Citation de Piling
incipit :
The aeroplane crawled across the sky, a silber beetle on an azure ceiling.
But now, something was happening. The steady drone of the engines had ceased. Men, miles below on the earth, looked up, half aware of a change in the pattern of things - and saw the silver creature falling from the sky, fluttering this way and that like a paper dart, faster, faster, faster, until suddenly it was no longer a pretty insect but a hurling, screaming, whining weight of metal aimed like a bullet at the earth.
It struck, with a noise like doom. The noise was followed by a silence, utter, profound, appalled, while you might count ten. Then the silence was shattered. Sirens wailed, men shouted and cried out, bells rang - and went on ringing, their noise spreading quickly round the earth, as the ripples circle out from a stone dropped into a pool.
And one of the last bells to ring was in the Pentecost farmhouse, a third of the way rounds the world, in the drowse of an English summer.
The aeroplane crawled across the sky, a silber beetle on an azure ceiling.
But now, something was happening. The steady drone of the engines had ceased. Men, miles below on the earth, looked up, half aware of a change in the pattern of things - and saw the silver creature falling from the sky, fluttering this way and that like a paper dart, faster, faster, faster, until suddenly it was no longer a pretty insect but a hurling, screaming, whining weight of metal aimed like a bullet at the earth.
It struck, with a noise like doom. The noise was followed by a silence, utter, profound, appalled, while you might count ten. Then the silence was shattered. Sirens wailed, men shouted and cried out, bells rang - and went on ringing, their noise spreading quickly round the earth, as the ripples circle out from a stone dropped into a pool.
And one of the last bells to ring was in the Pentecost farmhouse, a third of the way rounds the world, in the drowse of an English summer.