The thought of that cellar pulled me down like the law
of gravity. I walked along the corridor, now deserted, and saw a
stairway littered with broken glass, which my feet scrunched. There
were no lights in the basement of the hotel, but I had a flash-lamp,
going dim, and by its pale eye fumbled my way to a stone passage
leading to the cellar. That flight of stone steps was littered also
with broken glass. In the cellar itself was a mixed company of men who
had been dining earlier in the evening, joined by others who had come
in from the streets for shelter. Some of them had dragged down
mattresses from the bedrooms and were lying there in their trench-
coats, with their steel hats beside them. Others were sitting on
wooden cases, wearing their steel hats, while there were others on
their knees, and their faces in their hands, trying to sleep. There
were some of the town majors who had lost their towns, and some
Canadian cavalry officers, and two or three private soldiers, and some
motor-drivers and orderlies, and two young cooks of the hotel lying
together on dirty straw.
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