More Uhlans followed, the hoofs of their magnificent horses ringing
like thousands of steel hammers breaking stones in a road; and after
them the giant siege-guns rumbling, growling, the mitrailleuse with
drag-chains ringing, the field-pieces with creaking axles, complaining
brakes, the grinding of the steel-rimmed wheels against the stones
echoing and re-echoing from the house front. When at night for an
instant the machine halted, the silence awoke you, as at sea you
wake when the screw stops.
For three days and three nights the column of gray, with hundreds of
thousands of bayonets and hundreds of thousands of lances, with
gray transport wagons, gray ammunition carts, gray ambulances,
gray cannon, like a river of steel, cut Brussels in two.
For three weeks the men had been on the march, and there was not
a single straggler, not a strap out of place, not a pennant missing.
Along the route, without for a minute halting the machine, the post-
office carts fell out of the column, and as the men marched mounted
postmen collected post-cards and delivered letters. Also, as they
marched, the cooks prepared soup, coffee, and tea, walking beside
their stoves on wheels, tending the fires, distributing the smoking
food.
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