Page:The Invasion of 1910.djvu/400

 in our absence been erected in all the main roads leading in from the Northern Heights.

"On Hampstead Heath I found about a dozen or so of my comrades, whom I had not seen since I had left Hendon, and heard from them that they had been operating in Norfolk against the German Guards, who had landed at King's Lynn. With them I went through Hampstead and down Haverstock Hill to the great barricade that had been erected across that thoroughfare and Prince of Wales Road. It was a huge, ugly structure, built of every conceivable article—overturned tramcars, furniture, paving stones, pianos, wardrobes, scaffold boards, in fact everything and anything that came handiest—while intertwined everywhere were hundreds of yards of barbed wire. A small space had been left at the junction of the two roads in order to allow people to enter, while on the top a big Union Jack waved in the light breeze. In all the neighbouring houses I saw men with rifles, while from one house pointed the menacing muzzle of a Maxim, commanding the greater part of Haverstock Hill. There seemed also to be other barricades in the smaller roads in the vicinity. But the one at which I had been stationed was certainly a most formidable obstacle. All sorts and conditions of men manned it. Women, too, were there, fierce-eyed, towsled-haired women, who in their fury seemed to have become half savage. Men shouted themselves hoarse, encouraging the armed citizens to fight till death. But from the determined look upon their faces no incentive was needed. They meant, every one of them, to bear their part bravely, when the moment came.

"'We've been here three whole days awaiting the enemy,' one man said to me, a dark-haired, bearded City man in a serge suit, who carried his rifle slung upon his shoulder.'

"'They'll be 'ere soon enough now, cockie,' remarked a Londoner of the lower class from Notting Dale. 'There'll be fightin' 'ere before long, depend on't. This is more excitin' sport than Kempton Park, ain't it—eh?'