She, and Sara, and Jane Crab wedged themselves together in the open window and leaned far out, peering into the moonless dark. As they watched, a search-light leapt into being, and a pencil of light moved flickeringly across the sky. Then another and another—sweeping hither and thither like the blind feelers of some hidden octopus seeking its prey. There was something horribly uncanny in those long, straight shafts of light wavering uncertainly across the dense darkness of the night sky.
“Can you see the Zepp?” demanded Tim, with lively interest, from his bed.
“No, it's pitch black—too dark to see a thing,” replied Sara.
Exactly as she spoke, a brilliant light hung for a moment suspended in the dark arch of the sky, then shivered into a blaze of garish effulgence, girdling the countryside and illuminating every road and building, every field, and tree, and ditch, as brightly as though it were broad daylight.
“A star-shell!” gasped Molly. “What a beastly thing! Positively”—giggling nervously—“I believe they can see right inside this room!”
“'Tisn't decent!” fulminated Jane indignantly, clutching with modest fingers at her scanty dressing-gown and straining it tightly across her chest whilst she backed hastily from the vicinity of the window. “Lightin' up sudden like that in the middle of the night! I feel for all the world as though I hadn't got a stitch on me! Come away from the window, do, miss——”
The light failed as suddenly as it had flared, and a warning crash, throbbing up against their ears, startled her into silence.
“That's a trifle too near to be pleasant,” exclaimed Tim sharply. “Go downstairs, you three! Do you hear?”
Simultaneously, Selwyn shouted from below—
“Come downstairs! Come down at once! Quick, Sara! I'm coming up to carry Tim down—and Minnie won't stay alone. Come on!”