
nostrils again, seem to feel the same nausea that seized us when we
breathed it then. Over all the floor-space there is straw, thick,
tossed-up straw, through which, running past the stoves, are two narrow
lanes, one down either side. And on the straw lie human beings, not
many as yet, only those who have supped, or who, waiting for the meal,
have thrown themselves down in the last stages of physical and mental
exhaustion. Babies wail, women are sobbing, the _gardes-champêtres_
shout in rough voices. Bales, bundles, hand-grips, baskets lie on the
straw; there an old woman is lying wretchedly, her head on a canvas
bag; here two boys are sprawling across one another in heavy, uncouth,
abandoned attitudes.
We go about among the people talking to them, but they are dazed
and weary. Did we learn that night that the great attack upon Verdun
had begun, or did we only know of it some days later? So packed with
incident were those first days I cannot remember, but it seems to
me now that knowledge came later, and that we came home that night
wondering, questioning, our hearts filled with pity for those we had
left homeless upon that awful straw.
We came again into the outer room. More refugees were arriving, little
groups of bewildered creatures, muddy, travel-stained, dog-weary, yet
wonderfully patient and resigned. There are no sanitary arrangements of
any kind in the building, there is not a basin, nor a towel, nor a cake
of soap of which the refugees can make use.
The next evening we go again, supposing that the evacuation must be
complete, that this river of human misery will cease to flow through
the town, but little by little we realise that it is only beginning.
Days lengthen into weeks, and still the refugees come through. We know
now that Verdun is in danger, that the Germans have advanced twelve
kilomètres; we watch breathlessly for news, the town is listening,
intent, anxious, and every day the crowds at the market grow denser.
We spend much of our time there now, we have brought over basins, and
soap and towels; we have put a table in the inner room, so that those
who will may refresh themselves and wash. The rooms are packed. There
must be at least three hundred or four hundred people, and still more
drift in. Some have been in open cattle trucks for thirty-six hours
under rain and snow, for the north wind has become keener and the rain
has hardened into fine sleety snow; it is bitterly cold, the roads and
streets are awash with mud, women's skirts are soddened to the knee,
men are splashed shoulder high. A number of people have fallen ill
_en route_, others, seriously ill, have been compelled to leave their
beds and struggle as best they might with the healthy in their rush
to safety. We hear that the civil hospital is full, that babies have
been born on the journey down--been born and have died and were buried
by the way. Despair rides on many a shoulder, fear still darkens many
eyes. Some have escaped from a storm of shell-fire, many have had to
walk long distances, for the railway lines have been cut. Verdun is
isolated--Nixieville is the nearest point to which a train may go--and
all have left their homes unguarded, some being already blown to atoms,
others momently threatened with a like fate.
In spite of all our anxiety as we made our way to the market that
second night, laden with basins and jugs, _seaux hygiéniques_, and
various other comforts, we could not help laughing. We must have
cut funny figures staggering along in the darkness with our uncouth
burdens. Happily it WAS dark, and then not happily, as some one trips
over an unseen obstacle and is only saved from an ignominious sprawl in
the mire by wild evolutions shattering to the nerve. At the market we
cast what might be called our "natural feelings" on one side and bored
our way into the throng, our strange utensils and luggage desperately
exposed to view. _Que voulez-vous? C'est la guerre!_ The phrase covers
many vicissitudes, but it did not cover the shyest of our coterie
when, having deposited her burden on the gallery for a moment in order
to help a poor woman, she heard a crash and a round French oath,
and turning, beheld a certain official doing a weird cake-walk over
things that were never intended to be trodden upon by man. It was the
same shy member whose indignation at the lack of proper accommodation
bore all her native timidity away and enabled her to persuade the
same official to curtain off a small corner at the far end of the
gallery and furnish it as a toilet-room for the women, a corner which
to our eternal amusement was ever afterwards known as "le petit coin
des dames anglaises." However, the _petit coin_ was not in existence
for two or three days, and while it was in process of manufacture we
were more than once moved to violence of language, though we realised
that physical fatigue may reach a point at which, if conditions be
unfavourable, no veneer of civilisation can save some individuals from
a lapse into primitive ways.
In the inner room the crowd was dense as we struggled in with our
apparatus for washing. There was something essentially sordid in the
scene. The straw looked dirty, the people were muddier, more wretched.
Many were weeping, and very many lying in unrestful contorted attitudes
upon the ground. In such a crowd no one dare leave her luggage
unguarded, and so it was either gripped tightly to the body, even in
sleep, or else was utilised as a pillow. And no one of those who came
in by train or _camion_ was allowed to bring more than he or she could
carry.
