THE SKETCHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2355, 13 April 1899, Page 55

THE SKETCHER.

A STORM OF BULLETS. EXPERIENCE IN A WAR BALLOON.

The balloon rose about as fast as a cable car runs, and for the first 20ft or 30ft in the run we did not hear a shot. The bag was drifting well over the water when we heard- the first "ping! ping!" of the Mauser bullets across the side of the basket and against the bag. When the bullets came singly, it sounded as if they were striking against a stone wail. A few holes in the balloon did no damage, and we kept on rising, though it was a sure thing that we were hi for trouble. We knew that the Spanish firing line was within 1500 ft, and that they had the range on us.

A thousand feet below I saw a Spanish sharpshooter drop out of a tree once in a while, and I could tell by the way he dropped that his fall was no accident. He was knocked out ; that was a sure thing. Then I could see the Spaniards crawl through the tall grass to their entrenchments.

The aeronaut, " Bud," was quietly sailing the balloon, moving a lever now and then to change the rise or fall, and he and I were carrying on a quiet talk. I looked over the basket, and as I did so remarked:

" ' Bud,' there drops anothei dago from a tree;" and "Bud" answered, "Say, that fall was easy to the one we will get. Well, the balloon was probably to its full height— lsoo ft — and 1 was pushing away on the ticker when trouble began. It seemed as if the Spaniards had turned all their guns upon us. The noise of those Mausers against the bag was like 40 hodcarriers falling down ladders with their hods.

The aeronaut crouched down in the basket, hanging on to his lever, while Lieutenant M'Norn stood at hia place, glass in hand, and kept on writing despatches. The bullets were flying like hailstones by the basket and into the bag, and striking it hi a storm.

Nobody was rattled. . We kept right on playing ball I expected that the big bag would be ripped in a thousand pieces, and that it would fall like -.a lot of bricks. Instead of that, we began to gradually descend. The balloon was being plunked full of holes, but very little gas was escaping.

The rain of bullets never let up for a second. "Bud" had just asked me if I wasn't getting a little nervous, when he yelled : • " My God, they've got me ! " He dropped over to the bottom of the basket with two wounds, one in his left groin, and the other in his left foot I noticed two holes in" the basket as he dropped the lever. I had just been wondering who the first man would be. The lieutenant looked around and asked how badly the aeronaut was hurt. Then he said:

"Now, I have got to stand here and watch out, and if ' Bud ' gets so bad that he can't handle the lever, you do his work and your own, too." Then he wrote on a sheet of paper from his note-book: — "Bountiful. M'Norn."

This message meant : One man shot." But the rain of, bullets was doubled, probabljr because the Spaniards saw they were getting the best of us. I couldn't understand why the balloon did not fall like. a dead weight, until I was told later that the holes closed up almost as fast as the bullets came through. There was now enough gaa escaping to causa the balloon to drop faster.

The basket wai swaying from side to side as th« balloon shifted. The outlook was very "lcefy," for I expected every minute that tke balloon would rip, and there "vas nothing below us but -water. Lieutenant M'Norn was as cool as ice. He had just written a despatch and handed it to me when he -was" hit. He was standing close to the edge of the basket. The basket had taken a sudden turn -when he

fell with his head across the edge of the basket and a bullet in his right side. Theii followed the hottest ten minutes of my life. I caught the lieutenant with one arm and drew him back into the basket, which was swinging so that it was a guess whether we wouldn't all be spilled out at the next turn.

With the other hand I telegraphed to my friend Considine at the other end :

"The lieutenant is hit. I am holding him up with one hand and wiring with the other. I don't know how badly he is off, but it looks lik& ' 30 ' with him.

It was a hard place for a fall, and I was scared more over falling out of the basket than from the bullets that kept swarming. Considine wired back:

" Keep your nerve. The balloon is coming dowr easy, and we will stand by until it touches the land."

I -was covered trith the lieutenant's blood, and be ■was unconscious. The aeronaut was breathing, but could do nothing. Wilh my free hand I Again vrired to Coasidinet

" Get the t&ibulanca and the doctors. They have massed me, but the other men are unconscious."

I was told afterwerds that it was 12 minutes by the watch between the first messag« from the balloon" and the landing. It seemed like 12 years, I stuck my head over the edge of the basket to see -how the balloon was drifting, and I thought that there was a chance when I saw it turning to the land. For perhaps two minutes before the landing the shower of bullets let U P- .. . .

' Finally the basket grazed the beach and I climbed out. My feet were fairly on the ground when a sharpshooter's bullet 6truck my face under the left eye and covered my head with blood. It was a lucky shot, and pained me, but I knew that it was not serious.

Tho boys ran up and carried the lieutenant and aeronaut from the basket, and I turned around in time to see the big balloon collapse slowly to the ground. — P J. DELANEY, in the New York World.