front. Now the wires were neatly coiled on the ground beside the
basket. A sergeant stood over them to prevent any careless foot from
stepping on the precious strands. He guarded them as jealously as a hen
guards her brood.

The magazine containing retorts of specially prepared gas, for
recharging the envelope when evaporation and leakage had reduced the
volume below the lifting and floating point, was nowhere in sight. It
must have been somewhere near by, but we saw no signs of it. Nor did
our guides for the day offer to show us its whereabouts. However,
knowing what I do of the German system of doing things, I will venture
the assertion that it was snugly hidden and stoutly protected.

These details I had time to take in, when there came across the field to
join us a tall young officer with a three weeks' growth of stubby black
beard on his face. A genial and captivating gentleman was Lieutenant
Brinkner und Meiningen, and I enjoyed my meeting with him; and often
since that day in my thoughts I have wished him well. However, I doubt
whether he will be living by the time these lines see publication.

It is an exciting life a balloon operator in the German Army lives, but
it is not, as a rule, a long one. Lieutenant Meiningen was successor to
a man who was burned to death in mid-air a week before; and on the day
before a French airman had dropped a bomb from the clouds that missed
this same balloon by a margin of less than a hundred yards--close
marksmanship, considering that the airman in question was seven or eight
thousand feet aloft, and moving at the rate of a mile or so a minute
when he made his cast.

It was the Lieutenant who said he had authority to take one of our