Then suddenly you see a strange finger of light reaching into the sky.
Or you may liken it to a ladder of light climbing the sky. Or you may
liken it to a lance of light piercing the darkness. Or you may just
call it a good, old-fashioned search-light, which it is. It is
watching for Hun planes, and it plays all night long from north to
south, from east to west, restlessly, eagerly, quickly, like a "hound
of the heavens" guarding the earth. First it sweeps the horizon, and
then it suddenly shoots straight up into the zenith like another sun,
and it seems to flood the very skies. No German plane can cut through
that path of light without being seen, and one night I had the rare
privilege of seeing a plane caught by the search-light on its
ever-vigilant patrol. It was a thrilling sight. One minute later the
anti-aircraft guns were thundering away and the shrapnel was breaking
in tiny patches around this plane while the search-lights played on
both the plane and the shrapnel patches of smoke against the sky,
making a wonderful picture. Military writers say that the enemy planes
are more afraid of these search-lights than of the guns.
[Illustration: One night I had the privilege of seeing a plane caught
by the search-light.]
But perhaps the most thrilling sight of all is that dark night when one
sees for the first time the star-shells along the horizon. At first
you may see them ten miles away making luminous the earth. Then as you
drive nearer and nearer, that far-off heat-lightning effect disappears
and you can actually see the curve of the star-shells as they mount
toward the skies over No Man's Land and fall again as gracefully as a
fountain of water. Sometimes you will see them for miles along the
front, making night day and lighting up the fields and surrounding
hills as though for a great celebration.