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 number up with him, and it was I who chanced to be nearest to the balloon when he extended the invitation.

Some one--a friend--removed from between my teeth the unlighted cigar I held there, for fear I might forget and try to light it; and somebody else--a stranger to me-- suggested that perhaps I was too heavy for a passenger.
By that time, however, a kindly corporal had boosted me up over the rim of the basket and helped me to squeeze through the thick netting of guy lines; and there I was, standing inside that overgrown clotheshamper, which came up breast high on me--and Brinkner und Meiningen was swinging himself nimbly in beside me.

That basket was meant to hold but one man.
It made a wondrously snug fit for two; the both of us being full-sized adults at that.

We stood back to back; and to address the other each must needs speak over his shoulder.

The canvas saddle was between us, dangling against the calves of our legs; and the telephone was in front of the lieutenant, where he could reach the transmitter with his lips by stooping a little.
The soldiers began unhooking the sandbags; the sergeant who guarded the telephone wire took up a strand of it and held it loosely in his hands, ready to pay it out.