Its light-colored body hovered above the mountains in the pale-blue sky like a small silver-gray tube. "Spread the report at once!" called the captain to the telephone operator; and bustle ensued on all sides. "What shall we do?" asked a lieutenant. "There's no use in shooting at it; by the time it gets within range we should shoot our own men." The air-ship came slowly nearer, and at last it was directly over the American line of outposts. "They can see our whole position!" said Captain Lange, "they can see all our arrangements from up there." Boom! came the sound of a shot from the right. "That probably won't do much good." A few hundred yards below the air-ship a little flame burst out. The smoke from a shrapnel hung in the air for a moment like a ball of cotton, and then that, too, disappeared. Boom! it went again. "We shall never reach it with shrapnel," said the lieutenant, "there's no use trying to beat it except on its own ground." "We have some newly constructed shrapnel," answered the captain, "the bullets of which are connected with spiral wires that tear the envelope of the balloon." Now two shots went off at the same time. "Those seem to be the balloon-guns," said the lieutenant. Far below the air-ship hovered the clouds of two shrapnel shots. "They're getting our air-ship ready over there," cried the captain; "that's the only sensible thing to do." He pointed to a spot far off where a large, yellow motor-balloon could be seen hanging in the air like a large bubble. It went up in a slanting direction, and then, after describing several uncertain curves, steered straight for the enemy's balloon, which also began to rise at once. Hundreds of thousands of eyes were following the course of those two little yellow dots up in the clear, early morning air, as the mountain edges began to be tipped with pink. The Japanese air-ship had reached a position a little to one side of that occupied by the 28th Regiment, when a tiny black speck was seen to leave it and to gain in size as it fell with increasing velocity. When it reached the ground a vivid red flame shot up. Tremendous clouds of smoke followed, mixed with dark objects, and the distant mountains resounded with loud peals of thunder which died away amid the angry rumblings in the gorges. "That was a big bomb," said the captain, "and it seems to have done considerable mischief." Now a little puff of white smoke issued from the American air-ship and ten seconds later an explosive body of some sort burst against a wall of rock. "If they keep on like that they'll only hit our own men," said the lieutenant. "The Jap is ascending," cried some one, and again all the field-glasses were directed towards the two ships. Now both were seen to rise. "The Japs are throwing down everything they've got in the way of explosives," cried the captain. A whole row of black spots came rushing down and again came the thunder caused by the bursting of several bombs one after the other.