Upon the devoted British fell the full force of the German shock. Hopelessly outnumbered, and with the enemy on three sides, they nevertheless struggled out of van Kluck's grasp, and made a fighting retreat that will go down to posterity as one of the finest feats known to the history of warfare. Terrible were their losses, as were those of the French armies on their right; but they were still unbroken, and were still capable of striking hard when the Allied line should be knitted up anew. In the early days of September this was accomplished; the whole Allied line lay extended from the southern outskirts of Paris eastwards to Verdun. It had been welded into strength by misfortune; it had taken the measure of the foe, and was eager for revenge. To the Germans it appeared that Paris had been abandoned, and in Berlin men confidently declared that the war was over, and that only the fruits of victory remained to be reaped. Von Kluck, sweeping irresistibly towards the capital, believed that he had only wearied and broken foes before him. He had good reason for this belief, for he could not conceive that any armies could have retreated so rapidly and suffered so severely and yet remain fit to oppose him. He was full of confidence, but it was the confidence of ignorance. He was totally unaware that a new army, fresh and unwearied, was silently concentrating in the streets of Paris. In Britain there were the worst of forebodings. The Allied armies had been driven back helter-skelter with a terrible tale of losses, and von Kluck was within gunshot of the outer forts of the French capital. The 5th of September was the darkest hour before the dawn. Everywhere the Allied armies seemed to be on the verge of disaster. Von Kluck was wheeling his right in order to envelop the 5th French Army; farther east the Würtembergers were striking hard at the French centre; the Crown Prince, to the south of Verdun, was waiting for the huge siege guns with which he hoped to batter down the defences of that great fortress; Maubeuge was at its last gasp; and at Nancy the Bavarians, under the eye of the Kaiser himself, were preparing to break through the eastern barrier. The man in the street at home could only stifle his feelings of dismay, and hope that by some miracle victory might yet be snatched from the jaws of defeat. [Illustration: Motor-cyclist Dispatch Rider breaking through a Patrol of Uhlans. _By permission of The Sphere._ The motor-cyclist enables communications to be kept up, and messages to be sent to and from headquarters all along the far-extended lines of the Allies. Adventures similar to that illustrated above were common in the early stages of the war.]