A long minute passes slowly, then a wide fan-shaped flash of red light appears beyond the town, whose roofs are for a moment silhouetted black against its glare. It dies slowly, and another leaps up near it. Some one begins to count-- "One, two, three ..." Then rises up with an awful splendour and a strange deliberation a tall, coiling column of fire, which, like a swiftly-growing tree, opens and expands until it is nearly five hundred feet high--a huge fountain of flame. Some oil dump has been struck. It is an amazing sight. Every face, with open mouth and wondering eye, is lit for a moment in its red light, and then it slowly fades and dies away, leaving a steady glow behind the dark houses to show that a great conflagration is now in progress. "Nine ... ten ... eleven ... twelve!" ends the count. Then crash after crash of ear-splitting noise sounds on our ears as the noise of the twelve bursting bombs comes to our ears. The anti-aircraft guns bark and crash stupidly round us, and among the stars appear the quick and random spurts of the bursting shells. Aimless searchlights, pale and puerile, move irregularly over the sky. Still there is no sound above us. "Keep throttled, Finkelbaum! Jolly good shooting. You push off to dinner at Ghistelles; you've done your bit to-night," comments the wit. Bavoom--_bavoom_--suddenly sounds the engine right above us, as the machine opens out its engines as it escapes southwards from the Dunkerque defences. Some of us stroll over towards the edge of the canal. Of course there is no danger--he has dropped all his bombs--yet there may be a "hang-up," and the back gunlayer may only just now be finding it out. Crack, crack--crack, crack, crack, clamours the machine-gun over by our mess. Up rush the red sparks of the tracer-bullets. "There he is--there--_there_--to the left of those two searchlights. Open fire!" calls the C.O. With a flash and a roar the little three-inch gun speaks out, and the clatter of the falling shell-case can be heard above the scream of the whining projectile. More machine-guns start their staccato tumult. Tracer-bullets rush upward from a dozen places. The gun roars again. The aerodrome is now thoroughly enjoying itself. Pale in the moonlight a little bird-like shape on the dim blue tapestry of the night sky, I can see the German machine moving swiftly eastwards to the lines. The guns and machine-guns in a radius of five miles fire frantically and erratically towards it, and in the midst of this discord is heard a fast whistle which quickly develops into a scream. I slide down the side of the canal in a cloud of pebbles and dust. The sound of a very near explosion crashes on to my ear. I crawl up the canal and see a cloud of black smoke not many yards away in the ploughed field beyond the canal. The "hang-up" has been dropped. "Finkelbaum" has had his subtle revenge.