[Sidenote: A bomb lands close by.]
[Sidenote: The sky blazes with shells.]
I wakened with the sense that I had heard a gun, and, with one
stockinged foot thrust out of bed, wondered sleepily whether it was the
first, second or third of the alerte, or whether indeed I had not
wakened from a dream of a gun. Probably it was the last gun of the
alerte, for the next sound was the thunderous roar of a bomb which
clearly had landed close by (it got a railway shed and a freight car on
the tracks behind me). The terrific noise and the shock to our building,
which rattled as if it were coming down, considerably accelerated my
movements. I snapped on the electric torch which always lay, together
with my cap and slippers, beside the bed, slipped a skirt over my
nightdress and my great-coat atop, and got into the cap and slippers in
record time. But by the time I had crossed the flagged passage and
wrestled with the lock of the "grande porte" there was no getting out of
the house. The canteen, directly across the street, lay in utter
darkness, lights out, doors locked. There was no hope of using it as a
short cut to the _abris_, or shelter, on the other side, while to try to
go around it was almost certain death. The sky was ablaze with breaking
shells from our seventy-fives; shrapnel was falling like hail in the
streets, while the steady "pup-pup" of machine-guns--both our own and
the bombing planes'--advised all who could to remain under shelter. The
noise of our guns and of the bombs was like a small inferno.
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