There was no fear upon it, only a kind of uplifted spirituelle look. I
seem to remember that she said, "Do you think it will be this one,
Mummy?" but she stoutly denies having uttered any such words.
Presently, however, "this one" descended and found its mark. The din
was indescribable; conceive of forty-two bombs dropping in a limited
area in the space of four minutes, the glare of their bursting, the air
full of sulphurous fumes and an awful indescribable sense of evil,
imminent, devilish, against which we were absolutely helpless and
unarmed. As we stood there in absolute silence, holding on one to
another, we had no sort of knowledge or information that our very own
house was being destroyed. To you this may seem incredible, when you
reflect that the terrace, though wide, is joined to the house.
It was all so quick and so terrible, that we felt it must be the end of
the world, the total destruction of everything we had considered stable
in our earthly life. Presently, the voice of the man beside us spoke:
"I think it’s over now, and we’re safe." The air-ship, sailing low, so
that we saw it distinctly between the cone of the cedar tree and the
sky, disappeared rapidly and the noise of explosions ceased—only to be
replaced by the cries of excited people, and the moans of the hurt and
dying in the street. The darkness was profound, the power station
having been destroyed early in the attack.
We pulled ourselves together, and proceeded towards the house with a
view of entering. Part of the walls remained standing, but there was no
house. There in the middle of the beautiful hall you so much admired
the whole fabric seemed to have collapsed. Doors, windows, furniture,
pictures, piled in an inextricable heap. We saw right out into the
street in the further side, where already there were twinkling lights
and moving figures as the work of mercy and assistance began. But where
was Himself?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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