“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?” [Illustration: She Clung Desperately to the Basket’s Edge.] 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.