From a window Sister Eila saw him climb aboard; saw the machine move, run over the ground like a great beetle, and rise from the grass, pointing upward and eastward as it took wing and soared low over the river.
And down the highway, pell-mell, galloped a dozen gendarmes in a storm of dust and flying pebbles, wheeled in front of the inn, put their superb horses to the ditch and the cattle gate beyond, and, clearing both, went tearing away across the fields after the rising aëroplane.
Over the river bank they galloped, straight into the water, their big, powerful horses wading, thrashing, swimming across; then they were up the opposite bank and over and away, racing after the ascending aëroplane.
From it was coming a redoubled rattle now; machine and machine gun were both spitting fiercely as the winged thing fought upward toward the blue zone of safety.
The gendarmes drew bridle now and began to shoot upward from their saddles, then spurred on across the fields, taking ditches and hedges as they came, until the strange chase was hidden by a distant rise of ground and the quarry alone remained visible, high winging, still rising, still pointed eastward toward the Rhine.
Then, far away across the hills, a heavier shot set the August air vibrating—another, another, others following.
Faster and faster cracked the high-angle guns on the Barrier Forts, strewing the sky with shrapnel; the aëroplane soared and soared, leaving behind it a wake dotted with clots of fleece which hung for a while quite motionless against the intense blue, then slowly dissolved and vanished in mid-air.
From the Ausone Fort the gunners could hear, far to the southeast, the sky-cannon banging away on the Barrier Forts; and the telescopes on their signal towers swung toward the sky line above the foothills of the Vosges.
But in the town below the fortressed hill no echo of the cannonade penetrated. Ausone, except in the neighborhood of the railroad and the office of the Petit Journal d'Ausone, lay still and almost deserted in the August sunshine: a few children played under the trees by the bridge; a few women sat knitting along the river quay; one or two old men nodded, half asleep, fishing the deeper pools below the bridge; the market square remained empty except for a stray dog, tongue lolling, padding stolidly up the street about his business.
But before the office of the Petit Journal d'Ausone a crowd stood, covering the sidewalks and overflowing beyond the middle of the street. Young men and old, women and young girls, were clustered there quietly watching the bulletin boards.