But no.  This was against the precedent of Cain, who probably got Abel into a cul-de-sac, handed down to the keeping of the Roman aristocrat, the baron, the first Galland, and the fat, pompous little man.  It would deprive armies of an occupation.  It would make statesmanship too simple and naive to have the distinction of craft, which gave one man the right to lead another.  Both sides had to act in the old fashion of mutual suspicion and chicanery.

She was overwrought in the fervor of her principles; she was in an anguish of protest.  Her spirit, in arms against an overwhelming fact that was wrong, sinful, ridiculous, demanded some expression in action.  Now she was half running, both running away from horror and toward horror; in a shuttle of resolutions and emotions:  a being at war with war.  Passing the head of the procession, she soon had the castle road to herself, except for orderlies on motor-cycles and horseback, until a train of automobile wagons loaded with household goods roared by.  The full orchestra of war was playing right and left:  crashing, high-pitched gun-booms near at hand; low-pitched, reverberating gun-booms in the distance.  At the turn of the road in front of the castle she saw the gunners of the batteries that Feller had watched approaching making an emplacement for their guns in a field of carrots that had not yet been harvested.  The roots of golden yellow were mixed with the tossing spadefuls of earth.

A shadow like a great cloud in mad flight shot over the earth, and with the gunners she looked up to see a Gray dirigible.  Already it was turning homeward; already it had gained its object as a scout.  On the fragile platform of the gondola was a man, seemingly a human mite aiming a tiny toy gun.  His target was one of the Brown aeroplanes.

“They’re in danger of cutting their own envelope!  They can’t get the angle!  The plane is too high!” exclaimed the artillery commander.  Both he and his men forgot their work in watching the spectacle of aerial David against aerial Goliath.  “If our man lands with his little bomb, oh, my!” he grinned.  “That’s why he is so high.  He’s been waiting up there.”

“Pray God he will!” exclaimed one of the gunners.

“Look at him volplane—­motor at full speed, too!”

The pilot was young Etzel, who, as Lanstron had observed, would charge a church tower if he were bidden.  He was taking no risks in missing.  His ego had no cosmos except that huge, oblong gas-bag.  He drove for it as a hawk goes for its prey.  One life for a number of lives—­the sacrifice of a single aeroplane for a costly dirigible—­that was an exchange in favor of the Browns.  And Etzel had taken an oath in his heart—­not standing on a cafe table—­that he would never let any dirigible that he attacked escape.

“Into it!  Making sure!  Oh, splen—­O!” cried the artillery commander.

A ball of lightning shot forth sheets of flame.  Dirigible and plane were hidden in an ugly swirl of yellowish smoke, rolling out into a purple cloud that spread into prismatic mist over the descent of cavorting human bodies and broken machinery and twisted braces, flying pieces of tattered or burning cloth.  David has taken Goliath down with him in a death grip.