Page:Air Service Boys over the Rhine.djvu/188

178 As it happened, Tom and Jack, with Boughton, who had kept pace with them, witnessed the firing of the big gun. As it was discharged, ten other heavy guns, but, of course, of much less range, were fired off, being discharged as one to cover the report of the giant mortar. And at the same time dense clouds of smoke were sent up from surrounding hills, in an endeavor to screen the big gun from aeroplane observation. But it was too late.

In another moment, and even as the echoes of the reports of the ten cannons and the big gun were rumbling, the bombing machine of the French came up and began to drop explosives on the spot. At the same time word of the location of the great cannon was wirelessed back to the camp, and there began a devastating fire on the guns that had been, and were even then, bombarding Paris.