However, immediately before reaching the seashore our quarry turned again, and this time along the coast. Then, banking her over to the new direction, we found ourselves “down-wind” with an additional speed at the back of us of 15 m.p.h., which soon began to tell. The padre began to get unduly excited, and succeeded in giving a not unmusical series of “zimms” on the gun; the cartridges falling spent and useless on to the sand-dunes; there were no casualties. Undaunted, we kept on, taking care this time to get nearer up. The enemy were beginning to tire by this time, so putting in a fresh tray of ammunition, our courageous marksman let fly, with excellent results, three of the rearguard speeding headlong down to the earth. The pangs of a not unnatural hunger now beginning to make themselves evident, and finding ourselves some thirty miles from home, we turned her head for home and there eventually arrived, happy and hungry, after having set a new fashion in sporting and aviation circles, and discovered a new form of amusement and speculation for the _blasé_ ones, who had deserted their card-tables and cheap French novelettes to welcome us on our return. CHAPTER XIII A BALLOON-TRIP BY NIGHT Imagine a great bare meadow-land, lonely, wind-swept, and dark with inky blackness, out of which there plunges an occasional hurrying figure, that misses one by inches and passes on with a muttered oath. In the background, tall and sinister, two large gasometers. In the center of the field a wide tarpaulin laid along the ground, and edged by a circle of sand-bags, from the midst of which there rises a great round shape, like a mammoth tomato. It is the balloon not yet fully inflated, fed by two curling rubber tubes, that disappear in the direction of the gasworks. We are waiting, waiting patiently until she fills. Blackened, distorted shapes, that stand around in eerie circle, and at the sudden gruff command of a hoarse voice that booms ever and anon out of the voids of darkness, seize each a heavy sandbag and slowly and clumsily lower it mesh by mesh in the netting that covers the balloon. At last she is filled. The car is attached below, as rapidly and securely as the faint and flickering light of a stable lamp will allow of. The crew tumble in, one on top of another. She is let up only to be pulled down again with a nerve-racking bump. The gruff voice decides that she is now ready to get off; there is a slight slackening of ropes, an almost imperceptible lift, the figures on the ground recede rapidly, grotesque shadows in the darkness, and the lights begin to disappear one by one.