"There!" he said, at last. "I have been myself, for I had had enough of that nonsense. Lieutenant Zaeydydt, Brigadier Marteau, and I set off together. We could not stand that sort of thing any longer and I was determined to get to the bottom of it, if we had to go right there ourselves. Things went all right as far as the Yser, to the milestone 16. The last of the trenches occupied by the French Territorials are there, but we could not discover anything that was of any use to us. Looking out from there, towards the north, on a level with the tanks, there was something that looked like a footbridge over the Yser, but it was not distinct enough for us to be sure about it and we decided to go on along the river. "Just then, the French howitzers opened fire on the tanks: all the firing was from eighty to one hundred yards too far. Suddenly our good little eighty-four began to spit. You cannot imagine the pleasure it gave us to hear it quite near to its target. It was hitting a ruined house and each shot entered straight inside. It was the famous wine-shop, where we had been told there was a battery. All rubbish! There was no more a battery there than there is on my hand. All the same the firing was good. "We left the Territorials and went on, half crawling. We made good progress along the river just below the towpath. A hundred yards farther on were two French sentinels, who wished us good luck, and then two Belgian sentinels belonging to the 2nd Chasseurs. We could see nothing but their heads emerging from a hole, and after this we met no one. To the left, was a great sheet of inundation, to the right, was the Yser, and beyond, apparently nothing but deserted ruins. We kept on our way and, presently, came up against a huge tree lying on the ground and barring the towpath. We had to go round this obstacle and we first passed behind the ruins of a little house, built on the roadside. We were now advancing towards the inundation. It was all terrible. Ruins of houses broke the surface of the lake here and there. Sometimes we saw the dead bodies of horses and of cows there, too. There was also a dead man, a poor young Belgian Chasseur. He must have been there since the Dixmude battle. He was fair-haired, half buried in the mud, his gun under his arm and his head thrown back, so that his pointed beard was skyward and he was wearing an eyeglass. We were now once more on the towpath and were a little nearer the famous footbridge. It was only a hundred yards from us. We stood still and at once understood. On looking at the map, you will see on the left bank of the Yser the two petroleum tanks near the towpath, where we then were. On the right bank is the "Nacelle," as indicated on the map, but at this spot, 150 yards above the tanks, the Yser makes a bend and, consequently, what is at the water's edge on the left bank looks, from where we are, as though it were on the right bank. Now on the left, starting from the tanks and