detonation, a curious wailing whistle swept across the sky, and over
behind the roofs to the left there was another crash.

One after another they came, at intervals of half a minute, or screaming
on each other's heels as if racing to their goal. And then the crash
or, if farther away, muffled explosion as another roof toppled in or
cornice dropped off, as a house made of canvas drops to pieces in a
play.

The effect of those unearthly wails, suddenly singing in across country
in the dead of night from six--eight--ten miles away--Heaven knows
where--was, as the Germans intended it to be, tremendous. It is not
easy to describe nor to be imagined by those who had not lived in that
threatened city--the last Belgian stronghold--and felt that vast, unseen
power rolling nearer and nearer. And now, all at once, it was here,
materialized, demoniacal, a flying death, swooping across the dark into
your very room.

It was like one of those dreams in which you cannot stir from your
tracks, and meanwhile "Boom... Tzee-ee-ee-ee !"--is this one meant for
you?

Already there was a patter of feet in the dark, and people with white
bundles on their backs went stumbling by toward the river and the
bridge. Motors came honking down from the inner streets, and the quay,
which had begun to clear by this time, was again jammed. I threw on
some clothes, hurried to the street. A rank smell of kerosene hung in
the air; presently a petrol shell burst to the southward, lighting up
the sky for an instant like the flare from a blast-furnace, and a few
moments later there showed over the roofs the flames of the first fire.