She started upward, feeling with her feet[pg 241] for every stone step. The ascent appeared to be interminable; the narrowing stone spiral seemed to have no end. Her hand grew warm within his own.
But at last they felt a fresh wind blowing and caught a glimpse of stars above them.
Then, tier on tier, the bells of the carillon, fixed to their great beams, appeared above them—a shadowy, bewildering wilderness of bells, rising, rank above rank, until they vanished in the darkness overhead. Beside them, almost touching them, loomed the great bell Clovis, a gigantic mass bulking enormously in that shadowy place.
A sonorous wind flowed through the open tower, eddying among the bells—a strong, keen night wind blowing from the north.
The airman walked to the south parapet and looked down. Below him in the starlight, like an indistinct map spread out, lay the Nivelle redoubt and the trench with its gabions, its sand bags, its timbers, its dugouts.
Very far away to the southeast they could see the glare of rockets and exploding shells, but the sound of the bombardment did not[pg 242] reach them. North, a single searchlight played and switched across the clouds; west, all was dark.
"They'll arrive just before dawn," said the airman, placing his sack of bombs on the pavement under the parapet. "Come, little bell-mistress, take me to see your keyboard."
"It is below—a few steps. This way—if you will follow me——"
She turned to the stone stairs again, descended a dozen steps, opened a door on a narrow landing.
And there, in the starlight, he saw the keyboard and the bewildering maze of wires running up and branching like a huge web toward the tiers of bells above.