Grace Harlowe with the American Army on the Rhine

“I am quite content to have you tell me about it,” laughed Grace.

The major grinned, then tested the telephone, adjusted the aneroid barometer, took a final glance around, and nodded to the flight sergeant. The latter blew two short whistles, and as if for good measure bellowed “Let go!”

“Better come along,” called down Grace to Elfreda who with one hand shading her eyes was gazing up at them, her face a little pale.

Miss Briggs shook her head.

“One balloonatic in the family is enough,” she cried, then something seemed to be drawing the earth away from Grace Harlowe, and she suddenly realized that they were going up.

CHAPTER XI

ROUGH GOING IN CLOUDLAND

“WE’RE off,” the major informed her, but his reminder was unnecessary. Already J. Elfreda Briggs had shrunk to almost childish proportions and the big army truck looked like a toy express wagon. Had it been painted red the illusion would have been nearly perfect.

“My, it’s windy up here!” shouted Grace.

“We will be out of it soon, I think,” answered the major.

The wind was roaring through the rigging and the basket was swaying most alarmingly. It seemed to Grace as if they were in imminent danger of being spilled out. She clung tightly to the edge of the basket, and looked down into it rather than toward the earth. What was even more disturbing was the way that wicker floor settled and heaved underneath her feet. What if the bottom should drop out? What if the sides should give way? “Captain” Grace leaned back a little so as not to bear too much weight on the side she was clinging to.

Major Colt’s back was turned toward her and his binoculars were at his eyes. Those confident shoulders gave Grace renewed assurance that there was nothing unusual about their situation. Just the same she rather envied J. Elfreda Briggs, probably at that moment lounging back comfortably on the rear seat of the major’s automobile and making uncomplimentary remarks about “that crazy Grace Harlowe.” “Captain” Grace was not over-certain that Elfreda was wrong.

Going up in a captive balloon is very different from a trip in an airplane. There is no comparison possible so far as sensations are concerned. Flying in a plane is exhilarating, but the lurches and sways of the basket of a balloon, have a far different effect.

They had been going up for hours, as it seemed to her, when the major turned toward her.

“Make you dizzy?” he shouted.

Grace smiled and nodded. She wondered how pale her face was, or as much of it as showed outside of the helmet.

“Enjoying it?”

“It is a wonderful experience,” answered Grace, forcing a smile to her face.

“Stop at two thousand,” called the officer through his telephone. “Now you see one of the difficulties of going eastward. The strong light is in our faces and we cannot see clearly. After the sun passes the meridian, visibility will be vastly improved. You will enjoy the view then.”

Grace Harlowe fervently hoped she might.

“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.

“How do you like it now?” called the officer in a jovial voice.

Grace saw his lips move and knew he was speaking to her, though she could not hear a word he said.

“I can’t hear you, sir.”

“I thought so. Pinch your nose and swallow hard several times,” he shouted, himself performing the same operation on his own nose.

Grace followed his direction, faintly heard, and something snapped in both ears. For the moment she thought she had ruptured her eardrums, but to her amazement discovered that she could hear as well as ever.

“I think I am perfectly all right now, sir,” she said. “How queer!”

“Decreased pressure,” answered Major Colt briefly. “We will make our weather report now if you will be good enough to remove the thermometer from the pocket behind you and throw it overboard.”

“Throw it overboard? Do you mean it, sir?”

He nodded.

Grace thrust her hand into the pocket and, finding the instrument, dropped it over the side. To her surprise it stopped with a jolt when just below the level of the basket. It was attached to a slender wire. “Please haul it in in five minutes,” the major ordered. Then he gave through the telephone the wind velocity, which Grace was amazed to learn was thirty-eight miles an hour; then the barometer reading, and then he called for the temperature.

“Twenty-eight, sir.”

“Twenty-eight,” repeated the major through the telephone. “That duty done we will now proceed to enjoy ourselves. Hungry?”

“I – I hadn’t thought about it. Now that you mention the subject I do realize that there is a sort of gone feeling in my stomach.”

“We’ll have a bit of a bite. While I am getting it ready you see if you can find the American Army.”

Grace studied the landscape ahead of them for a long time, and said she couldn’t see anything that looked like an army. He demanded to know where she was looking.

“About where those little green hills are. I do not recall having seen those from the ground,” she said, lowering her glasses.

The major chuckled.

“Know where you are looking for the American Army? You’re hunting for it on the other side of the Rhine. Look down at an angle of about forty-five degrees. See anything?”

“I think I do, but what I see doesn’t look like any army that I ever saw.”

“You’re looking at the Third American Army, just the same. Now find the Boche army a little further out, but not too far.”