THE GOOD SHIP SAUSAGE

Evening Star, Issue 17032, 1 May 1919, Page 9

THE GOOD SHIP SAUSAGE

[By Gregory Mason-, in the 'Outlook/}

"Want to go up in the do you:" asked the officer commanding an American kite balloon station In Ireland. "Yes." " All right j tot* can go up -with Grey tomorrow," said the CO., nodding toward <» voung fellow -with a- tanried, round f»o« sitting opposite me across the joint mesa table of the submarine and kite balloon officers aboaTd the mother ship. " Can von swim?' asked Grey. " Yes."" " That's fine. Then you can try out our rcw Darachute, eh*" a Four faces browned by ballooning am* a score with the pallor <)E submarine li'e were turned towards me inquiringly. " Uh—hull —er—ah—all right." The table shook with laughter. "Xever mind," said Grey, -when it Wf*° c.uieter. "I guess you'll do. And TOav °* we won't need the parachute. Come aboard th. Polar Bear [the names of ships »n« people in this article are fictitious] at 9 to-morrow morning." ~ fhe Polar Bear was the British warship which was to tow the balloon around the bav in a practice hunt for American suomarines. Early in the morning I saw her. moored a quarter of a mile away, with trie bitr <rrev sausage balloon above her, anchored in the skv. the Stars and Stripes snajnine in the rigging over the of-skf; later', when I stepoed aboard the Polar Bear, a deck engine'was hauling down tne balloon. Giev was there, a jailor assisting him it getting into ah elaborate■ harn«r> of strapS buckled round the shoulders. che=t, wai-t. and lees. Another balloons. who had iust boarded the slup. stepped ud to him and whispered in bis ear. Ure> at once began to unbuckle the Jjarne«. •'Here. Mason." said be, put on tn.s parachute harness." "What about- you?" "O the other parachute is out ot order; but I don't need any. I can parachute down in the balloon." '• You wear that harness, Grey. 111 go without- it or I won't go a*. al! " But no argument would move to tak*> the hairiest When I suggested that I wci'd nut off the balloon trip ur-t.l arother time when there were two para ch'-te* V would not hear of it. 1 =an par.chnte in the balloon if it comes to that" he said, repeatedly, "and I want vou "to come along and take seme p:c-

tures." ~ , ii ~ Bv the time I get into the harness -he balloon overshadowed the deck, a .pea* erev air fish, blunt in the' head lui-e a scuipin, thrashing from cide toside and drawing nearly off their feet M seamen who hauled on "the guy ropes. -V dozen hands clutched at the basket when it came low enough- It threw them back and forth ovev stanchions and rows o-f ba>T»l depth bombs. Other hands heaved sandbars into the basket, and it fi-ailv settled on the deck, still 1 "'"" 1 '•nder all the sand and the men who belt.

" "Grev f-nd I leaped at the little wicker j <•:'"«.' balanced -over the edge oiioiuetcmachs. and somehow got in. There ■ was just room for two men to stand or <-roiich. We t'mew out all but four ot tne I -ardba<". and each of us held one ot these j on "the 1 " basket rim, ready to dump them! roadv." veiled Grey; "let her go." ; The dozen hands released us. and we r o<=e ="owiv. swinzbs from side to side m j Treat "swoops which carried ™* now 20i:„ j to -tarbenrd of the ship, now 20ft to port. Grev dumotd one sand bag. then another. | We'bfan'to rise more rapidly. i I crouched in the basket, concentrating all mv attention on a white wisp ot cloud 4n th'- zenith. There was no sense of upward motion then, only a sideways sway-i-i'r. more gentle now. . . -Ah—ehrV" breathed Grey a minute lat-T. " that's b-t+er." Cautioaslv I peeped downward over tne ba?k?t rim . , - _,, Phew' In a few seconds we had usen fifteen hundred feet. The land and sea looked just like the photographs made from airplanes. A cold sweat broke out on me I =T"it:el in Ihe basket and gazed intently rtnv at Grev's shoes, at anything to avoid the awful panorama over that thm .wicker rim. , , . j Now that the Polar Bear had stopped rwving out cable the heartless wmo. seized ii<"~tore at us. flung us this way and that. '■ Kite balloon." all right. The very bucks and nlunges of a boy's kite. Grey was lerpi"-' about, the basket in utter disregard of it='tlimsv structure. If he did not cap-sii-r- it, he would knock out is bottom —the pitiful' wicker shell which was all between us'f'nd fifteen hundred feet of emptiness. I looked up. Only six pieces of miserable clothes line were holding us to. that—to w ha*? —to several thousand cubic feet of vjipoV within that thin, squashy hide, wriggling, infktiiig. and subsiding with a cloud's lack of solidity. Two pitiable atoms were we. suspended ill the air from a cloud of hydrogen. Oh for an airplane with its engine, its sense of control! Th« r creaked, whistled, and trembled lis it about to break. To give myself something to do I tore the cover off a film and loaded my camera. "Thatta boy'." said Grey; "take one of the balloon hangars and one of the

