He saw far to the south a sudden faint radiance and he knew that it was the last of the lightning. The little feathery clouds, which looked so friendly and pleasant against the blue of the sky, came back and the moaning on the western horizon toward which he was traveling was wholly that of the guns.
He heard a noise over his head, a mixture of a whistle and a scream, and he knew that a shell was passing high. He walked on, and heard another. But they could not be firing at him. He was still that mere mote in the infinite darkness, but, looking back for the bursting of the shells, he saw a blaze leap up near the point from which he had come.
A cold shiver seized him. The range was that of the château, and Julie was there. The French gunners could have no knowledge that their own people were prisoners in the building, and if one of those huge shells burst in it, ruin and destruction would follow. The conservatory had been a silent witness of what flying metal could do. He stopped, appalled. He had been wrong to leave without Julie, and yet he could have done nothing else. It was impossible to foresee a shelling of the château by the French themselves.
The screaming and whistling came again, but he did not see any explosion near the château. One could not tell much from such a swift and passing sound, but he concluded that it was a German shell replying. He had seen a German battery near the house and it would not remain quiet under bombardment.
He had no doubt that the French gunners, having got the range, would keep it. Somebody, perhaps an aeroplane or an officer with flags in a tree, was signaling. It was horrible, this murderous mechanism by which men fired at targets miles away, targets which they could not see, but which they hit nevertheless. Every pulse beating hard, John shook his fist at the invisible German guns and the invisible French guns alike.
Then he recovered himself with an angry shake and began to run again. He knew now that he must go forward and secure a French force for rescue. But no matter how much he urged himself on, a great power was pulling at him, and it was Julie Lannes, a prisoner of the Germans in the château. Often he stopped and looked back, always in the same direction. Twice more he saw shells burst in the neighborhood of the house, and then his heart would beat hard, but after brief hesitation he would always pursue his course once more toward the French army.