The balloon went up. In silence they watched it rise to at last disappear in the clouds.

At once the girl with wind-blown hair got busy with her instruments. “I’m feeling for the steel ball,” she explained. “I’ll have it presently.”

“She’s feeling for the steel ball,” one of the buck private gunners repeated.

“She’ll have it presently,” said the other. “Like h—l,” he muttered, under his breath.

The eyes of the gun crew were on the girl. It was as if she had learned some Hindu magic there in India. They questioned that she could do the trick, but gave her the benefit of the doubt, nevertheless.

“Something like making a boy climb a rope into the sky,” one of them suggested.

“Uh huh. Probably,” the other agreed. “I saw an old guy do that trick once. And say! Was it spookey!”

“Did the boy come back?”

“Not that I saw, he didn’t.” The two buck privates settled back in their places.

“There now,” the girl sighed. “I’ve got it.”

“She’s got it,” one of the privates repeated. The other was silent. He had seen magic work. A boy had gone up a rope and hadn’t come down.

“Show me how your gun is adjusted,” the girl said to the sergeant. He showed her, carefully—painstakingly as if she were a child. She grinned, but said nothing.

“The balloon is drifting south by southeast,—three miles an hour,” she said at last. “I’ll find it again. Then I’ll set your gun on the spot. Your job is to follow the drift and shoot the balloon down after a sixty second wait.”

“Okay.” The sergeant waited. There was an odd grin on his face.

The girl bent to her task. Then suddenly she straightened up. Her keen eyes had detected a movement in the shadow of the palm trees. A dozen paces away she saw a man, a black dwarf, with strangely bowed legs and a grotesquely dried up face. Her first impulse was to say: “You go away!” She did not say it, but returned to her task.

“Now,” she sighed once more, “I’ve got the steel ball’s location. I’ll set your gun.” This task she performed with speed and accuracy. The 

 Prev. P 5/149 next