All the misery, all the suffering, all the heart-break of war seemed
concentrated there, and then quite suddenly out of ugliness and squalor
came beauty. A tall woman with resigned, beautiful face detached
herself from the throng, a naked baby wrapped in a towel in her arms.
As unconcernedly, as unselfconsciously as if she were at home in her
own kitchen she came to the table, filled a basin with warm water, and
sitting down, bathed the lusty crowing thing that kicked, and chewed
its fists, gurgling with delight.
It was the second time she had been evacuated, she told us. She had
seven children, her husband was a farmer and well-to-do. Their home
destroyed, they had escaped in August 1914, taking refuge in Verdun,
where they had remained, gathering a little furniture together again,
trying to make a home once more. She neither wept nor complained. I
think she was long past both. Fate had taken its will of her, she could
but bow her head, impotent in the storm. Her children, in spite of
their experiences, looked neat and clean, they were nicely spoken and
refined in manner. Soon the dusky shadows of the room swallowed her up
and the human whirlpool swirled round us once more, from it emerging
Monsieur B., the "certain official," and his wife who merely came to
look round, who made no offer to help, and who must not be confounded
with THE Madame B. who was the special providence of our lives.
What Monsieur B. thought when he found us more or less in possession
I cannot say, but this I know--that he, in common with every one
with whom our work brought us into official contact, showed himself
sympathetic, helpful, forbearing and kind. He fell in with suggestions
that must have seemed to him quixotic to a degree; he never insinuated,
as he might have done, that our activities bordered upon interference,
nor did he ask us how English officials would have received French
women if the situation had been reversed! At first, thinking, no doubt,
that the evacuation was only an affair of two or three days, none of
the charitable women of the town thought it necessary to visit the
Market, so all the care of the unfortunates was left in the hands of
some half-dozen men; but later on, as the stream continued to pour
through, and the congestion became more and more acute, many women,
some after a hard day's work, came in the evenings and helped to serve
the meals. Of course, as soon as they took things in hand we slid into
the background, though we found our work just as engrossing and as
imperative as ever, but how Madame B. could have walked through those
rooms that evening and have gone away without making the smallest
effort to ameliorate the conditions baffled our comprehension. However,
she added to the gaiety of nations by one remark, so we forgave her.
Seeing some respectably-dressed women who had obviously neither washed
nor combed for days, we indicated the "washing-stand."
"We are too tired to-night," they said. "In the morning...."
"One would have thought they would have found it refreshing," we
murmured to Madame B., who was essaying small talk under large
difficulties.
"Ah, yes, I cannot understand it. For me, I wash myself every night,
even if I am tired." The exquisiteness of that "_même_ si je suis
fatiguée" carried us through many a hectic hour.
And hours at the market were apt to be hectic. The serving of meals
was a delirium. In vain we begged the guards to keep the door of
communication closed, and allow only as many as there was room for
at the tables to come to the "dining-room" at a time. They admitted
the soundness of the scheme, but they made no attempt to carry it out.
Consequently, no sooner was a meal ready than ravenous people poured
out in swarms, snatched places at the tables and filled up every inch
of space between, ready to fall into a chair the moment it was vacated.
We had to elbow, push, worm or drive a way from table to table, from
individual to individual; we grew hoarse from shouting "_Attention!_"
We lost time, patience, breath and energy, and meals that might have
been served with despatch were a kind of wild scrimmage, through which
we "dribbled" with cauldrons of boiling soup or vast platters of meat,
with plates piled like the leaning Tower of Pisa--be it written in gold
upon our tombstones that the towers never fell--or with telescopic
armsful of glasses and bowls. And against us rose not only the solid
wall of expectant and famished humanity, but the incoming tide of new
arrivals, all of whom had to pass between the tables and the serving
counters in order to reach the inner room. Sometimes six hundred had to
be fed, sometimes as many as twelve hundred passed through in a day,
and--triumph of French organisation--very rarely did supplies run out,
very rarely were the big tins of "singe"[10] (which the shy member
really supposed was monkey!) brought into play. The meals themselves
were excellent. Hot soup from a good _pot-au-feu_ made from beef with
quantities of vegetables, then the beef served with its carrots and
turnips, leeks, etc., that cooked with it, then cheese or jam, and
wine. Coffee and bread in the morning, a three-course meal at midday,
another at six--no wonder Bar-le-Duc was eulogised. Never had such a
reception been dreamed of. "The food was delicious, excellent.... We
shall have grateful memories of Bar."
