Official-looking persons had signalled to him by means of flag
flapping and arm waving. On the whole a guttural variant of
English prevailed in the sentences that alighted upon the
balloon; chiefly he was told to "gome down or you will be shot."

"All very well," said Bert, "but 'ow?"

Then they shot a little wide of the car. Latterly he had been
shot at six or seven times, and once the bullet had gone by with
a sound so persuasively like the tearing of silk that he had
resigned himself to the prospect of a headlong fall. But either
they were aiming near him or they had missed, and as yet nothing
was torn but the air about him--and his anxious soul.

He was now enjoying a respite from these attentions, but he felt
it was at best an interlude, and he was doing what he could to
appreciate his position. Incidentally he was having some hot
coffee and pie in an untidy inadvertent manner, with an eye
fluttering nervously over the side of the car. At first he had
ascribed the growing interest in his career to his ill-conceived
attempt to land in the bright little upland town, but now he was
beginning to realise that the military rather than the civil arm
was concerned about him.

He was quite involuntarily playing that weird mysterious
part--the part of an International Spy. He was seeing secret
things. He had, in fact, crossed the designs of no less a power
than the German Empire, he had blundered into the hot focus of
Welt-Politik, he was drifting helplessly towards the great
Imperial secret, the immense aeronautic park that had been