'Keep yer flat feet 'orf o' me toes!' expostulated a gruff and much-injured voice. 'I ain't got no boots on. Knock orf jumpin' abart like a perishin' loonatic, carn't yer?'

The air was as full of sound as were the heavens of bursting shrapnel. Little guns and big guns were having the time of their lives. They banged, boomed, coughed, and spluttered together, and every now and then in the ear-splitting medley of sound one heard the hiccuping, deep-throated poom-poom of an anti-aircraft pom-pom, the shrill staccato ra-ta-ta-ta of a little ·303-inch high-angle Maxim, and the faint but quite unmistakable whistle and report of the shell as they clove their way through the air and exploded.

'Lord!' muttered Wooten with a laugh, his eyes glued to his glasses, 'I wonder where all the bits are coming down. We'll have to get under cover if they start loosin' off anywhere near us.'

It was a magnificent sight, quite the best fireworks display most of them had ever seen. The many searchlights made the night as light as day. The heavens were ablaze with the tell-tale sparkling flashes, while the earth seemed to vomit the fiery trails of tracer shell which crossed and recrossed in all directions. Brock's Benefit at the Crystal Palace was not in it.

Then, quite unexpectedly, there came a roaring thud from somewhere far away. Another, another, and yet another! The reports were loud and reverberating, and almost drowned the sound of the guns. They were bomb explosions, and the onlookers held their breath and glanced anxiously round to see how their neighbours were taking it. Nobody seemed unduly anxious, but some of them wondered vaguely what would happen if a missile fell on board the Mariner. Her thin decks offered no protection whatsoever, and if a bomb did hit her——

At last, after what seemed an eternity of waiting, a great, elongated, silvery-looking mass slid rapidly into view at the point of intersection of two of the searchlight-beams. It looked like an enormous hexagonal pencil suspended from the sky, and travelled with awe-inspiring sedateness and solemnity. It was the Zeppelin; but, from her size, she seemed to be at least ten thousand feet up. The searchlights followed her unremittingly. Her great bulk became indistinct and nebulous amidst wreathing eddies of smoke, while the shell-flashes seemed to be bursting out into space all round her.

'Ow!' yelled the excitable, dancing gentleman, as a particularly brilliant gout of flame flashed out immediately in line with the airship's blunt bows; 'that's got 'er! Did yer see 'er waggle?'

But shooting at a rapidly moving object high up in the air and almost immediately overhead is a much more difficult task than people imagine; and though some of the shell may have caused the Hun a certain amount of annoyance, it was tolerably certain that a good many more expended their energy in space.

But whatever the result, the raider evidently received a warmer reception than she had bargained for, for after being in sight for barely a minute she swung off and disappeared from view at a good fifty miles an hour. Whether or not she had been hit remained a mystery. Every anti-aircraft gunner in the place, even the man at the little ·303 Maxim, would have taken his solemn affidavit that missiles from his own particular weapon had hit her not once, but many times; while the Mariner's men, judging from their conversation, were of the same opinion. Some of them were even prepared to swear that they had seen gaping holes in the Zeppelin's bows, stern, and amidships—all over her, in fact; but if their accounts were to be believed their eyesight must have been abnormally abnormal, while the Zep should have come down a mass of punctured fabric and twisted aluminium framework. She had done nothing of the kind.

The guns ceased firing; one by one the searchlights flickered, glowed redly, and went out. All was peace.