Friday.—All to-day it rained and thundered. Thundered as if God in His Heaven were venting His wrath on the warring world below. For one long day there has been no booming of those awful guns. The road has become bare and deserted. In the evening came men into my house from the ammunition wagons in the wood. They told me that they had caught a spy. I am not surprised; this district swarms with them. But what otherwise can be expected if, previous to the war, the entire business relations of the neighborhood were conducted with the Germans? Every purchasable article from a motor-car to a needle was supplied from Berlin. This man was discovered in a deserted part of the wood, sending messages on a telegraph key. A sapper of the engineers saw the wire laid across the ground, and curious to know whither it led followed it along until he discovered this man. He will trouble us no more. But the unhappy result of it is, they say he signaled the position to the enemy, who will undoubtedly bombard us when the weather becomes fine again.
Saturday.—A fine clear morning. I hoped that the words of the sapper would prove themselves to be incorrect, and so they were to a certain degree. Anxiously I awaited the bombardment, and it must be confessed with a great misgiving in my heart. Ten o’clock! Eleven o’clock! Twelve o’clock! And still they did not open fire. But just before one a German Taube flew over. Unlike the air machine in the previous visits it did not fly away immediately, but came gradually lower in long sweeping circles, until with my glasses I was able to distinguish the two black crosses on the wings. Then the pom-poms began to bark and screech, and the heavens all round were marked with small white clouds of smoke no bigger than a man’s hand in size, and fascinating to watch. He was a cool fellow, the pilot of that air machine: undismayed by the bursting shrapnel he continued to circle round overhead, as if taking the exact bearings of the ammunition camp.
Monday.—I was roused from my bed by a series of violent explosions. It is that infernal bombardment come at last, I thought to myself. But no! The air above was filled with a loud hum as of a hundred motors. I looked above me to find the face of the sky darkened with aircraft, all of them with the black cross on either wing; from all sides they appeared to be circling in. And every moment there would be the unpleasant rush of the falling bomb. A shattering explosion. A burst of flame! And the yell or cry of the dead and dying, the heartbreaking neigh of a wounded horse, the crash of falling timber. The series of smaller explosions as the ammunition and cartridges went off. For ten awful moments this continued, bomb followed bomb, explosion followed explosion, shrieks, cries, groans. It was a living hell. My God, these aircraft are more to be feared than those infernal guns. I—I——
Here the old Father’s narrative ends, and across the page were two dull brown splashes, that tell their story but too plainly.
[CHAPTER XXII]
HEROISM IN THE AIR
Somebody censored was engaged in a long reconnaissance trip into the enemy’s country, and had already turned home when a shrapnel shell burst immediately beneath his aeroplane, smashed part of the body of the machine, and shattered the pilot’s leg. Rendered unconscious, he lost control, the aeroplane began to nose-dive to the earth, and fell 5000 feet. From this point the observer takes up the story:—
“I have given up all hope, the earth seemed rushing up to meet us, and I prayed that our agony might not be prolonged. I shut my eyes and waited for the final crash, when, wonder of wonders, the machine began to right herself. Hardly daring to believe my eyes, I looked to the pilot’s seat. The headlong rush through the cool air must have brought him round, and he was making strenuous efforts to regain control.