The sky slayer had struck again!
CHAPTER XXV.
IN THE GLARE OF FLAMES.
For a fragment of time,—while a man might have counted ten,—there was absolute silence following the shattering report of the bomb. Then came a babel of cries, shouts and women’s screams. Hastily throwing on whatever clothes came first, the two boys rushed out of the wrecked room.
But they did not do this without difficulty, for a mass of fallen plaster and debris blocked the door. In the corridor, an electric light still burned, and the force of the explosion appeared to have spent itself at the end of the passage where the boys’ room was situated.
“Wha—what happened?” stammered Bill, as they gained the corridor.
“It was a bomb, a bomb dropped from a Zeppelin,” answered Jack, equally moved. “What a fiendish bit of business.”
“I only hope they don’t drop any more,” Bill cried, as they hurried to where the stairway should have been.
But it was not there.
A great section of it had been blown to kindling by the force of the explosion. It was at that moment that Jack became aware of an acrid, sharp smell very different from the reek of the lyddite with which the shell had been loaded. It was a few minutes before he realized what it was,—fire!