From nadir to
zenith the mystic light shivered and sheeted. Never had Lanigan beheld a
more vivid display of the phenomenon of the aurora borealis. He seemed to
be waiting for something. He sighed and shook his head.
"Peter, my heart jumped at first glimpse! 'Tis like the flash of the
Argonne big guns! Thank God, the thunder of 'em isn't following!"
"Yes, thank God!" murmured Demeter, his soul in his tones!
They stood there for a few minutes, shoulder to shoulder, the contact of
arm with arm serving for an exchange of thoughts between those veterans in
a silence that would have been profaned by words.
The phantasmagoria overhead was shifting infinitely and rapidly; there
were flashes that seemed to presage a thunderous roar of an explosion and
were more bodeful because the hush aloft in the heavenly spaces remained
unbroken; then the filaments and streamers of light made one mighty
oriflamme across the skies, an expanse of woven hues, wavering and lashing
as if a great wind were threshing across the main fabric and flinging its
attendant bannerets.
"It's in the air; it's in the nerves! It puts hell into a man, doesn't it,
Peter?"
"Yes!"
"It was in that telephone back there! It crackled and snapped! A lot of it
may be in those poor fools up in that hall--and they ain't knowing what
the matter is with 'em! You and I have been over in the Big Bow-wow, boy,
and we have had some good lessons in how to handle rattled nerves.
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