“From our windows we could not quite make out the contours of the ruined castle, which is generally plainly visible. Our attention was called to the fact that there was “practicing” going on and we could at 8.07 see quick flashes. That these flashes pointed directly at Scarborough we did not for a few moments comprehend, then the fog slowly lifting, we saw a fog that was partly smoke. The castle grew into its place in the six miles distance. “It seemed for a moment that the eight-foot thick Norman walls tottered, but no, whatever tottered was behind the keep. Curiously enough, we could barely hear the cannonading, for the wind was keen in the opposite direction, yet we could, as the minutes crept by and the air cleared, see distinctly the flashes from the boats and the flashes in the city. “After about fifteen minutes there was a cessation, or perhaps a hesitation, that lasted two minutes; then the flashes continued. Ten minutes more and the boats began to move again. One cruiser disappeared from sight, sailing south by east. CANNONADING AT WHITBY “The other two rushed like fast trains north again, close to our cliffs, and in another half hour we heard all too plainly the cannonading which had almost escaped our ears from Scarborough. We thought it was Robin Hood’s Bay, as far north of us as Scarborough is south, but afterward we learned that the boats omitted this pretty red-roofed town and concentrated their remaining energy on Whitby, fifteen miles north; the wind blowing toward us brought us the vibrating boom. “We drove to Scarborough. We had not gone one mile of the distance when we began to meet people coming in the opposite direction. A small white-faced boy in a milk cart that early every morning makes its Scarborough rounds showed us a piece of shell he had picked up, and said it had first struck a man a few yards from him and killed the man. A woman carrying a basket told us, with trembling lips, that men and women were lying about the streets dead. “We did not meet a deserted city when we entered. The streets were thronging. There was a Sunday hush over everything, without the accompanying Sunday clothes, but people moved about or stood at their doorways. Many of the shop fronts were boarded up and shop windows were empty of display. The main street, a narrow passage-way that clambers up from the sea and points due west, was filled with a procession that slowly marched down one side and up the other. People hardly spoke. They made room automatically for a group of silent Boy Scouts, who carried an unconscious woman past us to the hospital. There was the insistent honk of a motor-car. As it pushed its way through, all that struck me about the car was the set face of the old man rising above improvised bandages about his neck, part of the price of the Kaiser’s Christmas card.