[10] Singe (monkey), the soldier-slang for bully-beef.
But the awful sleeping accommodation weighed heavily on our
consciences--the brown pall of atmosphere, the fœtid SOLID smell, the
murky lamp, the fitful glow of the fires, and on the floor on the dirty
inadequate straw a dense mass of human beings. Lying in their clothes
just as they came from the station, or as they left the big _camions_
in which many were driven down, not daring even to unlace their boots,
they were wedged so tightly we thought not even a child could have
found space. Some, tossing in their sleep, had flung themselves across
neighbours too exhausted to protest; acute discomfort was suggested
in every pose; many were sitting up, propped against their bundles;
children lay anyhow, a heterogenous mass of arms and legs, or pillowed
their heads against their mothers.
"Surely," it was said as we came away, "surely the cup of human misery
has never been so full."
Yet we were told the next day that during the night a fresh convoy
had come in, and that the _garde-champêtre_, tramping up and down the
narrow lane in the straw, shouted, "Serrez-vous, serrez-vous," forcing
the wretched creatures to be in still closer proximity, to sleep in
even greater discomfort.
II
Soon the numbers grew too large for the space, and the long gallery
running down from the "dining-room" was converted into a sleeping
apartment, a screen of white calico or linen serving as an outer wall.
The upper end through which we passed in order to gain access to
the original rooms was utilised for meals, a number of tables being
brought in and ranged as closely as possible together. Even then the
congestion and confusion continued; they were, indeed, an integral part
of all Marché Couvert activities, but to our great relief the sleeping
quarters were improved. A number of palliasse cases, the gift of a
rich woman of the town, were filled with straw, and over most we were
able to pin detachable slips made from wheat bags, an immense number
of which--made from strong, but soft linen thread--had been offered
to us at a moderate price by the Chamber of Commerce acting through
the Mayor. Three of these, or four, according to the size required,
sewn cannily together made excellent sheets--greatly sought after by
the refugees--indeed, we turned them to all kinds of use as time went
on. The slips were invaluable now, as, needless to say, the palliasse
covers would have been in a disgusting condition in a week, but it
was not until the Society presented the new dormitory with twelve
iron bedsteads and some camp beds that we felt that Civilisation was
lifting up her head again. The beds were placed together at the far end
of the dormitory and were primarily intended for sick people or for
better-class women who, unable to find a lodging in the town, had to
accept the doubtful hospitality of the market. Unhappily there were
many of these, and it was heartrending to see women sitting up in the
comfortless chairs all night in the cold eating-place rather than face
the horror of the straw and the crowded common-room.
Once the beds were installed that contingency no longer arose, though
Heaven knows the new apartment was squalid and miserable enough; the
beds ranged at the lower end, the palliasses running in close-packed
rows by each wall, space enough in the middle to walk between, but no
more.
One day we found one of our camp beds at the upper end with a
fox-terrier sitting on it, and on inquiry were told that a _garde_
had taken it, evicting two poor old women as he did so. Now we had
never intended those beds for lusty officials, so we very naturally
protested, but a more than tactful hint reduced us to silence. The
_gardes_ had it in their power to make things very unpleasant for us
if they felt so inclined; it would be politic to say nothing. Having
no official standing, we said nothing. What we thought is immaterial.
Later the gendarme was the Don Juan of an incident to which only a Guy
de Maupassant could do justice. There, in all that misery, in that
makeshift apartment packed with suffering humanity, with children and
young girls, with modest and disgusted women looking on, human passions
broke through every code of decency and restraint. The scandal lasted
for three days, then the woman was sent away.
Meanwhile the news from Verdun was becoming graver. The roads were cut
to pieces, motor-cars, gun-carriages, _camions_ were burying themselves
axle-deep in the mire; one road impassable, another was made, but by
the time the first was repaired the second was a slough. The weather,
always in league with the Germans, showed no sign of taking up, wet
snow was falling heavily.... "Three more days of this and Verdun must
fall."
Soldiers subsequently told us that it was the _camion_ drivers who
saved the situation, for they stuck to their wagons day and night,
one snatching rest and sleep while another drove. They poured through
Bar-le-Duc in hundreds, the roar of traffic thundering down the
Boulevard all day long. In the night we would lie awake listening. It
sounded like a rough sea dragging back from a stone-strewn shore. Once,
if soldier tales be true, "the Boches could have walked into Verdun
with their rifles over their shoulders. Four days and four nights we
lay in the open, Mademoiselle. Our trenches were blown to pieces, we
were cut off by the barrage, we had no food but our emergency rations,
no ammunition could reach us. Then our guns became silent. The Boches,
thinking it was a ruse, a trap, were afraid to come on. They thought we
were reserving fire to mow them down at close quarters, so they waited
twelve hours, and during that time our _camions_ brought the ammunition
up, and when they did come on we were ready for them."
