The Scots corporal slowly and painfully drags himself out from the pile of earth and debris and looks round. There is a curious numb feeling in his right arm. He sits up with a dazed gasp. There is a hand by him on the ground. His? He looks at his arm, and realises. Near by five of his pals are laid out. He seems to have escaped. "The Lord ha' maircy--but the regiment's fair blooded this day," and he falls back in a faint. More aeroplanes, more trails of smoke; and, wherever they fall, within twenty odd seconds a German shell bursts fair and true. All down the line there springs the crack of rifles. Beyond the canal the outposts of the Lincolns, Royal Scots and others are coming in at the double. A curtain of shell-fire is lowered behind them as the British batteries come into action. A curtain of fire rolls down before them as the German guns take the range. It is now close upon one o'clock, and enemy shells have begun to creep nearer and nearer in from the suburbs upon Mons itself. The good curé and his words are forgotten, for what living things can remain? And so there begins that pitiable exodus of old men, women and children which streamed steadily southwards, ever increasing as it crowded through the villages and towns. But there is no time to-day to think of them. They must go, or stay and perish--anything so long as they do not interfere with the great game of War. North of the town, where our lines necessarily bulged out, making a salient, the fighting was becoming desperate. Here three regiments especially (the Middlesex, Royal Irish and Royal Fusiliers) lost very heavily as they sturdily contested every yard of ground. This particular point had, from the first, been recognised as the weakest in the British lines. Barely an hour since the first shots were fired, and now by one o'clock practically every gun and every rifle of the British Force is blazing away as though the powers of hell were set loose. As yet it would seem that the ammunition is being merely wasted for the sake of making a noise. There is no enemy in sight save in the air the circling aeroplanes, and away on the flanks dimly-seen clouds of horsemen. A modern battlefield with its curious emptiness has so often been described that here one need only record the fact in passing. There is nothing to be seen. The men are firing, in the first flush of excitement, at corners of possible concealment--the line of a hedge, the edge of a wood, the very occasional flash of a field-gun. On the left, in the Second Corps, the British fire slackens somewhat as the men pull themselves together. No one has the foggiest notion of what is really happening. It is the officers' business of the moment to steady the ranks and keep them under cover.