How the monster met her end was described by one who saw all that happened: ‘She was flying at a great height,’ he said, ‘but the anti-aircraft guns were putting in splendid work. Not once, nor twice, but many times the airship seemed to be hit, until the gondola must have been riddled through and through. She reeled. Then she shook herself like some great angry animal enraged at attack, but not disposed to turn and flee. Probably she couldn’t fly away, even at that time. Anyway, she made no attempt. The airship burst into flames in the centre first, then at the ends. She sank lower and lower, and at last, tumbling over with nose pointing downward, she fell to the earth with no bump or thud. The dull splash of an incendiary bomb and the cracking report of what was left of her ammunition were the only noises she made as her dying gasps. ‘When the crowd did talk of the awful thing that lay smouldering in the long damp grass they were emphatic in two directions. Men of our own Flying Corps, who know the perils of the air from experience, paid splendid tribute to the memory of the charred dead who lay doubled up in the attitudes of the final agony. “Whatever they meant to do, whatever they had done, they were brave men,” said one. From others of the spectators came what was, perhaps, not unnatural—satisfaction undisguised.’ People who saw the airship in full flight agreed that she was flying very high—much higher indeed than the airship which previously visited London. From the earth she looked like a small illuminated cigar set thousands of feet above the countryside. Directly she was sighted in the northern districts of London several large searchlights held her while the guns got to work. There was an incessant gunfire for a few minutes, and then there was silence. The airship had fled north. But in the course of the next few moments the lights picked her up again. Then was seen the mysterious signalling light of our heroic airmen. The village of Cuffley, made famous by the fall of the airship, is a little village of tiled cottages resting in the curve of a white road which defines the crest of a splendid sweeping hill crowned with poplars and tall pines. The contour of the village is that of a wide, clearly determined triangle, with the church and the inn marking the base and the cottage of Castle Farm placed at the apex. ‘The shadow of the little grey church falls athwart the yard of the inn, by name The Plough; but Castle Farm is divided from it by two smooth, rich meadows.’ A footpath crosses these meadows, uniting the farm and the inn.