Curiously
enough we could barely hear the cannonading, for the wind was keen in
the opposite direction, yet we could, as the minutes crept by and the
air cleared, see distinctly the flashes from the boats and the flashes
in the city.
After about fifteen minutes there was a cessation, or perhaps a
hesitation, that lasted two minutes; then the flashes continued. Ten
minutes more and the boats began to move again. One cruiser disappeared
completely from sight, sailing south by east. The other two rushed, like
fast trains, north again, again close to our cliffs; and in another half
hour we heard all too plainly the cannonading which had almost escaped
our ears from Scarborough. We thought it was Robin Hood's Bay, as far
north of us as Scarborough is south; but afterward we learned that the
boats omitted this pretty red-roofed town and concentrated their
remaining energy on Whithy, fifteen miles north; the wind blowing
toward us brought us the vibrating boom.
We drove to Scarborough. We had not gone one mile of the distance when
we began to meet people coming in the opposite direction. A small
white-faced boy in a milk cart that early every morning makes its
Scarborough rounds showed us a piece of shell he had picked up and said
it had first struck a man a few yards from him and killed the man. A
woman carrying a basket told us, with trembling lips, that men and women
were lying about the streets dead.
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