maginations, slipped off in half a dozen motor-cars to Beacon Hill, and
set to work with remarkable vigour to improvise a fort about the Doan
swivel gun that had been placed there. They found it still in the hands
of the disgusted gunners, who had been ordered to cease fire at the
capitulation, and it was easy to infect these men with their own spirit.
They declared their gun hadn't had half a chance, and were burning to
show what it could do. Directed by the newcomers, they made a trench
and bank about the mounting of the piece, and constructed flimsy
shelter-pits of corrugated iron.

They were actually loading the gun when they were observed by the
airship Preussen and the shell they succeeded in firing before the bombs
of the latter smashed them and their crude defences to fragments, burst
over the middle gas-chambers of the Bingen, and brought her to earth,
disabled, upon Staten Island. She was badly deflated, and dropped among
trees, over which her empty central gas-bags spread in canopies and
festoons. Nothing, however, had caught fire, and her men were speedily
at work upon her repair. They behaved with a confidence that verged upon
indiscretion. While most of them commenced patching the tears of the
membrane, half a dozen of them started off for the nearest road in
search of a gas main, and presently found themselves prisoners in
the hands of a hostile crowd. Close at hand was a number of villa
residences, whose occupants speedily developed from an unfriendly
curiosity to aggression. At that time the police control of the large
polyglot population of Staten Island had become very lax, and scarcely
a household but had its rifle or pistols and ammunition. These were
presently produced, and after two or three misses, one of the men at
work was hit in the foot. Thereupon the Germans left their sewing and
mending, took cover among the trees, and replied.

The crackling of shots speedily brought the Preussen and Kiel on the
scene, and with a few hand grenades they made short work of every
villa within a mile. A number of non-combatant American men, women, and
children were killed and the actual assailants driven off. For a time
the repairs went on in peace under the immediate protection of these
two airships. Then when they returned to their quarters, an intermittent
sniping and fighting round the stranded Bingen was resumed, and went
on all the afternoon, and merged at last in the general combat of the
evening....