round it,
and leapt back again, all in one movement. At the same instant a man in a
concertina-like black suit, who had emerged from a side alley, ran towards
Winston, pointing excitedly to the sky.
'Steamer!' he yelled. 'Look out, guv'nor! Bang over'ead! Lay down
quick!'
'Steamer' was a nickname which, for some reason, the proles applied to
rocket bombs. Winston promptly flung himself on his face. The proles were
nearly always right when they gave you a warning of this kind. They seemed
to possess some kind of instinct which told them several seconds in advance
when a rocket was coming, although the rockets supposedly travelled faster
than sound. Winston clasped his forearms above his head. There was a roar
that seemed to make the pavement heave; a shower of light objects pattered
on to his back. When he stood up he found that he was covered with
fragments of glass from the nearest window.
He walked on. The bomb had demolished a group of houses 200 metres up
the street. A black plume of smoke hung in the sky, and below it a cloud of
plaster dust in which a crowd was already forming around the ruins. There
was a little pile of plaster lying on the pavement ahead of him, and in the
middle of it he could see a bright red streak. When he g