Grace Harlowe with the American Army on the Rhine

“Twenty-eight, sir.”

“Twenty-eight,” repeated the major through the telephone. “That duty done we will now proceed to enjoy ourselves. Hungry?”

“I – I hadn’t thought about it. Now that you mention the subject I do realize that there is a sort of gone feeling in my stomach.”

“We’ll have a bit of a bite. While I am getting it ready you see if you can find the American Army.”

Grace studied the landscape ahead of them for a long time, and said she couldn’t see anything that looked like an army. He demanded to know where she was looking.

“About where those little green hills are. I do not recall having seen those from the ground,” she said, lowering her glasses.

The major chuckled.

“Know where you are looking for the American Army? You’re hunting for it on the other side of the Rhine. Look down at an angle of about forty-five degrees. See anything?”

“I think I do, but what I see doesn’t look like any army that I ever saw.”

“You’re looking at the Third American Army, just the same. Now find the Boche army a little further out, but not too far.”

“I have them, sir.”

“What are they doing?”

“Creeping in formation.”

“Good! You are an observer already. Lean over and look down. Get used to it. Make you dizzy?”

“A little. I get dizzy when the basket tries to lie down on its side, and feel as if I were going to fall out.”

The major laughed and motioned to her to sit down.

“Going to have tiffin now. Don’t bother us with your family troubles down there, at least not until after the whistle blows,” he called through the telephone, and doubling his legs under him he sat down on the bottom of the basket, with an appetizing-looking luncheon spread out on a piece of paper in his lap.

They could hear the wind roaring over them now, but only breaths of it sucked down into the basket. A thermos bottle of tea that was still hot was handed to Grace, Major Colt producing another from “nowhere” for his own consumption.

“Drink it down. It will put new life into you. Dip into the food too. There’s plenty and to spare. Suppose you never sat down to tiffin thirty-five hundred feet in the air?”

Grace said she never had.

“Were you ever shot down while on observation work?” she asked him between mouthfuls.

“Yes, a few times.”

“What happened?”

“I came down.” He grinned.

“What else, sir?” persisted Grace, determined to get the story from him.

“Nothing except that a Boche flier took a mean advantage of me and sneaked up on me in an Allied plane that the enemy had captured. Then he calmly dropped a bomb on the old bag.”

“What did you do then, sir?”

“Deserted the ship and woke up in a hospital. You see I bumped my head against a stone wall in landing. My head from infancy has been soft and demands most delicate handling.”

Grace said she couldn’t imagine such a thing. To her the major was a heroic figure. He reminded her of Hippy Wingate. Like Hippy he made a joke of the desperate work he had done and was still doing. There were no heroics about those cloudland pirates.

“What did you do before the war, if it is not an impertinent question? You know a woman’s curiosity must be satisfied.”

“No impertinence about it at all. I had a good job, and maybe I shall have the luck to get it back again after the war is over. I was a floor-walker in a Newark, New Jersey, department store. I’ve been up in the world since then. Had my ups and downs as it were.”

Grace laughed. War played strange freaks with human beings. The officer’s confession, instead of decreasing her admiration of him, increased it. A man who could step from department store life into the perilous life of a wartime balloonist was a man! That was the way with her wonderful Americans. But to have to return to the chattering crowds of shoppers, directing this one to the ribbon counter, that one to the galvanized cooking utensil sale in the basement – the thought was too much for Grace Harlowe. She could not reconcile herself to it nor adjust herself to seeing this hardy pirate acting in any such rôle in the future.

“You do not think so, eh?” he demanded shrewdly. “Watch me. One day you will step up to me, without recognizing me, and say, ‘Floor-walker, will you please direct me to the cosmetics?’”

“I will not,” declared Grace Harlowe. “I never use them.”

Both laughed heartily.

“You may be right – I may be right, who knows?” he muttered. “I shall miss this wonderful life, of course, and it will be difficult to settle down and have to look up again rather than down on a world of pigmies. Had I to do it over again I should go into aviation. Those fellows are free as the birds of the air, while I am anchored to a tree or truck. I prefer to be free, to soar the heavens without having a string attached – What!”

