In some places plunderers
had been at work, but rarely at other than the provision and wine
shops. A jeweller's window had been broken open in one place, but
apparently the thief had been disturbed, and a number of gold chains
and a watch lay scattered on the pavement. I did not trouble to touch
them. Farther on was a tattered woman in a heap on a doorstep; the
hand that hung over her knee was gashed and bled down her rusty brown
dress, and a smashed magnum of champagne formed a pool across the
pavement. She seemed asleep, but she was dead.
The farther I penetrated into London, the profounder grew the
stillness. But it was not so much the stillness of death--it was the
stillness of suspense, of expectation. At any time the destruction
that had already singed the northwestern borders of the metropolis,
and had annihilated Ealing and Kilburn, might strike among these
houses and leave them smoking ruins. It was a city condemned and
derelict. . . .
In South Kensington the streets were clear of dead and of black
powder. It was near South Kensington that I first heard the howling.
It crept almost imperceptibly upon my senses. It was a sobbing
alternation of two notes, "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," keeping on
perpetually. When I passed streets that ran northward it grew in
volume, and houses and buildings seemed to deaden and cut it off
again.
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