Explore "Inside the Lines" by Earl Derr Biggers on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Many a long starlit hour alone on the deck of the _Castle Claire_ Captain Woodhouse found himself tortured by a persistent vision. Far back over the northern horizon lay Europe, trembling and breathless before the imminent disaster -- a great field of grain, each stalk bearing for its head the helmeted head of a man. Out of the east came a glow, which spread from boundary to boundary, waxed stronger in the wind of hate. Finally the fire, devastating, insensate, began its sweep through the close-standing mazes of the grain. Somewhere in this fire-glow and swift leveling under the scythe of the flame was a girl, alone, appalled. Woodhouse could see her as plainly as though a cinema was unreeling swift pictures before him -- the girl caught in this vast acreage of fire, in the standing grain, with destruction drawing nearer in incredible strides. He saw her wide eyes, her streaming hair -- saw her running through the grain, whose heads were the helmeted heads of men.
Her hands groped blindly and she was calling -- calling, with none to come in aid. Jane Gerson alone in the face of Europe's burning!