Page:Our Girls.pdf/35

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AT WOOLWICH
27

probably magazines for the storage of munitions) which reminds us of the rutted ways through the log-built villages on the steppes of Russia, and then we draw up at an open door from which the pale red of electric light is streaming.

A moment later we are in the women's cloak-room, with its rails (all full) for coats and hats. Here we take off our superfluous clothing, for the night is warm, and at a low footboard, which is the boundary-line of the safety and danger zones, put rubber shoes over our boots, lest the grit of the streets should strike fire from something within. And then, feeling as we felt when we walked, in Oriental slippers, into the Mosque of Omar on the site of the Temple of Solomon, we pass into a far more impressive and tremendous scene.

It is a broad encampment of small, one-story wooden houses or huts, separated from each other by a liberal space, and having wide streets between, with raised causeways on either side. Down the