In a moment, all was action. Those amazing Belgians, as responsive as children in a game, fell to furiously to create confusion and swift event out of the trance of peace. The battered giant in the Sava released a cloud of steam from his car. The men aimed their rifles in swift staccato. The lieutenant dashed back and forth from curb to curb, plunging to the barricade, and then to the half dozen boys who were falling back, crouching on one knee, firing, and then retreating. He cheered them with pats on the shoulder, pointed out new unsuspected enemies. Then, man by man, the thirty perspiring fighters began to tumble. They fell forward on their faces, lay stricken on their backs, heaved against the walls of houses, wherever the deadly fire had caught them. The street was littered with Belgian bodies. There stood Rossiter grinding away on his handle, snickering green-clad Belgians lying strewn on the cobbles, a half dozen of them tense and set behind the barricade, leveling rifles at the piles of fish. Every one was laughing, and all of them intent on working out a picture with thrills. The enemy guns had been growing menacing, but Rossiter and the Belgians were very busy. "The shells are dropping just back of us," I called to him. "Good, good," he said, "but I haven't time for them just yet. They must wait. You can't crowd a film." Ten minutes passed. "It is immense," began he, wiping his face and lighting a smoke, and turning his handle. "Gentlemen, I thank you." "Gentlemen, we thank you," I said. "There's been nothing like it," he went on. "Those Liege pictures of Wilson's at the Hippodrome were tame." He'd got it all in, and was wasting a few feet for good measure. Sometimes you need a fringe in order to bring out the big minute in your action. [Illustration: STREET FIGHTING IN ALOST. This is part of the motion-picture which we took while the Germans were bombarding the town.] Suddenly, we heard the wailing overhead and louder than any of the other shells. Louder meant closer. It lasted a second of time, and then crashed into the second story of the red house, six feet over Rossiter's head. A shower of brown brick dust, and a puff of gray-black smoke settled down over the machine and man, and blotted him out of sight for a couple of seconds. Then we all coughed and spat, and the air cleared. The tripod had careened in the fierce rush of air, but Rossiter had caught it and was righting it. He went on turning. His face was streaked with black, and his clothes were brown with dust. "Trying to get the smoke," he called, "but I'm afraid it won't register." Maybe you want to know how that film took. We hustled it back to London, and it went with a whizz. One hundred and twenty-six picture houses produced "STREET FIGHTING IN ALOST." The daily illustrated papers ran it front page. The only criticism of it that I heard was another movie man, who was sore--a chap named Wilson. "That picture is faked," he asserted.