Its light-colored body hovered above the mountains in the pale-blue sky like a small silver-gray tube.
"Spread the report at once!" called the captain to the telephone operator; and bustle ensued on all sides.
"What shall we do?" asked a lieutenant. "There's no use in shooting at it; by the time it gets within range we should shoot our own men."
The air-ship came slowly nearer, and at last it was directly over the American line of outposts.
"They can see our whole position!" said Captain Lange, "they can see all our arrangements from up there."
Boom! came the sound of a shot from the right.
"That probably won't do much good."
A few hundred yards below the air-ship a little flame burst out. The smoke from a shrapnel hung in the air for a moment like a ball of cotton, and then that, too, disappeared. Boom! it went again.
"We shall never reach it with shrapnel," said the lieutenant, "there's no use trying to beat it except on its own ground."
"We have some newly constructed shrapnel," answered the captain, "the bullets of which are connected with spiral wires that tear the envelope of the balloon."