“The balloon is drifting south by southeast,—three miles an hour,” she said at last. “I’ll find it again. Then I’ll set your gun on the spot. Your job is to follow the drift and shoot the balloon down after a sixty second wait.”
“Okay.” The sergeant waited. There was an odd grin on his face.
The girl bent to her task. Then suddenly she straightened up. Her keen eyes had detected a movement in the shadow of the palm trees. A dozen paces away she saw a man, a black dwarf, with strangely bowed legs and a grotesquely dried up face. Her first impulse was to say: “You go away!” She did not say it, but returned to her task.
“Now,” she sighed once more, “I’ve got the steel ball’s location. I’ll set your gun.” This task she performed with speed and accuracy. The boys of the gun crew watched in some surprise. One whistled softly through his teeth.
“She knows about guns,” the other whispered. “What d’you know about that!”
“Now.” The girl straightened up to fix her eyes on the sergeant. “You take it.”
The sergeant took over. The girl held a watch on him. The sergeant was on the spot. A girl had offered him a challenge. As a gentleman he had accepted the challenge. His face tensed as the seconds—one, two, three, four, five—ticked away.
“Now,” came from the girl in a hoarse whisper.
The sergeant’s fingers moved like triggers. Instantly the gun boomed. They waited one, two, three, four, five seconds. Then came the dull roar of the exploding shell.
They waited again—one, two, three, four, five—up to the count of twenty. Fragments of the shell could be heard dropping. And then, at the edge of the cloud appeared a gray shadow that rapidly developed into a black ball.