Already a second bomb followed the first, then another, and then a third; and with the last report another cylinder in the trench below burst into thick green billows of death and flowed over the ground, west.[pg 256]
Two more bombs whirled down, bursting on a machine gun; then the airman turned with a cry of triumph, and at the same instant the sun rose above the hills and flung a golden ray straight across his face.
To Maryette the man stood transfigured, like the Blazing Guardian of the Flaming Sword.
"Ring out your Brabançonne!" he cried. "Let the Huns hear the war song of the land they've trampled! Now! Little bell-mistress, arm your white hands with your wooden gloves and make this old carillon speak in brass and iron!"
He caught her by the arm; they ran down the short flight of steps; she drew on her wooden gloves and sprang to the keyboard.
"I'll hold the stairs!" he cried. "I can hold these stairs for an hour against the whole world in arms. Now, then! The Brabançonne!"
Above the roaring confusion and the explosions far below, from high up in the sky a clear bell note floated as though out of Heaven itself—another, others, crystalline[pg 257] clear, imperious, filling all the sky with their amazing and terrible beauty.
The mistress of the bells struck the keyboard with armoured hands—beautiful, slender, avenging hands; the bells above her crashed out into the battle-song of Flanders, filling sky and earth with its splendid defiance of the Hun.
The airman, bomb in hand, stood at the head of the stone stairs; the ancient tower rocked with the fiercely magnificent anthem of revolt—the war cry of a devastated land—the land that died to save the world—the martyr, Belgium, still prone in the deathly trance awaiting her certain resurrection.
The rising sun struck the tower where three score ancient bells poured from metal throats their heavenly summons to battle!