“CAPTAIN” GRACE INVADES GERMANY
A jolt followed, then a series of them, and the Overton girl felt
herself going down and down and down. After a little she summoned the
courage to open her eyes and look down, but only for a second, then she
pinched them shut.
“Shake yourself!” bellowed a voice above her.
Grace wondered at this marvel, for it was the voice of Major Colt. Once
more she opened her eyes and, tilting back her head, looked up. She
saw the pilot jumping up and down in the basket of the balloon only a
few feet above her. Grace was going down only as fast as the rapidly
collapsing balloon itself. The silk had fouled the long handling guys
of the balloon and hung there, leaving the Overton girl suspended
between sky and earth a little more than five thousand feet in the air.
Grace groaned when she discovered her predicament, but even then she
did not lose possession of her faculties. It was characteristic of
Grace to think calmly and clearly when facing an emergency. She did
so now, but that clear thinking did not get her out of her terrible
predicament.
“What shall I do?” she cried.
“Wiggle, woman, wiggle! Shake yourself loose and fall. You will be
killed where you are, and so shall I if I don’t quickly get away.” He
began jumping up and down again to assist in the operation of shaking
her loose.
Obedient to his command Grace began to wiggle and twist, raising her
arms and bringing them smartly down with a violent jerk, apparently as
calm and collected as if she were standing on the ground.
“Great work!” approved the anxious watcher. “You’re getting loose. Keep
it up.”
“There you go!” he yelled as the silk of the parachute released itself.
Grace Harlowe shot downward half lying on her side, a black streak in
the air. Almost at the same instant, Major Colt climbed over the edge
of the basket, took a quick glance first up at the big gas bag, then at
his lines, and let go.
This was no new operation for him. On several occasions he had
been obliged to go home in this manner, but this time his mind had
assumed a burden greater than any that had been on it in his previous
experiences--he had the responsibility of a woman’s life. That is,
he had had that responsibility. Just now Grace Harlowe was on her own
responsibility, beyond the hope of assistance from any human being.
She seemed to have fallen miles and miles, when finally she sensed a
gradual slackening of her speed. Grace had, on account of her light
weight, taken a terrific plunge, but the parachute at last began to
open. It did not bring her up with a jerk, but gradually, until her
downward motion was reduced to about four hundred feet a minute, fast
enough for a human being to fall.
Opening her eyes, Grace looked up and she breathed a sigh of relief
as she saw the glistening silk of the huge parachute spread out high
above her, slender lines running down from it, all centering in two
ropes that looked reasonably safe. Up above, the lines looked cobwebby,
too delicate for the purpose they were serving. Grace looked down,
but raised her eyes quickly. The awful distance between her and the
earth was too much for her ordinarily steady nerves to stand when she
visualized it.
As she raised her eyes something suddenly floated into the range of her
vision. It was a parachute and was coming down rather close to her.
“The major!” gasped the Overton girl. Then Grace Harlowe laughed. It
was a hollow sort of a laugh, and sounded weak in her ears. The major’s
arms and legs were sprawling as he leaned a little forward, and he
looked for all the world like a great spider dangling from the end of
a string, which so appealed to Grace Harlowe’s sense of humor that she
forgot herself and laughed. Being much heavier than she he was rapidly
gaining on her and would soon pass her at his present falling speed.
Grace, observing the ludicrousness of his position, quickly wrapped
her ankles about each other, not desiring to make such a spectacle of
herself as the balloon officer was doing.
Now they were abreast of each other and could look into each others’
faces. The Overton girl had been preparing herself for this very moment
and at the instant the major came near enough to catch the full import
of it, Grace smiled, and waved at him what ordinarily might have passed
for a joyous hand.
The major waved back and shouted something at her, but she was unable
to understand it. Voices up there sounded hollow, weak and far away.
A few moments later she was looking down on the top of his swaying
parachute, then Grace untangled herself and permitted her body to hang
limply, which she found much easier than keeping herself under a
strong physical strain.
“Hippy Wingate wouldn’t let me land his airplane. I wonder what
he would say were he to see me making a landing in Germany from a
parachute?” murmured the girl.
By this time objects began to grow out of the landscape in more or less
detail. Houses appeared; the Rhine shimmered in the sunlight that had
broken through the clouds, and here and there she thought she saw human
beings, though she could not be positive as to this. Several villages
came within her range of vision. Remarkable as it seemed to her, Grace
realized that she had lost all fear. She was beginning to feel a great
confidence in that filmy silk umbrella-shaped affair that was swaying
far above her, that confidence having been born when she saw how easily
it supported the major’s bulky figure.
“If the thing only will let me out without cutting up, I shall be well
pleased,” Grace told herself. “I wonder what has become of the major?”
