And a wonderful thing to see, even in those wonderful nights, is our
thermite bursting over the heads of the Germans. The shell breaks into
a shower of golden rain; one cannot judge easily at night how high
from the ground it breaks, but about as high as the tops of trees seen
at a hundred yards. It spreads out evenly all round and rains down
slowly; it is a bad shower to be out in, and for a long time after it
has fallen, the sodden grass of winter, and the mud and old bones
beneath it, burn quietly in a circle. On such a night as this, and in
such showers, the flying pigs will go over, which take two men to
carry each of them; they go over and root right down to the German
dugout, where the German has come in out of the golden rain, and they
fling it all up in the air.
These are such nights as Scheherazade with all her versatility never
dreamed of; or if such nightmares came she certainly never told of
them, or her august master, the Sultan, light of the age, would have
had her at once beheaded; and his people would have deemed that he did
well. It has been reserved for a modern autocrat to dream such a
nightmare, driven to it perhaps by the tales of a white-whiskered
Scheherazade, the Lord of the Kiel Canal; and being an autocrat he has
made the nightmare a reality for the world.
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