Page:The Invasion of 1910.djvu/405

 retired smartly up the hill as the terrible bombardment of London ceased. Our losses in the shelling of the barricade had been terrible. The roadway behind us was strewn with dead and dying, and with others I helped to bandage the wounded and remove them to private houses in the Adelaide and King Henry's Roads, where the doctors were attending to their injuries. In Haverstock Hill lay the bodies of many women, more than one with a revolver still grasped in her stiffened hand. Ah! the scenes at that barricade defy description. They were awful. The pavements were like those of slaughter-houses and the whole road to beyond the Adelaide had been utterly wrecked, there being not a single house intact.

"And yet we rallied. Reinforcements came up from the direction of Regent's Park—a great, unorganised crowd of armed men and women, doubly enraged by the cruel bombardment and the burning of their homes. With these reinforcements we resolved to still hold the débris of our barricade—to still dispute the advance of the invader, knowing that one division must certainly come down that road. So we reorganised our force and waited—waited while the sun sank with its crimson afterglow and darkness crept on, watching the red fires of London reflected upon the night sky, and wondering each one of us what was to be our fate.

"For hours we waited there, until the Kaiser's legions came upon us, sweeping down Roslyn Hill to where we were still making a last stand. Though the street lamps were unlit, we saw them advancing by the angry glare of the fires of London, while we, too, were full in the light, and a mark for them. They fired upon us, and we returned their fusillade. We stood man to man, concealed behind the débris wherever we could get shelter from the rain of lead they poured upon us. They advanced by rushes, taking our position by storm. I was in the roadway, concealed behind an overturned tramcar, into the woodwork of which bullets were constantly imbedding themselves. The man next