restlessly
through the thunder from the forts waked with a wild start. My charge, a
Belgian boy of nineteen whose arms had been amputated, shivered and then
relapsed into stoical calm as the house ceased to shake. "Zeppelin," he
said, in a quiet voice. "They have dropped bombs."

It seemed that two must have fallen and burst close by, the noise had
been so ear-shattering. Up from the street below our windows came a
clamour of voices, shrill and sharp, which cut through the constant
whirr of the giant motor. Near the head of the bed was an open window,
and mechanically, rather than of my own free will, I leaned far out, as
some of the professional nurses were leaning from other windows.

"You might get a bomb on your head," said my soldier, in his tired
voice. But I did not draw back. I was surprised to find that I was not
afraid. It seemed just then ridiculous, puny, to care about one's self.
I was awe-struck rather than terrified, realizing with a solemnity I had
never known that the next minute might be the last on earth for all of
us in that dimly lit room of narrow beds.

The sky was faintly gray with coming dawn. I looked up, up into the pale
dome, seeking with my eyes the great bird of evil that had laid its eggs
of death. There it was, immensely high above the black, shadowy roofs
and steeples of the hill and plain; a sinister shape, like all the
German sausages in the world rolled into one; and hanging from it cars
full of men reduced to the size of beetles by that great height.

The thing was almost directly overhead as I looked up, and it seemed
that if it dropped a parting bomb as it sailed our poor little hospital
must be struck. Yet I continued to stare, fascinated. Life and death
were twin brother and sister, equally terrible and splendid.

"I wish I could have seen Eagle just once again," I heard myself
thinking, as one hears the ticking of a watch under a pillow. But I felt
a strange, throbbing eagerness to know quickly the great secret of what
comes next after this world, with its seeming muddle of injustice and
disappointment, its joys and broken aspirations. "Why! it was like this
with me when we had our accident in the _Golden Eagle_!" I thought. And
even as the remembrance flitted ghostlike through my brain, I saw
tearing through the sky, far above the big bulk of the Zeppelin, a
monoplane etched in black against the light of dawn.

I could hardly believe that it was really there. It must be a