“Look over. You will get used to it very quickly. Not so much wind at this level. I knew we should get better weather here. Guess I spoke too quickly,” he added as a sickening lurch heaved the basket, and for a few seconds the bottom seemed surely to be falling out of it.
“Stopped at two thousand,” came a voice from the depth somewhere below.
“Thought you were gone that time, didn’t you?” chuckled the officer. “That jolt was caused by the stopping of the winch at two thousand.”
“Two thousand what, sir?”
“Feet of altitude. We will loaf around here for a time until you grow weary of it, then we will go higher in search of some new scenery. When the light gets better I will show you the Rhine.”
For the next several minutes the officer was occupied with studying the landscape to the eastward.
“Enemy trains moving in formation. Nothing unusual,” he called down through the telephone. “Large body of men emerging from forest ten kilometers to the south of the main body. Go to thirty-five. May get a better view.”
Grace tightened her grip as the basket lurched. She knew now what the order meant. They were going fifteen hundred feet higher than they were. Her eardrums began to throb and her breath came in little short gasps.
“Stop at thirty-five.”
Again that disconcerting jolt and a violent swaying back and forth of the huge, ungainly bag over their heads.