There are very few safe jobs in this army, but being a captive-balloon observer is one of the least safe of them all." I had noted that the young captain wore in the second buttonhole of his tunic the black-and-white-striped ribbon and the black-and-white Maltese Cross; and now when I looked about me I saw that at least every third man of the present company likewise bore such a decoration.

I knew the Iron Cross was given to a man only for gallant conduct in time of war at the peril of his life.
A desire to know a few details beset me.

Humplmayer, the scholarly art dealer, was at my side.

He had it too--the Iron Cross of the first class.
"You won that lately ?" I began, touching the ribbon.
"Yes," he said; "only the other day I received it." "And for what, might I ask ?" said I, pressing my advantage.
"Oh," he said, "I've been out quite a bit in the night air lately.

You know we Germans are desperately afraid of night air." Later I learned--though not from Humplmayer--that he had for a period of weeks done scout work in an automobile in hostile territory; which meant that he rode in the darkness over the strange roads of an alien country, exposed every minute to the chances of ambuscade and barbed-wire mantraps and the like.