“Alone?” Gerry laughed. “Lay your eggs, old hawk! Lay your eggs; and two’s a crowd for that castle tonight! The only danger’s getting lost in the halls! But in case someone shows, lend us your pistol--we have one. Then lay your eggs--close but not on; and keep flying above ten minutes more!” The occupants of the Schloss von Fallenbosch all had been aroused many minutes earlier by the burst of the first bombs in the city. The detonations, followed immediately by the alarm and by the sound of the anti-aircraft guns replying, had sent the citizens of Mannheim scurrying to their cellars. The allied raiders never attacked intentionally the dwelling places of the city; their objectives were solely the chemical and munition works; but the German population--knowing how their own flyers bombed open cities indiscriminately--always expected similar assaults upon themselves. Moreover, they well knew the difficulties of identifying objectives from high in the air and the greater difficulty of confining attack to a limited area; then there were the machine-gun bullets from the aerial battle and the bits of shrapnel showering back upon the city. But the _schloss_ heretofore had been quite removed from attack; it was far enough from the city to be in small danger from the falling shells of the high angle guns. So Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallenbosch and his aids, his wife and his servants, when roused merely went to their windows and watched the sky curiously and without idea of personal danger. If they thought at all about the prisoner confined in the cell in the old wing of the _schloss_ it was to consider her quite securely held; she, too, was roused, undoubtedly, and listening to the sounds which told that pilots from the allied forces were fighting within a mile or two. But what could she hope from them? Ruth, indeed, was aroused. This night was the first since she had been taken, upon which the allies had attacked at Mannheim; but she had recognized the distinctive sounds--distant but tremendous--which told of a raid. Her window was open but for its bars, and its height in the wall, instead of interfering, facilitated inspection of the sky. It gave her view over only a limited quadrilateral, of course, but every few seconds something happened in that space--shells burst, or a searchlight swept across, or a rocket flared--more than enough to make her sure that a real attack was on. Once she had a glimpse of an airplane upon which a searchlight glared and about which shrapnel burst; that meant she had seen a French, or English, or an American machine! To her, who was about to die, the sight was enormously exciting. Not that it brought her shadow of hope for herself. For the first five days following her capture she had been kept shut up in her cell, seeing only the man who brought her food and refused any right of access to anyone else.