The little lace-making town, the younger sister of Mechlin and Bruges, had not suffered as much as we had feared. The rattle of the bobbins was no longer to be heard on the doorsteps; certain houses showed the stigmata of preliminary martyrdom in their empty window-frames and blackened façades. But her heart beat still, and around her, in the great open conservatory which forms the outskirts of Ghent, Autumn had gathered all her floral splendours. "We marched through fields of magnificent begonias, among which we are perhaps about to die," wrote Fusilier R. To die among flowers like a young girl seems a strange destiny for the conventional sailor--the typical sea-dog with a face tanned by sun and spray. But the majority of the recruits of the brigade bore little resemblance to the type. Their clear eyes looked out of faces but slightly sunburnt; the famous "Marie-Louises" were hardly younger.[10] Their swaying walk and a touch of femininity and coquetry in the precocious development of their muscular vigour explain the nickname given them by the heavy Teutons, to whom they were as disconcerting as an apparition of boyish Walkyries: _the young ladies with the red pompons_! The Admiral, who had just reconnoitred the position, was conferring with his lieutenants on the spot; a fraction of the 2nd Regiment, under Commander Varney, was to take up a position between Gontrode and Quatrecht, leaving a battalion in reserve to the north of Melle; a fraction of the 1st Regiment, under Commander Delage, was to advance between Heusden and Goudenhaut, and to leave a battalion in reserve at Destelbergen. He himself would keep with him as general reserve, at the cross-roads of Schelde, which was to be his post of command, the rest of the brigade, that is to say, two battalions and the machine-gun company. The convoys, with the exception of the ambulances commanded by Staff-Surgeon Seguin, were to stay in the rear, at the gates of Ghent. This was an indispensable precaution in view of a rapid retreat, which, however, the Admiral had no intention of carrying out until he had sufficiently broken the shock of the enemy's onslaught. Thanks to our reinforcements, the Belgian troops were able to extend their front as much as was necessary by occupying Lemberge and Schellerode. The artillery of the 4th mixed Brigade, emplaced near Lendenhock, commanded the approaches of the plain. No trace of the enemy was to be seen. But the Belgian cyclist scouts had brought in word that the German vanguard had crossed the Dendre. We had only just time to occupy our trenches; in the last resort, if it should be necessary to fall back on Melle, we should find a ready-made epaulement in the railway embankment near the station bridge.