"Yes, my beautiful Boche, it's ten to one against you now!" muttered the Flight-Commander as he raced ahead, amid a spatter of rifle bullets from the soldiers guarding the bridge.
The engine-driver had seen the danger ahead now. He shut off steam, and put on his brakes, but the bridge was too near, and Dastral was already there.
"Whis-s-s-h! Boom-m-m! Crash!"
It was one of the new 112lb. bombs that Dastral dropped; the only one carried by the flight, who were chiefly armed with 20-pounders for the occasion. The aeroplane gave a lift and a lurch as the heavy missile left her, and had it not been for her great speed, the explosion that immediately followed would have caused her to crash.
Fairly hit in the centre of the track the brick and timber piles and beams collapsed, and the middle of the structure crumpled up and fell crashing into the roadway.
The troops, aware of what was happening when they saw the 'planes overhead, leapt from the doomed train, for no human effort could prevent the impending disaster now. When the bomb dropped and split the bridge, the train was but forty yards distant, and the sparks were flying from her brakes, as from a blacksmith's anvil, but it was of no avail. With a thunderous roar, followed by a mighty crash, and the wild hiss of escaping steam she went over the chasm. Carriage after carriage, crowded with the finest troops of Germany, followed the engine.
Wild cries of pain and anger, curses and groans filled the air, as wounded, scalded and half buried men dragged themselves from that awful scene of carnage and death.
"Gott in Himmel! Donner und blitz! Himmelman, Himmelman, wer ist Himmelman?" cried many an eye-witness of the terrible tragedy, as though the German air-fiend were some deity.
The other three 'planes were bombing the long stretch of carriages which had not leapt the chasm, and the hundreds of fugitives who were trying to escape from the half-telescoped vehicles, which had not gone over the precipice. But Dastral, banking swiftly on his machine, came round, and with another smoke bomb called them off to attack the other two trains.
Leaving the Bridge of Velu, they wheeled back swiftly, coming once more into the zone of fire from the anti-aircraft guns. Stopping only to drop a couple of bombs on the battery 'which had bespattered the wings of the second machine with shrapnel, they noticed the second train pulling up quickly, and the soldiers also leaping from the carriages.