ship." , Still half-crouching. I shoved the camera over the basket's rim and pressed the bulb. I dared not lean out to see what I was Inking* " Get a good one?'' asked Grey, cheerfully. " Yep." . I pushed the camera out the other side and pressed the bulb again. Suddenly a thing metallic .buzz rang in )ur ear?, "it was a telephone hanging inlide the basket. Grey put the receiver over iis hoad. '-What's the matter?" he asked. "Hey? Too heavy?"—a pa"=f "I've, "only got t• «k bags left. Better save them for' lauding. All right, we'll see." He hung up the receiver. "They say were too heavy, and the cable's sagging down to the water." he explained to "me. "But I think it will be all right as soon as we start." "Now really," I said, earnestly, "you better have them haul down and put me out. I weigh too much." "Oh. no,"" said Grey. "I think it will be all right as soon as we get started." "Now, listen, old man," said I, with wonderful self-abnegation. " you mustn't ;onsider ma at all. " I just wanted to come jp to get the sensation here and to take a few pictures. I've got my pictures now ssieh and I don't care anything about making the trip- Really I don't. I wouldn't think of inconveniencing you in the slightest. Now, just tell them to haul down the basket and let me out." I was arguing desperately, a dying man who sees a chance of life. Grey pondered, then pushed the telephone button to call the ship. No answer. He tried again. He was visibly disturbed. Evidently something very" serious was wrong. The dying mail's momentary hope disappeared. Needing to do something, I took up the telephone box and cradled it gingerly, as if that would help it. I said to myself: "I must keep my nerve; he may need inv help." Aloud"I asked: "Can't you get them to haul down?" and I was ashamed of the eagerness in my voice. "It's quite ail right." said Grey, confidently. "There's still two bags of sand: and if*that isn't enough we can throw our clothes overboard." Suddenly there was a change. We had been in a" gale; now we were in a dead ;alm. "We're off," said Grey. Take a look." Grasping the rigging firmly. I peered over the rim. The tops of the bare brown mountains seemed stationary. I looked lower. The beach was rushing away beneath us. I had a glimpso 61 tiny destroyers at anchor, then ve swept on. ""Polar Bear's making 16 knots an hour," Grey remarked. " Isn't thi3 nice?" " It's—it's better," I answered, drawing my first full breath. Grey continued to call on the telephone at short intervals without getting an answer. There seemed to be no atmosphere at aIL We were borne along on a soundless tide. I kept my eye on distant clouds, trying to find-shapes of animals and men in them to forget our horrible predicament. I felt it was ten to on© I should never get

