He has ripped the balloon at 2000 feet. Pious prayers and curses intermingle. Down she sinks, with a great hole rent in her side—down and down, faster and faster. Over go the bags of ballast, one after another. Now all have been dropped. She slackens speed; but only momentarily. Down she goes again, the upward current of air whistles unpleasantly through the rigging. In a last feverish effort boots are unlaced and hurled overboard, together with coats and every portable object to hand.
Too late. We hit the edge of a cliff; bounce back several feet into the air, then sink down on to the beach below. Another crash, again we are bundled and bounced about in the confined space of the car. The sand gets in our ears and eyes and mouths. The balloon lies along the sand a woebegotten shape, as flat as a pancake. When we eventually sort ourselves out, we find luckily, that there is but one casualty: a broken wrist, sustained by the foolish idiot that ripped! Just retribution!
And to end the adventure, a stolid British policeman, ponderous official-looking note-book in hand, approaches and demands our names and addresses, and asks if we are of British nationality!
[CHAPTER XIV]
THE BATTLE OF THE WOOD
Flanders,
Wednesday.
Somewhere in the north of France there is a little wood. It is about half a mile square in area, and stands immediately south of a fine, broad highroad, along which there daily pass large bodies of reinforcements, infantry and cavalry, and convoys bringing up ammunition and supplies. The tall trees offer a welcome shade in the hot weather, and it was the custom for passing troops to halt there for a short time; and just at the spot the roadside was always well littered with broken bottles. Needless to state, it was in German territory.
However, had it not been for that road, and for the fact that on this certain day, when the road had been closed to all traffic, there were certain mysterious movements of ponderous great wagons, suspiciously like ammunition wagons, which halted in the shade of the wood, this story would never have been written.