feel it below! They know. The wind has
changed. Off came their respirators. No gas this morning, eh? Yes, by God,
there will be gas enough for all----!"

He caught up a bomb, leaned over the parapet, held it aloft, poised,
aiming steadily for one second of concentrated cooerdination of mind and
muscle. Then straight down he launched it. The cylinder beneath him was
shattered and a green geyser of gas burst from it deluging the trench.

Already a second bomb followed the first, then another, and then a third;
and with the last report another cylinder in the trench below burst into
thick green billows of death and flowed over the ground, _west_.

Two more bombs whirled down, bursting on a machine gun; then the airman
turned with a cry of triumph, and at the same instant the sun rose above
the hills and flung a golden ray straight across his face.

To Maryette the man stood transfigured, like the Blazing Guardian of the
Flaming Sword.

"Ring out your Brabanconne!" he cried. "Let the Huns hear the war song of
the land they've trampled! Now! Little bell-mistress, arm your white hands
with your wooden gloves and make this old carillon speak in brass and
iron!"

He caught her by the arm; they ran down the short flight of steps; she
drew on her wooden gloves and sprang to the keyboard.

"I'll hold the stairs!" he cried. "I can hold these stairs for an hour
against the whole world in arms. Now, then! The Brabanconne!"

Above the roaring confusion and the explosions far below, from high up in
the sky a clear bell note floated as though out of Heaven itself--another,
others, crystalline clear, imperious, filling all the sky with their
amazing and terrible beauty.

The mistress of the bells struck the keyboard with armoured
hands--beautiful, slender, avenging hands; the bells above her crashed out
into the battle-song of Flanders, filling sky and earth with its splendid
defiance of the Hun.

The airman, bomb in hand, stood at the head of the stone stairs; the
ancient tower rocked with the fiercely magnificent anthem of revolt--the
war cry of a devastated land--the land that died to save the world--the
martyr, Belgium, still prone in the deathly trance awaiting her certain
resurrection.

The rising sun struck the tower where three score ancient bells poured
from metal throats their heavenly summons to battle!

The Hun heard it, tumbling, clawing, strangling below in the hellish
vapours of his own death-fog; and now, f