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. 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.
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