One lad of twenty, who told me the same tale, was home on leave when I
chanced to visit his mother and found the family at lunch. To celebrate
his return they were having a little feast--the feast consisting of
a tin of sardines and a bottle of red wine, in addition to the usual
soup and bread. The boy was a handsome creature, full of life and high
spirits, and in no way daunted by experiences that would have tried
the nerve of many an older man. He had been buried alive three times,
twice by the collapse of a trench, once by that of a dug-out into which
he and four others crawled under a storm of shells. "Fortunately I was
the first to go in, for a shell burst just outside, _ploomb_! killed
three and wounded one of my companions. The wounded man and I dug and
scratched our way out at the back."
He, too, he said, had been without food for four days.
"Weren't you hungry?" his mother asked, but he shook his head.
"One isn't hungry when the _copain_ (pal) on the right is blown to
atoms, and the _copain_ on the left is bleeding to death." Then
followed casualty details that filled us with horror.
"I saw men go mad up there. They dashed their brains out against walls,
they shot themselves. Oh, it was just hell! The shells fell so thick
you could hardly put a franc between them--thousands in an hour. The
French lost heavily, but the Germans.... I tell you, Mademoiselle, I
have seen them climbing over a wall of their own dead that high"--he
touched his breast--"to get at us. They came on in close formation,
drunk with ether. Oh, yes, it is quite true, we could smell the ether
in the French trenches. I have seen the first lines throw away their
rifles and link arms as they staggered to attack. Oh, we _fauché'd_
them! But for me, I like the bayonet, you drive it in, you twist it
round"--he made an expressive noise impossible to reproduce--"they are
afraid of the bayonet, the Boches. Ah, it is fine...."
He is the only man I have ever spoken to who told me he wanted to go
back.
Day after day we watched breathlessly for the _communiqués_; evening
after evening we went to the market hoping for better news, but there
was no lifting as yet in the storm-cloud that hung above the horizon.
And still the refugees poured through. We spent the greater part of
each day at the market now, snatching meals at odd hours, and turning
our hands to anything. We swept floors, we stuffed palliasses with
straw--but we don't recommend this as a parlour game--we helped to
serve meals, we washed never-diminishing piles of plates and bowls,
forks and knives, we put old ladies to bed, we made cups of chocolate
for them when they were unable to tackle the _pot-au-feu_, we chopped
mountains of bread and cheese (our hands were like charwomen's), we
distributed chocolate and "scarlet stew"--both gifts from the American
Relief Committee--we sorted the sheep from the goats at night and--the
_garde_ apart--kept the new dormitory select. We became expert in
cutting up enormous joints of meat, our implements a short-handled
knife invariably coated with grease, a fork when we could get one, and
a small wooden board. So expert, indeed, that one day a woman hovered
round as we sliced and cut and hacked, watching us intently for some
minutes. Then, "Are you a butcher?" she asked. It was an equivocal
compliment, but well meant. You see, she was a butcher herself, and I
suppose it would have comforted her to talk to one of the fraternity.
And as we slice the turmoil rises round us. A woman sits down to table
and bursts into violent uncontrolled weeping; a poor old creature
wanders forlornly about, finally making her way past the counter to
the boiler where the soup is bubbling. What does she want? "To put
some wood on the fire. She is cold, and where is her chair? Some one
has taken it away." Her brain has given way under the strain of the
last five days and she thinks she is at home. Snatches of conversation
float above the din. "It is three days since I have touched hot food."
"We slept in the fields last night." "Mais abandonner tout." Tears
follow this pathetic little phrase. A man and woman together, both over
eighty, white-haired and palsied, stray up to the counter. They cannot
eat, they want so very little, just some wine. The woman's skirts
drip as she waits; she has fallen into a stream as she fled from the
bombardment. They are established in a corner where they mutter and
nod, gibberish mostly, for the old man's wits are wandering.
Suddenly the table begins to rock, one end rises convulsively from the
ground, plates and dishes begin to slide ominously. An earthquake?
