“A bomb!  Oh!  If we could only get one of the Zeps!”

A furious outburst of firing followed, lasting perhaps a minute, then ceased as if by magic.  They saw two searchlights converge and meet right overhead.

“It’s above us!” murmured Noel.

Pierson put his arm round her waist.  ‘She feels no fear!’ he thought.  The search-lights switched apart; and suddenly, from far away, came a confusion of weird sounds.

“What is it?  They’re cheering.  Oh!  Daddy, look!” There in the heavens, towards the east, hung a dull red thing, lengthening as they gazed.

“They’ve got it.  It’s on fire!  Hurrah!”

Through the dark firmament that fiery orange shape began canting downward; and the cheering swelled in a savage frenzy of sound.  And Pierson’s arm tightened on her waist.

“Thank God!” he muttered.

The bright oblong seemed to break and spread, tilted down below the level of the roofs; and suddenly the heavens flared, as if some huge jug of crimson light had been flung out on them.  Something turned over in Pierson’s heart; he flung up his hand to his eyes.

“The poor men in it!” he said.  “How terrible!”

Noel’s voice answered, hard and pitiless: 

“They needn’t have come.  They’re murderers!”

Yes, they were murderers—­but how terrible!  And he stood quivering, with his hands pressed to his face, till the cheering had died out into silence.

“Let’s pray, Nollie!” he whispered.  “O God, Who in Thy great mercy hath delivered us from peril, take into Thy keeping the souls of these our enemies, consumed by Thy wrath before our eyes; give us the power to pity them—­men like ourselves.”

But even while he prayed he could see Noel’s face flame-white in the darkness; and, as that glow in the sky faded out, he felt once more the thrill of triumph.

They went down to tell the maids, and for some time after sat up together, talking over what they had seen, eating biscuits and drinking milk, which they warmed on an etna.  It was nearly two o’clock before they went to bed.  Pierson fell asleep at once, and never turned till awakened at half-past six by his alarum.  He had Holy Communion to administer at eight, and he hurried to get early to his church and see that nothing untoward had happened to it.  There it stood in the sunlight; tall, grey, quiet, unharmed, with bell gently ringing.

3

And at that hour Cyril Morland, under the parapet of his trench, tightening his belt, was looking at his wrist-watch for the hundredth time, calculating exactly where he meant to put foot and hand for the going over:  ‘I absolutely mustn’t let those chaps get in front of me,’ he thought.  So many yards before the first line of trenches, so many yards to the second line, and there stop.  So his rehearsals had gone; it was the performance now!  Another minute before the terrific racket