"Stoop, as the yellow roses droop, In the wind from the ..." _Boom_--the second bomb bursts some eighty feet away to the left. Both have missed; the menace is passed. With a feeling of relief I say a short prayer, and watch with an easier interest the little white puffs of smoke which trail across the sky behind the rapidly-fading aeroplane, like flowers scattered in the path of a passing deity. The machine-guns above me at last cease their clamour. The grey barrel of the gun on the forecastle spits out its flame and smoke for the last time. The winch ceases its clatter and is reversed in order to allow the balloon to rise again; for, the danger being past, it is required to work with the _Queen Elizabeth_. Now the whistle sounds for breakfast, and soon we sit at our narrow wooden tables in the afterhold, eating moist bread and terribly yellow salmon, and drinking washy tea. We talk of food, food, food incessantly, picturing the glories of past meals in London, the exquisite repasts which will be ours when we return; we dream of white tablecloths, of flower vases, of toast-racks, and white china, and bacon, hot, sizzling, curling.... We are a strange crowd--artists, stokers, solicitors, clerks, blue-jackets, soldiers, architects, chauffeurs,--all are mixed together. The better educated men are A.B.'s; the P.O.'s are telephone operators or old service men. It is as strange a company as any in the war. The meal is over, and I climb up on deck, and see that between us and the long mottled hills of Gallipoli lies the huge but graceful shape of the _Queen Elizabeth_. Her fifteen-inch guns are tilted at a high angle, and are turned towards the coast. It seems evident that she is about to bombard some position, and that our balloon is going to "spot" for her. I walk down the gangway to the balloon deck and stand near the little telephone cabin, where the operator sits at a table with the receivers strapped over his ears, in direct communication with the bridge and the balloon observer high above. I look through a little glass window, and become a witness of a stupendous feat which illustrates vividly the amazing power of destruction of modern artillery. The pencil in the operator's hand writes-- "9.10. Balloon to _Q.E._ Transport 16,000 tons in narrows M17 x2 steaming slowly N.W. Can you open fire? "9.12. _Q.E._ to Balloon. Am about to open fire. "9.13. Balloon to _Q.E._ Transport now M17 x3. _Q.E._ fired ..." There is a sudden deafening noise and I hear the roar of a shell screaming at a terrible speed through the air. The roar slowly lessens, and suddenly its tone drops about six notes as it passes over the coast and moves above land instead of water. For nearly a minute I can hear the ever low whine of the shell, which dies away in a faint thud. "9.14. Balloon to _Q.E._ O 500. R 200," writes the pencil. The shell has fallen five hundred yards over its target, and two hundred feet to the right.