of English and American newspapers to my room in the Hotel St.
Antoine and I had spent the evening reading them, so that the bells
of the cathedral had already chimed one o'clock when I switched off
my light and opened the window. As I did so my attention was
attracted by a curious humming overhead, like a million
bumblebees. I leaned far out of the window, and as I did so an
indistinct mass, which gradually resolved itself into something
resembling a gigantic black cigar, became plainly apparent against
the purple-velvet sky. I am not good at estimating altitudes, but I
should say that when I first caught sight of it it was not more than a
thousand feet above my head--and my room was on the top floor of
the hotel, remember. As it drew nearer the noise, which had at first
reminded me of a swarm of angry bees, grew louder, until it
sounded like an automobile with the muffler open. Despite the
darkness there was no doubting what it was. It was a German
Zeppelin.

Even as I looked something resembling a falling star curved across
the sky. An instant later came a rending, shattering crash that shook
the hotel to its foundations, the walls of my room rocked and reeled,
about me, and for a breathless moment I thought that the building
was going to collapse. Perhaps thirty seconds later came another
splitting explosion, and another, and then another--ten in all--each,
thank Heaven, a little farther removed. It was all so sudden, so
utterly unexpected, that it must have been quite a minute before I
realized that the monstrous thing hovering in the darkness overhead
was one of the dirigibles of which we had read and talked so much,
and that it was actually raining death upon the sleeping city from the
sky. I suppose it was blind instinct that caused me to run to the door
and down the corridor with the idea of getting into the street, never