CHAPTER XXVI.

TWO YOUNG HEROES.

The corridor was deserted, but a few lights burned dimly. No damage appeared to have been done there, and it was clear that the bomb had wrought havoc only on the top floor, which was the one occupied by the boys and those they had rescued.

"I wonder if the elevator is running?" asked Bill.

The lift was at the upper end of the passage and they carried the woman to it, but there was no response to their rings. Outside they could hear fire apparatus clanging wildly up and the confused roaring murmur of an immense crowd.

In the distance, the guns of the forts boomed, filling the air with their sonorous thunder as they fired at the daring night raider of the enemy. With this sound was mingled the sharper crackle of light artillery and specially built "sky guns." But as they learned afterward, the perpetrator of destruction on the sleeping city escaped scot-free, to make subsequent attacks.

The elevator apparently not running, they had to face the task of carrying the unconscious woman down to the lobby and securing medical aid. Luckily for their tired muscles, Antwerp hotels are not like our skyscrapers, and it was not long before they reached the ground.

The scene was a wild one. Hysterical women and white-faced, frightened men, in every stage of dress or undress, were huddled in the centre of the place while the hotel clerks and servants were doing their best to pacify them. In the confusion, the boys attracted hardly any attention, and they laid the woman down on a lounge while they summoned a doctor, of whom several were already busy attending to women who had swooned or become hysterical.

The fear of the crowd was that another bomb might follow the first. Already word had spread that a hospital had been struck and a dwelling house wrecked, two women and a man being killed outright in their sleep in the latter.

"What an outrage!" exclaimed Bill, looking about him at the wild scene while a doctor administered restoratives to the woman they had saved. "To attack women and children and harmless citizens from the sky."

"I hope they get that old wind bag and blow it to bits," wished Jack, with not less warmth.

"Well, this is our first taste of war, Jack, and I can't say I like it."

"Nor I. It would do some of those jingoes in our own country, who were yelling for war with Mexico, a lot of good to see this," returned the young wireless man.

"Let's go outside and see what's going on," suggested Bill. "I guess our charge is all right, now she's beginning to recover."

If the scene in the hotel had been wild, like a nightmare more than a reality, that outside was pandemonium itself. Imagine a crowd of wild-eyed men and women, few of them wholly dressed, surging behind lines of policemen and the entire street lighted by the ghastly glare of flames upon which the engines were playing furious streams.

"If that bomb-thrower sailed over here now he could wipe out half of Antwerp, I should think," said Jack, as they elbowed their way through the throng. Oddly enough, although the lads had only been able to throw on a few garments hastily, they did not, till that moment, recollect that their new outfits had been destroyed. It was Bill who called attention to this.

"We ought to make the fortunes of a tailor," he commented. "We'll have to get a lot of new stuff to-morrow,--or rather to-day, for it's after three o'clock."

"If this keeps up we'll be reduced to Adam and Eve garments before we get through," laughed Jack.

Far in the distance, on the outskirts of the city and on the chain of forts, the white fingers of the searchlights were sweeping the sky questioningly, looking for the sky-destroyer to deal out death to him in his turn. The guns boomed and cracked incessantly, sending a rain of missiles upward.

But flying high, and favored by a misty sky, the Zeppelin escaped without injury, leaving a panic-stricken city in its wake. There was no more sleep for any one in Antwerp that night. Vigilance against spies increased ten-fold, and it was bruited about that the real object of the aviators had been to blow up the royal palace, and by destroying the king and queen to terrify the Belgians into submission.

Naturally, sleep was out of the question for the boys. They spent the rest of the night wandering about the city and visiting the ruins of the house that had been struck just before the hotel. Its entire front was torn out by the force of the explosion, and just as they arrived, three bodies had been found in the ruins.

The sight of the shrouded, still forms brought home to them with still greater force the horror of it all.

"Tell you what, Bill," said Jack, as they returned to the hotel to breakfast, and found that the fire had been extinguished and the panic quieted down, "war is a pretty thing on paper, and uniforms, and bands, and fluttering flags, and all that to make a fellow feel martial and war-like, but it's little realities like these that make you feel the world would be a heap better off without soldiers or sailors whose places could be taken by a few wise diplomats in black tail coats. It wouldn't be so pretty but it would be a lot more like horse sense."

"Gracious, you're developing into a regular orator," laughed Bill.

"Well, the sight of these poor dead folks and all this useless wreckage got under my skin," said Jack, flushing a little, for he was not a boy much given to "chin music," as Bill called oratorical flights.

During the morning they secured new clothes for the second time since landing in the city, and then paid their appointed call on M. La Farge.

"I have good news for you, boys," he said as they came into his office. "Your man was last heard from at Louvain. I suspect he is rather given to adventure, for I understand that he has been quite active in aiding our people. It's strange that his people have not heard from him, though."

"Perhaps they have by this time," said Jack; "but if he has been actively siding with the Belgians, isn't his neutrality in grave danger, with all its serious consequences?"

M. La Farge nodded thoughtfully.

"I have heard much of your wealthy young Americans," he said, "and while their hearts are warm and it is good of this young man to be doing what he can, my advice to you is to get him to return home as soon as possible--the Germans shoot first and listen to explanations afterward, as they say in your country."