[Illustration:  Victorious, But Dead Tired]

It was resolved that the first work of the balloon should be devoted to putting this German naval gun out of action.  In this section at this time the German balloons were thick in the air, and this gave them good control of the Ypres salient.  We dared not attempt the experiment there for a long time, but it was finally determined to launch this one, and it was brought up one evening, with its volunteers, inflated during the night, and launched in the morning.  Promptly at 10:00 o’clock, when it was ready for raising, the German planes hummed busily overhead.  Despite their activities, the balloon got well up and was doing good observation work on its way over to the naval nuisance; there it reached its objective, making the necessary notations and records.  Then—­Kr-kr-kr-p!  Kr-kr-kr-p!  And the shells commenced to scatter around it.  Then it was a case of getting the bag down, which was not so easy.  These observation balloons are operated from a large armored truck, to which they are fastened, and the truck runs along carrying the air-bag with it, attached with a long cable; it is handled just as a toy balloon would be carried by a boy,—­when the boy runs along, the balloon runs with him.  Attached to the bottom of the gas bag is a basket, usually holding four observers, with a parachute for each man, and while in the air they have to work as fast as possible, because their stay in the azure is as short as the energies of Fritz can make it.  If the wind is up and the sky cloudy, it is one chance in a dozen that they will escape before the planes get them, as the swing of the basket makes it difficult in the extreme for them to notice the danger until it is upon them.

On this morning the first indication that they had that their time was up was the swooping down of a cluster of birds of death on all sides.  The weather was foggy, a stiff wind blowing and the basket swinging from side to side.  This was the first time an attempt had been made to float a balloon in the Ypres salient, as the danger was too obvious to take the risk.  However, as I say, the chance was taken.  It so happened that our guns were taking a breathing spell, and we stood on the top of our gun pit eagerly watching the fall of the balloon and its escape.  The road along which the armored truck had run ran at one point quite close to the German lines, and the airplanes were now coming thicker every moment and bombing it from every quarter.  Telephone and telegraph wires running from trenches to headquarters and all parts of the lines intervened between the balloon and safety, and there was nothing for them but to cut the wires to let the bag get through.  Each minute the danger increased, but the men in the truck scrambled up the poles, nipped the wire with their nippers, and the balloon passed through.  This was done repeatedly before it reached its haven.  Bets were freely made by every man in my gun crew,