was still except for a peculiar vibration, a low humming note, like a
great bee booming over clover fields. It became louder and the
vibration quickened, and the note was like the deep stop of an organ.
Tremendously sustained was the voice of a great engine up in the
sky, invisible. Lights were searching for it now. Great rays, like
immense white arms, stretched across the sky, trying to catch that
flying thing. They crossed each other, flying backwards and forwards,
travelled softly and cautiously across the dark vault as though groping
through every inch of it for that invisible danger. The sound of guns
shocked into the silence, with dull reports. From somewhere in Paris
a flame shot up, revealing in a quick flash groups of shadow figures
at open windows and on flat roofs.

"Look!" said the man who had a view across the Boulevard St.
Germain.

The woman drew a deep breath.

"Yes, there is one of them! ... And another! ... How fast they travel!"

There was a black smudge in the sky, blacker than the darkness. It
moved at a great rate, and the loud vibrations followed it. For a
moment or two, touched by one of the long rays of light it was
revealed--a death-ship, white from stem to stern and crossing the sky
like a streak of lightning. It went into the darkness again and its
passage could only be seen now by some little flames which seemed
to fall from it. They went out like French matches, sputtering before
they died.

In all parts of Paris there were thousands of people watching the