a thing which offered so fine and looming
a target.

Moreover, the balloon was most effectively guarded against attack at
close range. We became aware of that fact when we dismounted from the
automobile and were clambering up the steep bank alongside. Soldiers
materialized from everywhere, like dusty specters, but fell back,
saluting, when they saw that officers accompanied us. On advice we had
already thrown away our lighted cigars; but two noncommissioned officers
felt it to be their bounden duty to warn us against striking matches in
that neighborhood. You dare not take chances with a woven bag that is
packed with many hundred cubic feet of gas.

At the moment of our arrival the balloon was drawn down so near the
earth that its distorted bottommost extremity dipped and twisted slackly
within fifty or sixty feet of the grass.

The upper end, reaching much farther into the air, underwent convulsive
writhings and contortions as an intermittent breeze came over the
sheltering treetops and buffeted it in puffs. Almost beneath the
balloon six big draft horses stood, hitched in pairs to a stout wagon
frame on which a huge wooden drum was mounted.

Round this drum a wire cable was coiled, and a length of the cable
stretched like a snake across the field to where it ended in a swivel,
made fast to the bottom of the riding car. It was not, strictly
speaking, a riding car. It was a straight-up-and-down basket of tough,
light wicker, no larger and very little deeper than an ordinarily fair-
sized hamper for soiled linen. Indeed, that was what it reminded one
of--a clothesbasket.

Grouped about the team and the wagon were soldiers to the number of
perhaps a third of a company. Half a dozen of them stood about the
basket holding it steady--or trying to. Heavy sandbags hung pendent-
wise about the upper rim of the basket, looking very much like so many
canvased hams; but, even with these drags on it and in spite of the
grips of the men on the guy ropes of its rigging, it bumped and bounded
uneasily to the continual rocking of the gas bag above it. Every moment
or two it would lift itself a foot or so and tilt and jerk, and then
come back again with a thump that made it shiver.

Of furnishings the interior of the car contained nothing except a
telephone, fixed against one side of it; a pair of field glasses, swung
in a sort of harness; and a strip of tough canvas, looped across halfway
down in it. The operator, w