The artillery battle soon became general. The horizon was lit with flames. The air crashed about her ears. She was so deafened that she did not at first hear the noise of the troop of ambulances getting under way for the front.
They swept under her window, their shapes but dimly outlined, for they carried no lights. A lamp moving along the road—especially an automobile lamp—was an object easily spied from a directing taube or a captive balloon; and a shell was likely to drop upon the bright mark within a few moments.
Belinda put on her long blue cape, pulled up the hood, and went out. Minerva and the other lodgers remained in bed. They had suffered other bombardments.
The nurse needed nobody to tell her that those dark cars rolling off to the north, finding their way over the broken roads by the light of the illuminating bombs thrown up from the trenches, or by the flash of the shells, would begin soon to return laden with wounded. She must be "on the job," as Madame la Directrice was so fond of saying.
Suddenly the searchlights began to play more rapidly above the trenches. High up in the gloom they revealed certain drifting shapes against which the anti-aircraft guns were turned—a squadron of bombarding machines returning from a raid behind the German lines.
She watched these vague forms as the moving lights searched them out. Then the shrapnel began to burst about them.
They came on slowly, as though tired after their long journey into the enemy's country. She hoped they would soon be safely across the battleline.
Suddenly, like a new star in the murky firmament, a red flame appeared. Belinda watched it with terrified gaze, for she knew instinctively what it was.
In the midst of the squadron of bombarding aeroplanes this light had sprung up. It spread rapidly—and began to fall.
One had been set afire! This thought only for an instant preceded another in the girl's mind: Suppose Frank Sanderson was in that burning machine!