All the barges and shipping upon the canals had been
requisitioned for transport. In that clear, bright, warm weather, it
would all have looked from above like some extravagant festival of
animated toys.
As the sun sank westward the spectacle must have become a little
indistinct because of a golden haze; everything must have become warmer
and more glowing, and because of the lengthening of the shadows more
manifestly in relief. The shadows of the tall churches grew longer and
longer, until they touched the horizon and mingled in the universal
shadow; and then, slow, and soft, and wrapping the world in fold after
fold of deepening blue, came the night--the night at first obscurely
simple, and then with faint points here and there, and then jewelled in
darkling splendour with a hundred thousand lights. Out of that mingling
of darkness and ambiguous glares the noise of an unceasing activity
would have arisen, the louder and plainer now because there was no
longer any distraction of sight.
It may be that watcher drifting in the pellucid gulf beneath the stars
watched all through the night; it may be that he dozed. But if he gave
way to so natural a proclivity, assuredly on the fourth night of the
great flank march he was aroused, for that was the night of the battle
in the air that decided the fate of Holland.
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