Under me I felt the basket heave gently.

Looking up I saw that the balloon was no longer a crooked sausage.

She had become a big, soft, yellow summer squash, with an attenuated neck.

The flaccid abdomen flinched in and puffed out, and the snout wabbled to and fro.
The lieutenant began telling me things in badly broken but painstaking English--such things, for example, as that the baglike protuberance just above our heads, at the bottom end of the envelope, contained air, which, being heavier than gas, served as a balance to hold her head up in the wind and keep her from folding in on herself; also, that it was his duty to remain aloft, at the end of his tether, as long as he could, meantime studying the effect of the German shell-fire on the enemy's position and telephoning down instructions for the better aiming of the guns--a job wherein the aeroplane scouts ably reenforced him, since they could range at will, whereas his position was comparatively fixed and stationary.
Also I remember his saying, with a tinge of polite regret in his tone, that he was sorry I had not put on a uniform overcoat with shoulder straps on it, before boarding the car; because, as he took pains to explain, in the event of our cable parting and of our drifting over the Allies' lines and then descending, he might possibly escape, but I should most likely be shot on the spot as a spy before I had a chance to explain.

"However," he added consolingly, "those are possibilities most remote.