Part 134

A terrific salvo cut him short. Somewhere he could hear a crashing avalanche of broken glass, prolonged into a tinkling cascade; then came a second's silence, then another splitting roar from the end of the street.

The waiter came in hurriedly, very pale.

"An aeroplane, Monsieur! They are firing at it from the boulevard----"

His words were obliterated in the rush and clatter of horses outside.

Dragoons were galloping up the stony rue d'Auros, squadron on squadron, and behind them rattled three high-angle guns harnessed to teams driven by dragoons.

"Attention there!" shouted an officer, reining in and halting a peloton of horsemen. "Fire at will from your saddles!"

Warner sprang to the window; the street and the market square was full of halted cavalry firing skyward. They had several high-angle guns there too; the ear-splitting detonations became continuous; and all the time the solid earth was shaking under terrible detonations from the fort's cupolas, where the big cannon were concealed.

From everywhere came the treble clink and tinkle of broken glass; people in the hotel were running to the windows and running away from them; the building itself seemed to sway slightly; dust hung in the air, greying everything.

Warner drew Philippa to him and said calmly, but close to her ear:

"The thing to do is to get out of this at the first opportunity. I had no idea that anything would happen as near----"

His voice was blotted out in a loud report, shouts, a woman screaming, the rumble and tumbling roar of bricks. Another shattering report almost deafened him; the air was filled with whizzing, whining noises; the entire front of a shop diagonally across the street caved in with a crystalline crash of glass, and the cornice above it lurched outward, swayed, crumpled, and descended in a pouring avalanche of bricks and mortar.

Somebody in the hotel lobby shouted:

"An aeroplane is directly over us. They are dropping bombs!"

"Go to the cellar!" cried another.

An officer of gendarmerie came in, followed by a trooper.

"Stay where you are!" he said. "It's safer."

Another explosion sounded, but farther away this time.

"Their Taube is steering toward the fort," continued the same quiet-voiced officer who had spoken. "Don't go out into the streets!"

The uproar in the square had become terrific; high-angle guns poured streams of fire into the sky; dragoons sitting their restless horses fired upward from their saddles; an engine escorted by brass-helmeted pompiers arrived and a stream of water was turned on the debris of the shop across the street, where already pale flames flickered and played over the dusty ruins.

"Somebody has been killed," whispered Philippa in Warner's ear.

He nodded, watching the Red Cross bearers as they hastened up with their stretchers, where the firemen were uncovering something from beneath the heap of smoking debris.

A staff officer, attended by a hussar lancer, and followed by two mounted gendarmes, rode into the street just as the dragoons, forming to whistle signal in column of fours, rode out of the street at a gallop.

There came another clatter of hoofs; an open carriage escorted by six gendarmes-a-cheval rolled through the rue d'Auros. In it was a white-haired gentleman wearing a top hat and a tri-colored sash.

"The mayor," nodded Warner, as carriage and escort passed rapidly in the direction of the Hotel de Ville.

The sky-guns had ceased firing, now; three of them were limbered up and dragged away toward the Boulevard d'Athos by dragoons. More Red Cross brassards appeared in the street, more stretchers. Two double-decked motor ambulances drew up; others, following, continued on toward the Place and the railroad station. Then three grey military automobiles full of officers came whizzing through the rue d'Auros with terrific blasts of warning; and sped on, succeeded by others filled with infantry soldiers, until a steady stream of motor cars of every description was rushing past the windows, omnibus motors, trucks, hotel busses, furniture vans, private cars, of every make and varying capacities, all loaded with red-capped fantassins and bristling with rifles.

Warner opened the window and leaned far out, one arm around Philippa.

Eastward, on the Plaza Sainte Cassilda, masses of lancer cavalry were defiling at a trot, dragoons, hussars, and chasseurs-a-cheval, and the rue d'Auros was filled with onrushing motor cars as far as he could see. Westward, parallel with the stream of automobiles, field artillery was crossing the Place d'Ausone, battery after battery, the drivers whipping and spurring in their saddles, the horses breaking from trot to gallop.

"Something unexpectedly serious is happening," said Warner, trying to make his voice audible in the din from the fort. "Look into those alleys and lanes and cross streets! Do you see the people hurrying out of their houses? I must have been crazy to bring you here!"