The major sprang up, scattering the remainder of their tiffin on the floor of the basket. The basket had given a terrific lurch and, glancing up with a frightened expression on her face, Grace saw the huge bag heaving, swelling and plunging, the basket twisting, lurching and jolting under her.

The girl staggered to her feet and grasped the side of the basket. Her head was spinning and her diaphragm seemed to be seeking to emulate the erratic movements of the ship.

“Wind-storm!” shouted Major Colt. “Going to have some real sport.”

Grace did not know what his idea of sport was, but she was quite positive that if this were sport she was not a sportsman.

“Haul in, you idiots!” bellowed the officer through the telephone. “Can’t you see we’re trying to stand on our heads?”

“Waiting for orders, sir,” came back the answer. “Hauling down now till ordered to stop.”

“You’d better,” growled the major. “Hang on so you don’t get thrown out!” he called to Grace.

The Overton girl needed no advice in that direction. She was clinging to the basket’s edge with all her might. The balloon adopted new tactics. The instant the winch down there began to wind in, the balloon, as if resentful of this interference with its “sport,” began to buck and dive. At one time the wicker basket was actually lying on its side, and as Grace lay on her stomach against it she found herself gazing straight down three-and-a-half thousand feet.

“Captain” Grace closed her eyes to shut out the sight. It was just a little more than she could stand. A few seconds later she was on her feet again, for the balloon had righted. Now the bag began to whip the air.

“Let go!” she heard the balloonist call through the telephone. “Trying to crack the whip with us? Not ready to bump our heads on the ground just yet. Up five hundred more. Maybe we’ll find a better streak there. Anyway we’ll ride it out, wind or no wind.”

The balloon eased a little, and while it still bucked there was less kick, so to speak, in its movements.

The respite, however, was a brief one, and again those fearsome tactics were resumed.

Major Colt glanced at Grace during a brief lull. She nodded and forced a smile to her face.

“Are we in great danger?” she shouted.

“It might be worse,” was the comforting response. “We are good so long as the bag holds, but the wind is growing stronger and no telling what may turn up. Keep cool. I’ll get you out of it, wind or no wind.”

A blast that threatened to rend the bag struck them, and the balloon lay down on its side. It was up with a bound, then down again, until Grace Harlowe could not decide for a certainty whether she was standing on her head or on her feet. As a matter of fact she was practically doing both.

Then suddenly peace, delicious peace and quiet, settled over the troubled ship. It righted, the wind stopped blowing and the balloon floated gently on an even keel.

“Oh, isn’t this fine!” cried Grace happily.

“Rotten fine, thank you, as the Englishman would say. Know what’s happened?”

“No, sir, but whatever it is I feel greatly relieved to know that the wind has died down as suddenly as it broke loose.”

“My dear woman, something other than the wind has broken loose. The wind is blowing just as hard as before, but we do not feel it because we are going with it. We’re adrift!”

“Meaning?”

“That the balloon has snapped its cable and is now traveling toward the Rhine at a high rate of speed. From present indications I should say that you and I will arrive there considerably in advance of the Third American Army.” Trying to appear undisturbed, though he was more troubled than he cared to admit to his passenger, Major Colt possessed a pretty clear idea of what was before them.

CHAPTER XII

A LEAP FROM THE SKIES

GRACE HARLOWE regarded him calmly, rather to the surprise of the balloonist, for he had feared a different attitude.

“What are the probabilities, sir?” she asked.

“Oh, we are certain to get down, Mrs. Gray.”

“But – ” She smiled doubtfully.

“We are getting higher all the time, and I am in hopes that we shall run into a counter-current that will drive us back over our own lines. Once there we can come down with nothing more than a shaking up. We can do that anyway if we do not become mixed up with more currents.”

“But, sir, I do not see how getting back to our own lines is going to be of much assistance to us. Granting that we reach a current of air that will take us over our lines, haven’t we got to pass through the present level to get down, and will not that level blow us toward the Rhine again? We might keep on seesawing indefinitely, it appears to me.”

