ce this hurtling death might spring upon them out of the night, that
unhinged their manhood. And while Walthamstow's walls went down and
great flame-tongues spouted where homes had stood, while the thick, hot
air was tortured with agonized and inhuman cries, the enemy up above let
loose another bolt.

[Sidenote: The second bomb as the town blazes.]

[Sidenote: Effects of the explosion.]

More terrible than the first explosion was, or seemed, this second one.
It mowed down half a hundred shrieking souls. And it was curious to note
the lateral action of the blast when it hit a resisting surface.
Dynamite explodes with a downward or upward force, lyddite and
nitro-glycerine and what not other devil's own powers act more or less
in the same set manner. But the furious ingredients of these bombs
hurled on Walthamstow contained stuff that released a discharge which
swept all things from it horizontally, in a quarter-mile, lightning
sweep, like a scythe of flame. A solid block of shabby villas was laid
out as flat as your palm by the explosion of this second bomb. Scarcely
a brick was left standing upright. What houses escaped demolition around
the edge of the convulsion had their doors and windows splintered into
rubbish. The concussion of this chemical frenzy was felt, like an
earthquake, in a ten-mile circle. Wherever the scorching breath of the
bombs breathed on stone or metal it left a sulphurous, yellow-white
veneer, acrid in odor and smooth to the touch. Whole street-lengths of
twisted iron railings were coated with this murderous white-wash.

[Sidenote: More bombs as the Zeppelin rises.]

[Sidenote: Freaks of the explosion.]

Having made sure of its mark, the ravaging Zeppelin rose higher on the
discharge of its first bomb and still higher after firing the second. At
the safe distance of four thousand feet it dropped three more shells
recklessly, haphazard. One of these bored cleanly through a slate-tiled
roof, through furniture and two floorings and burrowed ten feet into the
ground without exploding. This intact shell has since been carefully
analyzed by the experts of the Board of Explosions at the British War
Office. Another bomb detonated on the steel rails of the Walthamstow
tram-line and sent them curling skyward from their rivetted foundations
like serpentine wisps of paper. Great cobblestones were heaved through
shop windows and partitions and out into the flower-beds of rear
gardens; some of the cobbles