n that moment of revelation was that the left upper wing was
burning downward with a reddish, smoky flame. But this was not the most
wonderful thing about this apparition. The most wonderful thing was that
it and a German airship five hundred yards below were threaded as it
were on the lightning flash, which turned out of its path as if to take
them, and, that out from the corners and projecting points of its
huge wings everywhere, little branching thorn-trees of lightning were
streaming.

Like a picture Bert saw these things, a picture a little blurred by a
thin veil of wind-torn mist.

The crash of the thunder-clap followed the flash and seemed a part of
it, so that it is hard to say whether Bert was the rather deafened or
blinded in that instant.

And then darkness, utter darkness, and a heavy report and a thin small
sound of voices that went wailing downward into the abyss below.

2

There followed upon these things a long, deep swaying of the airship,
and then Bert began a struggle to get back to his cabin. He was drenched
and cold and terrified beyond measure, and now more than a little
air-sick. It seemed to him that the strength had gone out of his knees
and hands, and that his feet had become icily slippery over the metal
they trod upon. But that was because a thin film of ice had frozen upon
the gallery.

He never knew how long his ascent of the ladder back into the airship
took him, but in his dreams afterwards, when he recalled it, that
experience seemed to last for hours. Below, above, around him were
gulfs, monstrous gulfs of howling wind and eddies of dark, whirling
snowflakes, and he was protected from it all by a little metal grating
and a rail, a grating and rail that seemed madly infuriated with him,
passionately eager to wrench him off and throw him into the tumult of
space.

Once he had a fancy that a bullet tore by his ear, and that the clouds
and snowflakes were lit by a flash, but he never even turned his head to
see what new assailant whirled past them in the void. He wanted to get
into the passage! He wanted to get into the passage! He wanted to get
into the passage! Would the arm by which he was clinging hold out, or
would it give way and snap? A handful of hail smacked him in the face,
so that for a time he was breathless and nearly insensible. Hold tight,
Bert! He renewed his efforts.

He found himself, with an enormous sense of relief and warmth, in the
passage. The passage was b