Volume 2 - ElectricCanadian.com

THE ROMANCE OF BANKING 299them that it was an enemy machine. They dressed hurriedlyand went out on the road to see the fun. The bursting ofbombs and shells could be heard in the neighbourhood, but theaeroplane appeared to have gone, so they went back to bed.A quarter of an hour later the noise came near once more, andagain they dressed and went out of doors to seek better shelter,only to find that an enemy machine was immediately overhead.They dived back into the doorway and had just shut itwhen there was a terrific explosion and they seemed to beenveloped in a huge red cloud of dense suffocating smoke.TheTemporarily blinded, they went out on the street again.cries of injured and frightened people rose all around them,and an investigation showed that every house on a streetfacing them, as well as the interior of their own, had beenwrecked. Pieces of shrapnel had entered the windows oftheir sitting-room, embedding themselves in the walls, and inanother room a piece had cut a clean hole through a marbleslab an inch and a half thick. Although the bomb hadapparently exploded in mid-air, its effect had been to destroyevery window and to wreck the interiors of all the houses inthe neighbourhood.These young men apparently led charmed lives. As atMargate their escape was marvellous, for in getting behind adoor they were doing a most dangerous thing. The militaryauthorities later warned the public against just such a course,because an exploding bomb usually blows in all the doors in theneighbourhood, and a person hiding behind one is almost certainto be killed. In this case the glass of the door was blownin and the edges of the woodwork peppered with shrapnel, butnone had gone directly through the door itself or they wouldhave been hit.Had they remained in their room, instead ofgoing out the second time, they would almost certainly havebeen killed.For the lover of excitement at any cost, the City of Mexico,after the fall of President Diaz, when various factions werefighting for control of the administration, provided ample