“You surely have a head on your shoulders, young woman,” answered the major laughingly. “This being the case I’ll tell you the truth. We are in a fix. The best we can do at the moment is to let the bag drift where it will, hoping for the best. Provided it doesn’t carry us too far away, the wind probably will at least moderate by sundown, then I shall liberate some gas and we will make a landing. To try it in this wind would mean that the ship surely would be torn to pieces and that quite probably we would share a similar fate.”

“How long can the balloon be depended upon to stay up?”

“Until sometime to-morrow morning. Of course if it takes a great altitude it is liable to burst, but I shall try not to let it get up that high.”

“It is a cheerful outlook, Major. I thank you for your frankness, just the same. It is considerable satisfaction to know just what the probabilities are.”

As she was speaking, the officer, with glasses to his eyes, was studying the terrain ahead of them. Grace applied her own glasses to her eyes and gazed off to the eastward. She could make out the narrow ribbon of water, a crooked ribbon it was, that marked the course of the Rhine. Beyond it were rugged, terraced hills which she knew were vineyards, here and there the towers of a castle relieving the monotony of the hills. She was interrupted by a shout from the pilot.

“Here we go back,” he cried. “In another level now. That’s good.”

It was not long before they had swept over the marching American army, now so far below them that it could be made out only with the binoculars. The major liberated a little gas, whereupon the big bag was caught in a blast and driven to the eastward again. This time he let the ship go. There was no other safe course to follow. As it swept through the air it gained in altitude again, but did not go so high as before. Soon the earth was blotted out by a sea of clouds, which only now and then broke sufficiently to give the aviators a view of what lay beneath the cloud-sea.

“We must go lower,” the pilot told her, opening the gas valve ever so little, whereupon the balloon slowly sank through the clouds and the earth grew into their vision.

Something pinged through the air close at hand. Grace Harlowe had heard that sound many times since she arrived on the western front, and so had the major. It was a bullet, probably a rifle bullet. She flashed a significant glance at her companion and he nodded.

Ping! Another bullet had flung itself up from the earth.

The major threw over some ballast, which in this instance proved to be one of his sailing instruments.

“Sorry, but I had to do it,” he explained in answer to her look of inquiry. “Of course I might throw myself out, but that would be too much ballast and you never would stop going heavenward until the outfit blew up.”

Grace laughed and the officer joined in the laugh. The balloon had quickly shot through the clouds and was sailing along, the basket just grazing the tops of them. It was a wonderful spectacle, which the Overton girl, despite her serious situation, found time to gaze upon, and marvel at the beauties of cloudland.

All at once the clouds broke up into huge banks of black and white vapor, and looking down the officer saw that they had been swept back some little distance to the westward. He reasoned that they were about over the spot where the shots had been fired, which proved to be the range of terraced hills on the eastern side of the river.

“I told you we would reach the Rhine before the army did,” he chuckled.

Ping!

A little chip of wicker was neatly snipped from one corner of the basket. Grace Harlowe regarded it questioningly, and grinned.

“I thought you said the war was ended, sir,” she said, glancing over at him.

“Huns!” he replied explosively. “What can one expect?”

“What I am concerned about principally, sir, is what would happen to us if the gas bag were hit by a rifle bullet. Would it be a serious matter for us?”

He nodded.

“We would be obliged to give up our joy ride and go home.”

Ping! Pock!

“Hit!” exclaimed the major, glancing up apprehensively at the bag.

“I heard it, sir. Are we losing altitude?”

“Not much, but we shall be soon. Yes, she’s settling a little now. Look up.”

Grace did so and observed a fold in the bag that had not been there before, showing that some gas had escaped.

“How long will it take to let us down?”

“About twenty minutes. We shall go down faster after a little. Look over your harness and make certain that the lines are not fouled,” he directed, taking his own advice. “Just in case of emergency,” he nodded.

“They seem to be all right, sir,” Grace informed him. “You do not think we shall have to use them, do you?”

Major Colt shook his head.

“Not at this rate of descent.”

Ping! Pock!

They had been hit again. Grace found herself admiring the shooting, for it really was excellent work, probably done with an automatic rifle in the hands of a former enemy sharpshooter.

The major cast an anxious glance up at the swaying bag, then down at that which was slowly assuming the appearance of Mother Earth. He was disturbed, not for himself but because of his passenger. Grace observed his distress.

