It was a monoplane.

It had, I judged, just emerged from a cloudbank to the southward.

It was heading directly toward our field.
It was high up--so high up that I felt momentarily amazed that all those Germans could distinguish it as a French flyer rather than as an English flyer at that distance.
As I looked, and as all of us looked, the balloon basket hit the earth and was made fast; and in that same instant a cannon boomed somewhere well over to the right.

Even as someone who knew sang out to us that this was the balloon cannon in the German aviation field back of the town opening up, a tiny ball of smoke appeared against the sky, seemingly quite close to the darting flyer, and blossomed out with downy, dainty white petals, like a flower.
The monoplane veered, wheeled and began to drive in a wriggling, twisting course.

The balloon cannon spoke again.