The terrible racket of the Lämmergeyer filled the sky; the orderly stumbled into the room, slipped in a puddle of something wet, sent an empty bottle rolling and clinking away into the darkness; stumbled twice over prostrate bodies; reached the telephone, half fainting; whispered for help.
After a long, long while, the horror still thickly clogging vein and brain, he scratched a match, hesitated, then holding it high, reeled toward the door with face averted.
Outside the sun was already above the horizon, flashing over Haut Alsace at his feet.
The Lämmergeyer was a speck in the sky, poised over France.
Up out of the infinite and sunlit chasm came a mocking, joyous hail—up through the sheer, misty gulf out of vernal depths: Cuck-oo! Cuck-oo! Cuck-oo!
CHAPTER IV
RECONNAISSANCE
And that was the way Carfax ended—a tiny tragedy of incompetence compared to the mountainous official fiasco at Gallipoli. Here, a few perished among the filthy salamanders in the snow; there, thousands died in the burning Turkish gorse——
But that's history; and its makers are already officially damned.