“Don’t worry, Major. You know you said that nothing serious possibly could happen on this voyage, now that the war is over.”

“I take it back. The war isn’t over. It will be over mighty quickly, though, if I get my hands on the miserable Boche who is trying to shoot us down.”

“Trying to? He already has,” corrected the Overton girl.

There were now several folds in the big envelope, the sides of which seemed to be respirating like those of some huge animal, and they were falling altogether too rapidly to leave much hope for what was to come.

“We shall be down in a heap soon,” announced the officer calmly. “Mrs. Gray, are you in full possession of your nerve?”

“I think so. Why?”

“Because you’ve got to jump.”

“Oh!” “Captain” Grace could feel a cold sweat breaking out all over her. “Ho – ow – ho – ow high are we?”

“About a mile.”

She looked over the side into the abyss, and Grace Harlowe was convinced that were she to try that jump her heart would stop beating forever long before she reached the earth. Still, she showed none of her real feelings when she looked up at her companion.

“I am ready whenever you give the word, sir. You must tell me just what to do and when to do it. You know it will have been the first time that I ever fell out of the skies. I’ll be a real shooting star, won’t I?”

“You will do,” grinned the balloonist. “Get ready. We have no time to lose.”

“How about yourself, sir?”

“As soon as you are well started I will follow, and being heavier I probably shall catch up with you. Make certain that you are clear before you get out of the basket. Then climb out, hanging on to the edge of the basket, looking about you once more to be on the safe side. Understand?”

Grace nodded.

“Then what, sir?”

“Let go! Your part of the operation will not have been completed until you reach the ground. The instant you feel your feet touching earth, cut yourself clear. Here is a knife. Hang it about your neck. Hurry now. We are losing rapidly.” The pilot cast another anxious glance over the big bag, then down at the earth.

“Are you clear?”

“I think so, sir.”

“Climb out! Take it easy. I knew an absent-minded pilot who climbed out with great deliberateness and let go and was dashed to his death because he had forgotten to hook up his harness. He thought he had it in order, but he had not. Out now. I will give you a hand.”

The basket tipped perilously when she threw a leg over the edge of it. The other leg seemed to weigh tons. It simply would not go over, and the major had to assist her. Grace’s body finally slipped over, she clinging desperately to the basket’s edge as she straightened out. It was the most awful moment of her life.

“Let go!” bellowed the major.

Grace shut her eyes and held them shut with all her might. Her fingers slowly relaxed their grip on the basket and her body shot downward.

CHAPTER XIII

“CAPTAIN” GRACE INVADES GERMANY

A JOLT followed, then a series of them, and the Overton girl felt herself going down and down and down. After a little she summoned the courage to open her eyes and look down, but only for a second, then she pinched them shut.

“Shake yourself!” bellowed a voice above her.

Grace wondered at this marvel, for it was the voice of Major Colt. Once more she opened her eyes and, tilting back her head, looked up. She saw the pilot jumping up and down in the basket of the balloon only a few feet above her. Grace was going down only as fast as the rapidly collapsing balloon itself. The silk had fouled the long handling guys of the balloon and hung there, leaving the Overton girl suspended between sky and earth a little more than five thousand feet in the air.

Grace groaned when she discovered her predicament, but even then she did not lose possession of her faculties. It was characteristic of Grace to think calmly and clearly when facing an emergency. She did so now, but that clear thinking did not get her out of her terrible predicament.

“What shall I do?” she cried.

“Wiggle, woman, wiggle! Shake yourself loose and fall. You will be killed where you are, and so shall I if I don’t quickly get away.” He began jumping up and down again to assist in the operation of shaking her loose.

Obedient to his command Grace began to wiggle and twist, raising her arms and bringing them smartly down with a violent jerk, apparently as calm and collected as if she were standing on the ground.

“Great work!” approved the anxious watcher. “You’re getting loose. Keep it up.”

“There you go!” he yelled as the silk of the parachute released itself. Grace Harlowe shot downward half lying on her side, a black streak in the air. Almost at the same instant, Major Colt climbed over the edge of the basket, took a quick glance first up at the big gas bag, then at his lines, and let go.

