He had been up seven hundred feet in the air that afternoon, with no place to go in case of accident, when the Frenchman came over and tried to hit him.

"It struck within a hundred meters of me," called back the young captain as he disappeared through the dining-room doorway.

"Made quite a noise and tore up the earth considerably." "He was lucky--the young Herr Captain," said Von Scheller--"luckier than his predecessor.

A fortnight ago one of the enemy's flyers struck one of our balloons with a bomb and the gas envelope exploded.

When the wreckage reached the earth there was nothing much left of the operator-- poor fellow!--except the melted buttons on his coat.