He had
been up seven hundred feet in the air that afternoon, with no place to
go in case of accident, when the Frenchman came over and tried to hit
him. "It struck within a hundred meters of me," called back the young
captain as he disappeared through the dining-room doorway. "Made quite
a noise and tore up the earth considerably."
"He was lucky--the young Herr Captain," said Von Scheller--"luckier than
his predecessor. A fortnight ago one of the enemy's flyers struck one
of our balloons with a bomb and the gas envelope exploded. When the
wreckage reached the earth there was nothing much left of the operator--
poor fellow!--except the melted buttons on his coat. 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.
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