down alive, and I dared not nourish hope 1 on that deader chance. Better to face the j worst. I fixed all my determination on the ! effort to meet any fate coolly. But I kept wondering what it would be like to fail—fall—fall. , , , Grey reached over the side, brought in a rope end with a snaffle, and hooked it into a ring beneath my chin in the parachute harness. "The parachute is in that case, on the outside of the basket," he explained. "If anything goes wrong, you just jump, and you'll tear the parachute out of the case. Don't worrv if it doesn't open for the first three or four hundred feet. You're pretty heavy." A cold sweat broke out on me again. "Don't worry I" By the time I had dropped throe or four -hundred feet I> should be beyond all worry! Every man has his particular fear. Since the days when the rest of " the gang " in Tucker's ! barn used to " stump' me by walking across a narrow beam over the hay-mow my particular fear has been height. Still I managed to think about Grey. "But what'll you do?" " Oh, I'll climb up in the rigging and use the balloon as a parachute,' he lied, cheerfully. " But there isn't much danger of falling, unless we get- on fire," continued my companion. " We're much more likely to break away." j "Break away?" "Yes, snap the cable or the rigging connecting with it and float away by ourselves." " How high would she go?" " Oh, only ten or twelve thousand feet." Ye gods f Only ten or twelve thousand feet! Although in that moment I honestly felt, my chances of getting down from that balloon alive were negligible, it was not death I feared, for all fe.ar of that was overshadowed by the mucb greater fear of height. I longed to be in a submarine. Peering' over quickly, I saw two beneath us, shaped like toothpicks—the sharp end the bow. I remembered arguments I had heard at the mess table between submarine men and balloon men. The latter expressed unbounded admiration for chaps who constantly faced the risk of drowning in a box under water, like rats drowned in a pond by the stable boy. The submarine men contended that there was nothing in that if you did not give way to your imagination. " '3ut to be up there in the ciouds absolutely at the mercy of the elements, and then to fall!" I shuddered ; ah, that was it. In a sinking submarine, as the water rises inside the steel box which encloses you, you need not struggle ; when the water reaches your 1 chin, you can just close your eyes, put ! your liead under, and go to sleep. But ' here, before vou could die vou must fall—ifall! I " I hope we break away," said Grey, I laughing. "The wind would carry us > right into Ireland, and we could make a j sensational landing, telegraph for men to j come for the balloon, and have a week-end in Dublin." I " Yes, and we might break our necks j landing. I roomed with a fellow at college ; who organised an Intercollegiate Balloon j Society," and he was always being bumped I against- stone walls and trees when he j landed." "Oh, that's all right. I don't mind being bumped against- good dry land. What | I'm afraid of every time I go up in this | sausage is that, when they pull us down ! at the end of the watch and the balloon I begins to dive, we'll be slowly dragged into the water." " I hope so." "What you say?" " I say I ask for nothing better than the assurance that I'll get, down from this crazy balloon and be gently dumped into : the water." " C-ee. you're a nervy cus=!" said Grey. Kverv man has hi? particular fear. I know Grey's row. and the knowledge made me almost cheerful. ■ I rtood up and imitated Grey, who was examining ships belcw us with his glasser,. ' A little passenger steamer passpd beneath. ; and we could see the people staring at us 1 ' with - idle interest. One passenger was ' ! takin* our picture How heartless! \ | Didn't thev realise our plight.' But I re- " j mem be red how I looked at the Sausage [ ! from below with just that degree of casual ' ! interest From the ship's deck the bal--1 i Icon's height seemed nothing remarkable ' From here 't was horrible. Th/? next time I looked at a balloon or airpl.rne from the j ground I would appreciate this heroism. I How I envied the people on that ship, | ! and the crews of the submarines which j ' were just beginning to submerge! I . W«, had passed them now; but ever " j when they got under water they were con- ; J spicuous enough to the naked eye. Ali I though the projecting periscope of _ each was "a mere I lack pin, the white ribbon ; of wake bennid w«& unmistakable—quite 1 different from the wakes left by our ship, the pns-ongeL- steamer, and the three ' American destroyers which had come out I j to practise with their hydrophones. 3 I It' those submarines had be?n Germans M sneaking up to attack ships with us, we 3 would have seen them long before they , J were within torpedo range. * | "On a clear day you can see a ' sub's ' * I wake ten miles from one of these balr j loons," said Grey, "and under good condi--1 tions you can see his hull thirty or forty 3 • feet under water. The-ie 'K.B.s' are 3 j much better for hunting subs than seaj planes or flying, boats. They're cheaper, 1 , to begin with, and they can go up in a ■ i seventy-five-knot gale. Besides, a balloon 3 J can measure angles and ranges accurately when a flying boat is only estimating them. " 1 Of course, we .don't carry bombs, as the I planes do, but then we're in constant t-ele- ' phonic touch with the destroyers, and the 3 I flying boats pre not. And when it comes to bombing Fiitz, you'd better pick a 1 i destrover."

