I had been asked aboard the _Xerxes_ for an afternoon of seaplane and balloon practice. I had already seen a good deal of the former at various points in the Mediterranean and Adriatic, but the towed observation balloon--the "kite," as they call it--was an entirely new thing. I "put in" at once for an ascent in a kite, for I was anxious not only to get some sort of a firsthand idea of how it was being employed against submarines--of which I had already heard not a little--and also to compare the work with that of handling the ordinary observation balloons, of which I had seen so much in France, Italy, and the Balkans. The captain--whom I found just getting the ship under weigh from the bridge--after some hesitation, promised to "see what he could do," if there was not too much wind, when he was ready for "balloon work." To one who has had experience only of hangars on land, perhaps the most impressive thing about an "aeroship" is the amount of gear and equipment which can be stowed and handled in restricted spaces. Wings and rudders which fold and refold upon each other until they form compact bundles that can be trundled about by a man or two, collapsible fuselages and pontoons, wheels which detach at a touch of a lever, "knock-down" transmissions--these things were everywhere the rule. One "baby" scout I saw almost completely assembled on the launching-stage, and the "tail," which a couple of men wired to the main body in a little more than a minute, I would have sworn I could have knocked off with a single well-placed kick. Yet, five minutes later, I saw that same machine "loop," "side-flop," "double-bank," and (quite at the will of its young pilot, who is rated the most expert seaplane man in the British Naval Air Service) recover at the end of a five-hundred-feet rolling fall, all without apparently starting a strut or rivet. "Collapsibility" and portability are evidently secured without sacrificing any essential strength. The science of working the seaplane from the deck of a ship is still in process of development. Even up to quite recently it was the practice to put a machine overboard on a sling, and allow it to start from the water. The use of detachable wheels--which fall off into the sea after they have served their purpose in giving the preliminary run--has made launching from the deck practicable and comparatively safe, but the problem of landing even a wheeled machine on deck has not yet been satisfactorily solved. On account of lack of room, most of the experiments in this direction have ended disastrously, even tragically.