CHAPTER XIII
THE ZEPPELIN RAID ON LONDON
“Is the old town on fire, Tom?” Jack gasped, as the two air service boys listened to the noise which was growing wilder every moment.
“It must be the Zeppelins have come and London is under fire from the skies!” Tom exclaimed.
“Oh! Hurry up, and let’s get dressed!” cried the excited Jack. “I wouldn’t miss this for anything! Just to think what we’ll have to boast about when we get home—if ever we do. There’s nothing to hinder our going out on the streets, is there?”
Tom was already flinging his clothes on with reckless speed, and did not stop to answer.
Presently the youths found themselves hurrying along the street, with hundreds of other curious sightseers, who seemed to forget the terrible danger hanging overhead in their eagerness to see the bombarding air fleet.
Coming to an open “circus,” or intersection of two streets, around which the buildings are set in a circle, they found it filled by a seething mass of people. There were men and boys; women struggled with the crowd; and girls, who had better have stayed at home in some degree of safety, added to the throng.
All were staring up toward the heavens, covered with gray clouds. Powerful searchlights played across the sky, the long shafts of white light looking very weird.
Loud cries attested to the fact that one of the attacking airships had been discovered. Many fingers pointed it out, and as Tom had carried his binoculars along he quickly had the glasses focussed on the small object high up in the heavens.
“It’s certainly a big balloon, and looks like a long sausage,” he told Jack, as he stared entranced. “And all around it I can see queer little puffs of smoke breaking out, though most of them seem to be below the Zeppelin. Those must be the shrapnel shells they’re firing up at the invader from the anti-aircraft guns used to defend the city. They’re mounted on roofs of houses, they say.”