Only a great brindled hound that some one tied to the table leg when
we were not watching. He lay down, slept happily, smelled dinner, has
risen to his majestic height and a wreck is upon us. The table sways
more ominously, then Fate, in the shape of the pretty Pre-Raphaelitish
_femme-de-ménage_ of the market, swoops down upon him and sends him
yowling into the crowd, through which he cuts a cataclysmal way. Dogs
materialise out of space, we are sometimes tempted to believe. They
live desperate lives, are under everybody's feet, appear, and disappear
meteor-wise, leaving trails of oaths behind them. A small child plants
himself on the floor, and seizing one of these itinerant quadrupeds,
tries to make it eat its own tail. The dog prefers to eat the child;
a wild skirmish ensues, there are shrieks and yowls that rend the
heavens, then a covey of women kick the dog into space, and snatching
up the child, carry him to the inner room, where they hold a parliament
over him amid a babel of tongues that puts biblical history to shame.
A soldier, mud-stained, down from the trenches, comes to look for
his wife; a tall girl in a black straw cart-wheel hat, plentifully
adorned with enormous white daisies, flits here and there; a coarse,
burly man who has looked on the wine when it is red and who is wearing
a _peau-de-bicque_ (goat-skin coat), which I regard with every
suspicion, tries to thrust half-a-franc into my hand. Then comes an
alarm. The refugees are not told of it, but thirty Taubes are said to
be approaching the town. The meal goes on a little more breathlessly,
and we carry soup and meat wondering what will happen if the sickening
crash comes. But the French _avions_ chase the Germans away.... Late
that night I saw the half-witted old woman asleep on the floor, sitting
up, her back propped against a child's body, her knees drawn up to her
mouth.
III
"There are refugees at the Ferme du Popey too."
Surely there are refugees everywhere! The quarters at the market
have long since proved grotesquely inadequate, for not even the
"Serrez-vous, serrez-vous" of the _garde_ could pack three people
upon floor space for one, so schoolrooms and barrack-rooms were
requisitioned elsewhere, and now even the resources of the farm are
being drawn upon. The procession of broken, despairing people seemed
never-ending. We met them in every street, trailing pitifully through
the mire, or leading farm wagons piled high with household goods. Those
at the farm had all come down in carts, it was said, many being days
on the road, so, thinking we might be of use, we waded out to find the
extensive _basse-cour_ a scene of strange confusion.
Soldiers in horizon-blue were cooking food in their regimental kitchens
for famished women and children, others were watering horses at the
pond; through the archway at the end we could see yet others hanging
socks and underlinen upon the fence; beyond ran the canal guarded by
its sentinel trees. Wagons filled the yard, men were shouting and
talking, officials moved busily here and there. We climbed a glorified
ladder to a long, low, straw-strewn loft which was murkily dark, the
windows unglazed, being covered by coarse matting which flapped in the
wind. Here a number of women were lying or talking in subdued groups
while children scrambled restlessly about, the squalor and misery being
heartrending. They were leaving immediately, there was nothing to be
done, so, having chatted with a few, we went away, telling a harassed
official that we were at his service if he had need of us.
A day or two later this offer had strange fruit, for a horde of
excited people descended upon the Boulevard, rang at our door, swarmed
into the hall and demanded sabots. Now it happened that a short time
before a case of sabots had been sent to us by the American Relief
Committee (always generous supporters, supplying many a need)--a
case so vast that both wings of our front door had to be opened to
admit it--so we were able to invite the horde to satisfy its needs.
Instantly the hall became a pandemonium. They flung themselves upon
the box, they snatched, they grabbed, they chattered in high, shrill
voices--Meusienne women of the working-classes generally talk in a
strident scream--they tried on sabots, they flung sabots back into the
box; in short, they behaved very much as people do behave when their
cupidity is aroused and their nervous systems exhausted by an almost
unendurable strain.
The commotion, rising in a steady crescendo, had risen _forte_,
_fortissimo_, when bo-o-om! thud! bo-o-om! bombs began to fall on the
town. The clamour in the hall died away, sabots dropped from nerveless
fingers. Bo-o-om! The cellar? _Où est-ce?_ Some one leads the way, and
then, while clamour of another kind seizes the skies, in the icy cellar
the mob of half-distraught creatures fall on their knees and chant the
Rosary.
As a mist is wiped from a mirror by the passage over it of a cloth,
angers, passions, greeds were wiped from their eyes, their voices sank
to a quiet murmur. Like children they prayed, and the Holy Spirit
brooded for one brief moment over hearts that yearned to God.
Then the raid ended, silence fell on the town, but round the sabot-box,
like gulls that scream above a shoal of fish, rapacity swooped and
dived, and its voice, sea-gull shrill, bit through the air.