This was no new operation for him. On several occasions he had been obliged to go home in this manner, but this time his mind had assumed a burden greater than any that had been on it in his previous experiences – he had the responsibility of a woman’s life. That is, he had had that responsibility. Just now Grace Harlowe was on her own responsibility, beyond the hope of assistance from any human being.

She seemed to have fallen miles and miles, when finally she sensed a gradual slackening of her speed. Grace had, on account of her light weight, taken a terrific plunge, but the parachute at last began to open. It did not bring her up with a jerk, but gradually, until her downward motion was reduced to about four hundred feet a minute, fast enough for a human being to fall.

Opening her eyes, Grace looked up and she breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the glistening silk of the huge parachute spread out high above her, slender lines running down from it, all centering in two ropes that looked reasonably safe. Up above, the lines looked cobwebby, too delicate for the purpose they were serving. Grace looked down, but raised her eyes quickly. The awful distance between her and the earth was too much for her ordinarily steady nerves to stand when she visualized it.

As she raised her eyes something suddenly floated into the range of her vision. It was a parachute and was coming down rather close to her.

“The major!” gasped the Overton girl. Then Grace Harlowe laughed. It was a hollow sort of a laugh, and sounded weak in her ears. The major’s arms and legs were sprawling as he leaned a little forward, and he looked for all the world like a great spider dangling from the end of a string, which so appealed to Grace Harlowe’s sense of humor that she forgot herself and laughed. Being much heavier than she he was rapidly gaining on her and would soon pass her at his present falling speed.

Grace, observing the ludicrousness of his position, quickly wrapped her ankles about each other, not desiring to make such a spectacle of herself as the balloon officer was doing.

Now they were abreast of each other and could look into each others’ faces. The Overton girl had been preparing herself for this very moment and at the instant the major came near enough to catch the full import of it, Grace smiled, and waved at him what ordinarily might have passed for a joyous hand.

The major waved back and shouted something at her, but she was unable to understand it. Voices up there sounded hollow, weak and far away. A few moments later she was looking down on the top of his swaying parachute, then Grace untangled herself and permitted her body to hang limply, which she found much easier than keeping herself under a strong physical strain.

“Hippy Wingate wouldn’t let me land his airplane. I wonder what he would say were he to see me making a landing in Germany from a parachute?” murmured the girl.

By this time objects began to grow out of the landscape in more or less detail. Houses appeared; the Rhine shimmered in the sunlight that had broken through the clouds, and here and there she thought she saw human beings, though she could not be positive as to this. Several villages came within her range of vision. Remarkable as it seemed to her, Grace realized that she had lost all fear. She was beginning to feel a great confidence in that filmy silk umbrella-shaped affair that was swaying far above her, that confidence having been born when she saw how easily it supported the major’s bulky figure.

“If the thing only will let me out without cutting up, I shall be well pleased,” Grace told herself. “I wonder what has become of the major?” He had passed out of her sight. Had the Overton girl looked for him further to the westward, she might have discovered the silk parachute settling down on the Rhine and, soon afterwards, the doughty major floundering in its waters.

His weight had carried him down in nearly a straight line, while Grace, being light, had drifted down the wind and was headed for a vineyard. She eyed the terraced hillside dubiously.

“If I land there they surely will have to replant their vineyard. I shall certainly leave a trail of devastation,” she chuckled. “In any event it will have been accomplishing something to lay waste even a small patch of enemy territory. Let me see, what am I to do? Oh, yes, I am to cut the strings the instant I feel my feet touching the ground.”

Grace removed the knife-lanyard from her neck and gripped the handle of the knife. Glancing up she fixed upon a point for cutting the rope, and even reached up to it with the knife hand.

“I wish Elfreda might see me now,” she chuckled. “Instead of a ‘balloonatic’ she would call me a ‘parachutic.’ I never heard of such an animal, but I must be it. Get ready, Grace Harlowe, and watch your step,” she reminded herself. “Upon second thought I think I am just as well satisfied that J. Elfreda is not to be a spectator of my landing. I have a growing suspicion that I am about to make an exhibition of myself. My, but that earth does look good!”