Only one shell more fell on Fort Boncelles, but it landed full in the middle of the ruined structure, and was one of the shells from the 11-inch howitzers. The inner concrete walls fell to dust, pieces of armor-steel and gun shelters were hurled a quarter of a mile away and both the remaining guns were silenced. Eleven men remained to surrender the fort, not one of them unwounded, all nearly crazed with the endurance of nine days and nights of the most terrific bombardment known to man. Dazed, deaf and exhausted to the verge of insanity, they were brought before their captors. Only three were able to speak, one of them the master's comrade. "What have you there?" asked a junior officer, as the Belgian feebly resisted search. A German soldier snatched the packet from his tunic. "Only a message from a comrade," the Belgian mumbled, his words thick with collapse. The officer opened the packet, ran his eye through the letter, looked at Mme. Maubin's photograph, and, with a contemptuous exclamation, tossed the photograph and letter into a little stream that flowed by the roadside. The Belgian, enraged at this callous action, for the moment forgetful of his wounds and the lassitude of prostration, lurched forward to seize the officer's throat. He was promptly seized, and, as he was held there, almost swooning, a captive and unarmed, the officer drew his pistol and shot him dead. In this wise the Germans took Liége. FOOTNOTES: [3] The _Queen Elizabeth_, under the British flag, the most powerful vessel at the opening of the war, carried eight 15-inch guns and sixteen 6-inch guns as an auxiliary battery. [4] General Von Emmich's advance force, irrespective of reserves, was 120,000 men. [5] This does not mean the trench of modern trench warfare, but the old-fashioned shallow rifle-pit. [6] These figures are not official, but are careful estimates from known facts by leading artillerists of the Allies. CHAPTER III THE CAPTIVE KAISER When, on the night of that first bombardment, Horace Monroe struck across the fields to take the river path homewards, the boy's spirit thrilled with a keen eagerness for the future. To his very finger-tips he seemed to be a-quiver with life. Action and the clacking blare of the cannonade heightened his sensations. Death had come near to him but it had not made him afraid, rather it had given him a sense of exultation. He was still partly deaf from the shock of the shell-burst and to his memory was continually returning the scene of Deschamps lying on the Embourg road, the blood trickling from his forehead. "It's hard luck for Deschamps, though," he muttered to himself, "to be put out of everything, without even having seen the fighting!" This, the fact that his chum had been debarred from participation in the Great War which seemed to be bursting over his head, loomed up to Horace as far more lamentable than the wreck of his chum's life and the ruin of his ambitions to be an artist.