Instantly there came a terrific boom. Jack and Amos felt the ground tremble under them with the concussion, and they did not need to be told it had been a most destructive bomb that had been dropped from the swiftly moving Zeppelin.
Instantly there came a terrific boom.—[Page 249.]
Almost immediately afterwards came a second shock, with the same quiver of the racked earth following the explosion. When even a third made the atmosphere seem to be surcharged with thunder Amos sank to his knees and pulled at the legs of his companion.
“Drop down, Jack,” he called, almost frantically. “How do we know but what the very next bomb will be close by? We don’t want to be torn into fragments if we can help it, do we?”
“It’s all over, I reckon, by now,” Jack assured him. “The Zeppelin seems to have passed well over us; and besides there’s a whole flock of Allied aeroplanes rising like birds to give chase. This wreck of a town has had another close call, I take it. Those bombs were terrible ones, and must have been meant for a purpose.”
“What do you think the Germans were after? I don’t suppose now they knew for a minute Jack Maxfield and Amos Turner had come to town?”
Of course Jack understood that his chum was only saying this in a spirit of sport.
“They’re after bigger game than two American boys this time, Amos,” he said.
“Then you think they meant to catch somebody high up in authority; is that it?” demanded the other.