Shortly before midnight they awoke with a sudden start. A strange light gleamed in their faces, and the mist had almost vanished. The hill-sides and the sky above were bathed in a pearly light, while almost immediately above them they beheld a city, as it were let down from heaven and suspended in mid-air, beset with domes and minarets that flashed like jewels in the marvellous radiance that flooded all space.
"A miracle! A miracle!" Sam Ineson exclaimed, in awe-struck tones, and then held his breath, for a familiar song broke upon his ears. From the sky, or from the battlements of the aerial city, he knew not which, there rang forth the great Nativity hymn:
While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
All seated on the ground,
The Angel of the Lord came down,
And glory shone around.
Jerry Coggill looked into the face of Sam Ineson and saw there an expression of trance-like rapture. As though moved by a common impulse, the two soldiers sprang to attention, saluted, and, when the hymn ceased, fell on their knees in prayer. Then the mist closed on them again, the city among the clouds was hidden from view, and the sky lost its translucence. But sleep was no longer possible for the soldiers. They were as men who had seen the invisible; it was as though heaven had descended upon them and the glory of the new-born King had gleamed in their eyes, and they were filled with a holy awe.
Next morning the mist had cleared, and the miracle was explained. The spot which they had chosen for their resting-place was at the foot of the great scarp of limestone upon which stands the city of Bethlehem, two thousand five hundred feet above the sea. The city had passed, without the shedding of a drop of blood, into the hands of General Allenby, and the soldiers stationed there, inspired by the associations of the place and the Christmas season, had left their barracks shortly before midnight, and, proceeding to the officers' quarters, had greeted them with a hymn. And the Christmas moon, rising high above the mountains of Gilead and Moab, had found for a short space of time an opening in the curtain of mist and had poured down its light upon the hills of Judea, making the city of Bethlehem seem to the rapt minds of the two Yorkshire dalesmen as though it had been the city of the living God let down from heaven.