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!” She could see human beings running up the terraces toward the point at which she might confidently be expected to alight. Grace did not approve of this, and wished they would all go away about their business. Among them she discovered some men in German uniforms. Her eyes narrowed.