Then, directly ahead of them, parallel to the Impasse d'Alcyon, a shell fell with the whistling screech of a steamer's siren; there came a deadened roar; a geyser of water and gravel rose in mid-river, hurling rocks, planks from the landing, and splintered rowboats in every direction.
Great limbs from the willow trees hurtled earthward, a muddy maelstrom of foam whirled their punt, caught it on a comb of seething water, flung it from wave to wave.
Warner, beaten from his balance, had fallen to his knees. As the plunging punt swept downstream, he continued to use his pole mechanically. Around them debris still rained into the discolored river, branches, fragments of sod; the surface of the water was covered with floating boards, sticks, green leaves, uprooted reeds and rushes; a mangled and bloody swan floated near, its snowy neck and head under water.
Philippa crouched on the bottom of the punt, deadly pale, her hands over her ears, her grey eyes riveted on Warner.
When his voice was under control, he said:
"Are you all right, dear?"
She read his lips, nodded, tried to smile, fell to trembling with both hands still convulsively crushed over her ears.
Current and pole had already swept the punt out past the banlieu, past the suburban cottages, past the farms and the cattle and the clotheslines where the wash hung drying.
Behind them lay the town, amid a hell of exploding shells; the hills and woods reëchoed the infernal crash; and, high overhead, above the dreadful diapason of the guns, rose the crazy treble hooting of incoming projectiles, dominating the awful roar on earth with a yelling bedlam in the sky.
Again and again he looked aloft, fearfully attempting to trace and trail and forestall some whistling screech growing louder and louder and nearer and nearer, until the shattering crash of the explosion in the town behind them relaxed the nerve-breaking tension.