This was the enthusiast arguing for hi.own pet. The riving boat men contend just as vigorously" fof the superiority of their own craft. Again that thin, whiny buzz of the telephone startled me. li Hello!" called Gray. "What's matter? I been callin' vou for ten minutes. _ Now, vou put a man on your end of this telephone, and keep him there!" 1 "What? Oh, yes; that's all right," He turned to me. " The cable's taut now. They've just hauled us down three hundred feet: they think we'll manage better that wav ir. this wind." "That's belter," 1 replied. "I don't notice any difference between fifteen hundred and' twelve hundred feet, but every little bit hc-ips." Grey laughed. "The higher you are the eaier, ancf the more sure you are of your parachute working." At his reference to the cable I looked at it for the first time. A thin black thread falling straight toward the ship, whose bow was beneath us. How frightfully thin ! Two-thuds of the way down I lost it where it began to bend towards the stern of the Polar Bear. And that shipjust a boy's toy l>oat■! If we fell she would be crushed. The other ships were toys, too, and thctrees, and a tiny white lighthouse was a bev's sand castle. The fields were little patches of green, or blue where cloud shadows fell, or of golden brown where wheat grew. The haycocks were grey golf tees. The roads were strings of confetti thrown over the landscape by aimless children. The sea was a blue tablecloth with little dabs cf spilled salt where whitecaps were breaking. The largest waves were mere pocks on the surface, and the whole sea had a slightly corrugated appearance. The funniest things were the gulls which followed our ship with set wings. Though 20 or 30 feet above water, they seemed playthings of white tin pulled over the surface of the sea by in--risible threads from the ship. Grey began to explain things, and that helped a little. He showed mo the barometer, and three valve pulls 'to let gas out of the balloon in case we broke our cable and bumped the sky. " Grab this if you want to come down," said he, indicating a cord, "and haul in hand over hand with all your might. It rips a patch right off the bag and lets the gas pour out." Fox only a moment curiosity hold off fear; then I squatted back in the basket. It was no help to look up instead of down, for up there was that craay gas-bag, trembling, surging, advertising its own immateriality—a huge, distorted thing about to burst like an overpacked puSball. And there were we in that insanely dancing hamper, held only by six §in cords to an absurd, feeble skinful of fog, I

cursed myself for coming; I cursed the mad creature man for experimenting with such things as balloons and submarines, for not being satisfied with the solid earth —oh, the earth, the good brown earth! Just to smell .it again, taste it", -and feel • it- under my foot! ~,-,. , I To look at the bottom of the basket only reminded vou of its horrible fragility j There was oiilv one sight to view with any j comfort—the great, bare coastal moun- I tains, fixed and steady as God. I stared at them, and hope began to Teturn. After all, the men on the ship could haul us down in a minute or two. Perhaps they would do so, -and change passengers'hear the end of the bay where •we were going now to look for a sunken torpedo. Although the height was still terrifying, the calmness was rather pleasant. The basket was rocking very little now as we ran in toward land and had the wind dead aft. If only my companion would stop jumping about like a lunatic in a cage! Sounds from the deck reached us, and a rooster's crow from the shore. Clouds obscured the sun just as we reached the promontory near which the torpedo had been lost. The water turned from blue to black. Grov bad said that a submarine hull was visible 30 or 40 feet undeT water on a clear clay ; but we could see nothing in that murkv sea as we searched lor the torpedo with bur glasses. Where the water was very shallow, bottom was indicated by patclies of light yellowish green. *Gre\< telephoned down that we could see no torpedo. The ship began to turn, leaving a wide circular track of white foam. As the clumsy balloon turned also wo went out of the calmness which had laved us into an atmospheric maelstrom. We rose and fell in the breaking surf of it, furiously buffeted. The rows of short picket lines whipped against the bulging sides of the gas-bag like reef points whipping on a sail, and the 30ft guy ropes trailing out behind like snapping kite tails. The balloon's stabilisers and rudder swelled with the air which rushed in through vents in the forward ends of three lonrj pouches sewed on to the rear end of th"e gasbag. These three pouches give kite balloons the peculiar appearance of wearing a lifebelt around their sterns. The pouches have the floating, tremulous appearance of elephant ears. Each time the great kite plunged downwards and sideways, as it would if a boy <riant were jerking* the cable, the six ropes holding the basket to the balloon would sag limply, as if suddenly cut. This produced a sickening feeling in us—the sensation of suddenly dropping in an elevator. Wo were now behind our towing ship "and tugging at our cable. In addition to its other motions, the basket rose and fell in sharp bounds each time the ship below rose, and fell on the incrsasing waves, and the little hamper also vibrated violentiy from the trembling caused by the strain on the steel towing line. The wind was rising rapidly, the sky darkening, and the bare mountains were growing manes of fierce cloud. The Polar Bear was still making 16 knots, and the wind was blowing more than 40 in the opposite direction, so" that we were struck with the total force of a 60-knot gale. Grey let down two little hammock seats inside the pendulous oriole's nest, and we Silt facing each other. I had to shout to make him hear me, and I shouted often to avoid thinking. That high, faint call of the telephone kept chilling me. It always suggested bad news news from another world. Usually, i however, it rang to let one of the officers below chaff Grey about the wind or his passenger. _ ] " How's your passenger —seasick yet?' asked the captain of the Polar Bear. " No: but I am," answered the young balloonist, truthfully. Seasickness is not uncommon even m old hands at kite ballooning. Grey had been at it only a few weeks. All my sickness centred in my head, which was ready j to split with aching. A kite balloon com- ! bines all the motion* of a ship and a circus tumbler.

