* * * * *
For a week before William left England there had been expectation of coming developments at the front, and the papers had spoken of "considerable aerial activity," on the enemy's side as on ours. The developments commenced in earnest on the day of his return from leave; but his first personal experience of the increase in aerial activity was not for a few days later, when, as he was passing through the square in the centre of the town, a gun thudded out—and then another. He stopped and made one of a little knot of khaki that was staring up into the blue, and whereof one of the component parts was a corporal who worked in his office. He himself could see nothing but a drift or two of smoke, but he gathered from the sharper-sighted corporal that there were two Fritz planes overhead, and he stood cricking his neck and blinking upwards in the strong sunlight while passers-by made groups on the pavement and shopkeepers issued from their doors. He had seen the same thing happen before and quite harmlessly; no one around him seemed alarmed or disturbed, and in a few minutes the guns ceased firing as the aeroplanes passed out of range.
"Photographing," said the corporal, as they walked away to the office. "He's been over quite a lot the last week or two, and some time or other I suppose we shall have him in earnest. It's a wonder to me he's left us alone so long; it 'ud be worth his while coming even if he didn't do more than drop a bomb or two on the A.H.T.D., and start a few hundred horses."
"Yes," agreed William, "I suppose it would." He was not in the least alarmed as he settled down to his files; since he joined the Army he had never been exposed to danger, and security had become with him a habit.
* * * * *
That night there was a heavy post, and the office was kept working late; it was close on eleven when William was called upstairs to take down some letters from dictation. The officer who had sent for him was clearing his throat for the first sentence when the door opened for the announcement, "Local aircraft alarm, sir."
"Oh, all right," said the officer resignedly. "Go downstairs, Tully, and come up again when the lights go on. Probably only a false alarm—we had two the other night. Just the sort of thing that would happen when we're behindhand."
He went out grumbling, and William followed him, feeling his way by the banisters, for the electric light was turned off while he was still on the upper landing; other men from all over the warren of a building were descending likewise, and they bumped and jostled each other in the sudden darkness on the stairs. There were jests as they bumped and much creaking of boots—through which, while William was still a flight from the ground floor, came the first rapid thudding of "Archie." On it, a moment later, an unmistakable bomb and the pattering outburst of machine-guns.... William listened curiously; it was his first experience of an air raid, and though the pace of his heart quickened, as yet there was no real fear in him; but a man pressed against him by the descending stream gasped audibly and clawed round William's arm with his fingers. The action was fear made manifest in darkness, and William, instinctively knowing it infectious, repelled it and strove to free his wrist; but the shaking fingers, eloquent of terror, only clung more tightly to their hold.
"What is it?" William snapped. "What's the matter?"
"It's me—Wright," a voice whispered back in jerks. "I can't help it—the Lord knows I try, but I can't. If it was shells I could stand 'em, but——"