§ 24

But the German gunner never got Peter, because something else got him first.

He thought he saw a Hun aeroplane coming over very high indeed to the south of him, fifteen thousand feet up or more, a mere speck in the blue blaze, and then the gas bag hid it and he dismissed it from his mind. He was thinking that the air was growing clearer, and that if this went on guns would wake up presently and little voices begin to talk to him, when he became aware of the presence and vibration of an aeroplane quite close to him. He pulled off his telephone receivers and heard the roar of an engine close at hand. It was overhead, and the gas bag still hid it. At the same moment the British anti-aircraft gunners began a belated fire. “Damn!” said Peter in a brisk perspiration, and hastened to make sure that his parachute rope was clear.

“Perhaps he’s British,” said Peter, with no real hope.

“Pap, pap, pap!” very loud overhead.

The gas bag swayed and billowed, and a wing with a black cross swept across the sky. “Pap, pap, pap.”

The gas bag wrinkled and crumpled more and more, and a little streak of smoke appeared beyond its edge. The German aeroplane was now visible, a hundred yards away, and 541banking to come round. He had fired the balloon with tracer bullets.

The thing that Peter had to do and what he did was this. He had to step up on to a little wood step inside his basket. Then he had to put first one foot and then the other on to another little step outside his basket. This little step was about four inches wide by nine long. Below it was six thousand feet of emptiness, above the little trees and houses below. As he swayed on the step Peter had to make sure that the rope attached to his body was clear of all entanglements. Then he had to step off that little shelf, which was now swinging and slanting with the lurching basket to which it was attached, into the void, six thousand feet above the earth.

He had not to throw himself or dive headlong, because that might lead to entanglement with the rope. He had just to step off into pellucid nothingness, holding his rope clear of himself with one hand. This rope looped back to the little swinging bucket in which his fine silk parachute was closely packed. He had seen it packed a week ago, and he wished now, as he stood on his step holding to his basket with one hand, that he had watched the process more meticulously. He became aware that the Hun, having disposed of the balloon, was now shooting at him. He did not so much step off the little shelf as slip off as it heeled over with the swing of the basket. The first instants of a leap or fall make no impression on the mind. For some seconds he was falling swiftly, feet foremost, through the air. He scarcely noted the faint snatch when the twine, which held his parachute in its basket, broke. Then his consciousness began to register again. He kept his feet tightly pressed together. The air whistled by him, but he thought that dreams and talk had much exaggerated the sensations of falling. He was too high as yet to feel the rush of the ground towards............