It was now evident that- Grey had no intention of changing passengers, and pessimism returned. As wo beg-itVi to pick up familiar landmarks near harbor I dared not hope; I only felt how much more grim would be out death now—with home in sight. The submarines came to the surface again—toothpicks floating in a bathtub of .disturbed water. The destroyers were also bound for port. Close behind each vessel its wake was a white ribbon ; farther back it seemed a trail of grey smoke clinging to tho water; and yet farther behind the wake was a smooth, shining path through the dull damascene of the sea. Those ships which were going against the wind and waves threw a deep furrow off each bow, the two furrows forming a Y-shaped ripple like the trail of a waterbug across a placid puddle. This V-shaped ripple and the wake were much more conspicuous than the ship to us, and could be seen for miles. The sides of each ship were frothing, the rocky coasts were foaming, and white snakes ran in and out of the long crevices in the" rocks. Ah, there beyond the toy lighthouse was our hai'bor; behind it a thin strip of land, and then again the sea, filled with steep island erupting fog. AVe passed directly over an anchored sailing ship, its spits of masts inviting us to impale ourselves. The Polar Bear decreased speed as we went up the harbor. How slow they were below about getting the mooring! Those sailors did not seem to realise the desperate haste of getting us down. Our fate was of no importance to them. I looked up at the foolish balloon again from the mad basket. For out on the water I saw the shadow of the sausage—hardly more intangible than it—and below I saw* the shadow of the basket, a barely perceptible blotch on the sea. Man is just a-5 impermanent as that shadow, I thought. Our emotions, agonising or pleasant, are just as evanescent. Our fate is of no importance I sat down to put the camera in its case. "Well, did you know we had dropped?" spoke Grey suddenly. I looked*overside." "We were barely 300 ft above the ship. In a few seconds we had dropped 900 ft. but I had felt no motion. I stood up and said, fervently: " Thank God ! That oM salt water looks good to me." "It looks like Hell to me," said Gray, just as feelingly. " Xow is the time to worry. If anything went wrong now the parachute would be no good. You couldn't jump." "Well, who wants to jump?" I stood now with an air of nonchalance for tho benefit of the bluejackets gazing at us with curiosity from the Polar Bear. Then, as the deck engine hauled on our cable again, there began a bucking more violent than .any of the previous antics of balloon and basket. (For a week afterwards I had the bruises of a football game.) "Hang on!" yelled Grey. "This part is always the worst." With one hand ho flipped the rigging, and with the other he eld a bag of sand, ready to drop it overboard if the sausage should dip too near the water. Strong hands seized the guy ropes and pulled us down toward the Polar Bear's deck. The baslcet bumped over depth charges holding 3001b of high explosive, and finally came to rest. After sand ballast was put in wo climbed out. We had been up two and a-half hours. They Grey told me whv his particular fear was water. He could not swim a stroke. On his next trip, a few days later, when hunting German submarines, as the balloon was being hauled down to the ship, what ho most"feared happened. Ho was tlnown out of the basket and drowned. Grey was not his real name ; but if these lines should be read by one of his family the circumstances would be recognised. He was a fine, brave chap, and died as truly for his country as if his balloon had been brought down by a German shell.