CHAPTER XXVI

Night was closing in about Noll and Dimny before the fortifications of Antwerp loomed up like storm clouds over the horizon, and at last the cathedral tower of _Onze lieve Vrouwe Kerk_ pierced the edge of the sky. As they came on, it thrust up and up its ornate shaft four hundred feet toward the clouds, the shaft that Napoleon called “a piece of Malines lace.” Other towers began to shoulder in alongside, and finally the city was upon them. The outskirts of Antwerp were sad with industrial death, with dark manufacto…