There was no difficulty in learning what was the matter. That wild cry of alarm was becoming very familiar to the ears of the worried citizens of Dunkirk these stormy days.
“The Germans are coming! The Germans are coming!”
In French and in English this shout was being carried along, constantly added to by scores of voices. People rushed pell-mell this way and that, many dodging down into cellars, as though seeking safety from some terror that was likely to descend on the coast city like a cyclone.
Those who were not yet running had their necks craned, and their eyes turned upward toward the northeast. Frank stepped over to where he could see better, and then he also “rubbered,” as Billy would have called it.
On numerous occasions the German aviators had conducted an organized raid on Dunkirk, dropping dozens of terrible bombs in what seemed like an indiscriminate fashion. Possibly these were in the main intended to damage the camps or accumulated stores of the British legions; but if so the aim of the men in the Taubes was singularly bad, for the majority of the bombs had thus far either exploded in the open streets, or shattered private houses.
Many innocent persons, including women and children, had suffered from these explosives, and it was not singular then that whenever the cry was raised that the “Germans were coming,” meaning a raiding flock of aëroplanes, there would ensue a mad panic in the streets of the French city.
“There are several moving things over there away up in the heavens,” Frank told himself as he gazed in more or less excitement. “Even without a glass I’m almost ready to say they can’t be Taubes.”
He stood there watching and waiting until the soaring objects drew closer, when their true identity could be discovered.
Frank, being an aviator himself, quickly detected certain things that the common observer might never have discovered; and which told him the half dozen specks in the sky that February morning were birds and not aëroplanes.
“Some gulls flying high,” he murmured as he watched. “Yes, there they circle around, which aviators bent on bombarding the city and then running off in a hurry would never think of doing.”