London: from calm to panic

1 On a hazy Saturday morning, London seen from high above the Thames goes about its usual business.

2 At Waterloo the crowd cheers as huge field guns and carriages of soldiers roll past

3 Loafers on Waterloo Bridge lean over the balustrade to stare at brown scum on the Thames

4 At dusk on the Strand, the narrator's brother stands frozen with the pink special edition

5 At dusk the wet pink special edition sweeps out of Wellington Street into the Strand.

6 At dusk in Trafalgar Square, a young man stops to watch the first haggard refugees

7 Before dawn, from the brother's attic, windows light up across the grey roofs of London

8 At dawn the brother's hands crush the pink paper with the Commander-in-Chief's dispatch

9 At dawn on the door-step, the brother reads the dispatch's last line over the newspaper

10 At pink dawn a Marylebone terrace street tilts uphill toward Chalk Farm.

11 With ten pounds in his pocket, the brother comes down the lodging-house steps at dawn