Dust clouds succeeded the smoke; then the dust lifted slowly.
Those ants were not to be seen. They had altogether vanished. It was
as though an anteater had come forth invisibly and eaten them all up.

Marveling at this phenomenon and unable to convince myself that I had
seen men destroyed, and not insects, I turned my head south again to
watch the red ladybugs in the field. Lo! They were gone too! Either
they had reached shelter or a painful thing had befallen them.

The telephone spoke a brisk warning. I think it made a clicking sound.
I am sure it did not ring; but in any event it called attention to
itself. The other man clapped his ear to the receiver and took heed to
the word that came up the dangling wire, and snapped back an answer.

"I think we should return at once," he said to me over his shoulder.
"Are you sufficiently wearied?"

I was not sufficiently wearied--I wasn't wearied at all--but he was the
captain of the ship and I was not even paying for my passage.

The car jerked beneath our unsteady feet and heeled over, and I had the
sensation of being in an elevator that has started downward suddenly,
and at an angle to boot. The balloon resisted the pressure from below.
It curled up its tail like a fat bumblebee trying to sting itself, and
the guy ropes, to which I held with both hands, snapped in imitation of
the rigging of a sailboat in a fair breeze. Plainly the balloon wished
to remain where it was or go farther; but the pull of the cable was
steady and hard, and the world began to rise up to meet us. Nearing the
earth it struck me that we were making a remarkably speedy return. I
craned my neck to get a view of what was directly beneath.

The six-horse team was advancing toward us at a brisk canter and the
drum turned fast, taking up the slack of the tether; but, as though not
satisfied with this rate of progress, several soldiers were running back
and jumping up to haul in the rope. The sergeant who took care of the
telephone was hard put to it to coil down the twin wires. He skittered
about over the grass with the liveliness of a cricket.

Many soiled hands grasped the floor of our hamper and eased the jar of
its contact with the earth. Those same hands had redraped the rim with
sandbags, and had helped us to clamber out from between the stay ropes,
when up came the young captain who spelled the lieutenant as an aerial
spy. He came at a run. Between the two of them ensued a sharp