The rain softened the earth about the dug-outs in front of Ypres, and soon an epidemic of caved-in sides and roofs was raging all along the line, assisted by Black Marias, which shook the moist ground until dug-out supports fell and walls collapsed wholesale. A captain of the 18th Hussars was in a dug-out roofed by an iron bedstead. A small landslide brought down the beams above and the bedstead fell, so striking the Hussar officer that his neck was broken and he was instantly killed. The 19th, 20th, and 21st of May passed quickly, the three brigades of the Division changing from front line to support dug-outs and back again in relays as the days succeeded each other. On the 21st the sun came out, bright and strong, and justified a few minutes' delay _en route_ through Ypres to obtain some photographs. The town was sadly depressing. Earthquake and conflagration might produce as much ruin, but could hardly arrange it so fantastically. In Ypres Madame Caprice came hand in hand with Devastation and Death. In diabolical mood she flung the shattered buildings of the staid old town hither and thither with an eye to the spectacular. The grotesque met one's glance on every side. Only a James Pryde could have done justice on canvas to such a scene. After a thunderstorm of almost tropical intensity on the night of the 21st, the 1st Cavalry Division troopers were relieved, and soon after daylight were sleeping soundly in the huts and the adjacent farms near Vlamertinghe. The 22nd and 23rd of May they spent in resting, and on the evening of the 23rd again went back into the trench line. General de Lisle returned for his rest to new quarters at Esquelbecq, in a thirteenth century château which boasted the honour of having once been stormed by Marlborough. The 14th Division of the "K" Army was billeted near Esquelbecq, and had been placed in the newly formed 6th Corps. Allenby's 5th Corps then consisted of the 28th Division, 9th Division (the first of the "K" Divisions to arrive in France), and the Northumberland Territorial Division. The 6th Corps, containing the 4th Division, the 27th Division, and the new 14th Division was placed under the command of General Keir. On the evening of May 23rd, while the troopers of the 1st, 2nd and 9th Cavalry Brigades tramped through Ypres once more, and took over part of the sodden trench-line of the Salient, General de Lisle again took up headquarters in the big château not far west of the demolished town. The Salient front trenches led over the line that was taken up after the reconstruction following the hard fighting on May 13th. Wilson's 4th Division reached from the French right, near the Ypres-Yser Canal on the north, to the Canadian Farm, then past the Ypres-Passchendaele Road to the Ypres-Zonnebeke Road near Verlorenhoek. [Illustration: View of the 13th century château at Esquelbecque]