Page:Air Service Boys over the Rhine.djvu/86

76 some humor out of the grim situation. For one day, following the bombardment, a journal appeared with "scare" headlines, telling about eleven "lives" being lost. But when one read the account it was discovered that the lives were those of chickens.

And this actually happened. A shell fell on the outlying section and blew up a henhouse, killing nearly a dozen fowls and blowing a big hole in the ground.

There were other occasions, too, when the seemingly superhuman bombardment was not worth the proverbial candle. For the shells fell in sections where no damage was done, and where no lives paid the toll. Once a shell went through a house, passing close to an aged woman, but not hurting her, to explode harmlessly in a field near by.

And it was with such accounts as these that the Paris papers kept up the spirits of the inhabitants. Meanwhile the Germans kept firing away at quarter-hour intervals, when the gun was in action.

"I wonder if there is any chance of us getting in at the game?" questioned Jack of Tom one night.

"I shouldn't be surprised. As that officer said, they'll have to depend on the aircraft to locate the gun, I'm thinking."