Page:Our Girls.pdf/69

 on such errands he always is), but only to destroy fortified places, and places for the making or storing of ammunition, it followed that he was hunting our women at work in the munition factories. Still one heard the singing of the girls below. It was impossible to think calmly. If at that instant, by touching a button I could have destroyed the whole body of the enemy nation that had sent out these assassins of the air and the darkness, I should certainly have done so.

At the next moment there was the boom of a gun, followed by the booming of another and another, until a hundred guns seemed to be firing at once. For some minutes the roar was deafening, and then, suddenly came dead silence. The searchlights remained, and they were keeping the flying thing in focus, but the sky seemed to be holding its breath. Then a sharp, blue, horizontal star stabbed the black clouds, and at the next moment, there was a red flash that flew across the sky like a desert sunset. The Zeppelin was