Fire in the sky

From ‘The burning of the Zeppelin’, The Spectator, 9 September 1916:

Half London formed the vast proscenium for this tragedy of the air, and saw on the aerial stage the triumph of right over might — saw with their natural eyes David smite Goliath and hurl him in flaming ruin to the ground. Never before in human history had men sat in such a theatre and seen such a curtain rung down from the starry heights above them. But what made this drama of the open Heaven memorable above all record was the cheer that greeted its close. Those who had the inexpressible good fortune to hear that soul-shaking sound heard something which for its quality and its volume no ear had ever heard before, and, it may be, will never hear again.