He had passed out of her sight. Had the Overton girl looked for him
further to the westward, she might have discovered the silk parachute
settling down on the Rhine and, soon afterwards, the doughty major
floundering in its waters.
His weight had carried him down in nearly a straight line, while Grace,
being light, had drifted down the wind and was headed for a vineyard.
She eyed the terraced hillside dubiously.
“If I land there they surely will have to replant their vineyard. I
shall certainly leave a trail of devastation,” she chuckled. “In any
event it will have been accomplishing something to lay waste even a
small patch of enemy territory. Let me see, what am I to do? Oh, yes, I
am to cut the strings the instant I feel my feet touching the ground.”
Grace removed the knife-lanyard from her neck and gripped the handle of
the knife. Glancing up she fixed upon a point for cutting the rope, and
even reached up to it with the knife hand.
“I wish Elfreda might see me now,” she chuckled. “Instead of a
‘balloonatic’ she would call me a ‘parachutic.’ I never heard of such
an animal, but I must be it. Get ready, Grace Harlowe, and watch your
step,” she reminded herself. “Upon second thought I think I am just as
well satisfied that J. Elfreda is not to be a spectator of my landing.
I have a growing suspicion that I am about to make an exhibition of
myself. My, but that earth does look good!”
She could see human beings running up the terraces toward the point
at which she might confidently be expected to alight. Grace did
not approve of this, and wished they would all go away about their
business. Among them she discovered some men in German uniforms. Her
eyes narrowed.
“Boches! Too bad they couldn’t have had this opportunity of catching me
a few weeks ago. Here we are. I am now about to show the natives what
an American girl can do in piloting a parachute to earth.”
What the Overton girl had not taken into her reckoning was a tree
that stood directly in her downward path. She went through its outer
branches, but the parachute, relieved of a little of its weight, swayed
forward and missed the tree, straightening up as her weight was once
more thrown on the ropes.
The wind filled the parachute again, and it began to drift on, parallel
with the rows of terraces. In going through the tree, Grace had lost
the knife, but she did not miss it as yet, being concerned with her
landing and the raking that the branches of the tree had given her. She
discovered the loss when, upon reaching up to cut the rope, she found
she had nothing with which to cut.
It was at that instant that her feet touched the ground. Up to this
time the parachute had behaved very well indeed. As she already
had expressed it to herself, the animal proved to be “thoroughly
halter-broken.” However, the instant it felt that it was free, the
thing began to cut up. It lurched and bucked and Grace went through
half a dozen rows of vines, boring a path for herself with her head,
bowling over two women and a boy in her mad drive.
“Catch me!” she gasped, but if her plea was heard it was not heeded.
None of the spectators appeared to be eager to get within striking
distance of the bird-woman who was first being whipped in the air, then
on the vines of the Rhine vineyard. Her feet were in the air about as
much as they were on the ground, for the parachute had now changed its
course and was headed for the Rhine.
Ahead of her Grace espied a stone wall, and an idea came to her, for
her mind was working even if, up to that point, her body had been
unable to perform any functions of self-preservation.
“If I can get my feet against that wall as we go over, I may be able to
brace myself for a few seconds until something rips. Surely the silk
ought to tear in those circumstances.”
Her monologue was cut short by a dive into a thick hedge that divided
two vineyards. It seemed to Grace as if the raking she got was
literally tearing her to pieces. Her clothing, when she came through,
was in tatters, her body bore many deep scratches and cuts, and blood
from a scalp wound was trickling down her face. There was one side of
Grace Harlowe, though, that no amount of mauling could subdue--her
spirit of pluck.
“I’ll win yet,” she gritted, coming to her feet, which were jerked from
the ground, while she kept her gaze fastened on the stone fence at the
bottom of the rows of terraces.
There was, of course, the possibility of bumping her head against the
stone wall, as the major had once done, instead of striking it feet
first. If the former were her luck the result would be serious, so
the Overton girl tried to jockey the parachute, but with little more
success than had she been trying the same tactics on an outlaw mustang.
The wind down between the hills in the Rhine Valley was a variable
wind, that hurled her first in one direction, then in another. Just now
she was headed for the river--and the stone wall.
Grace met the wall feet first, as she had hoped to do. The shock to her
nervous system was terrific, and it seemed to the girl as if her limbs
were being driven up through her body. The parachute merely hesitated.
It took a mighty lunge with the assistance of a favoring blast of wind,
and jumped up a few feet into the air, taking Grace Harlowe with it,
then dived for the railroad tracks at the base of the bluff.
Grace went down the bank on her stomach, keeping her head up as well as
she could. She was suddenly yanked to her feet and slammed viciously
down on the roadbed, while the parachute wrapped itself about a
telegraph pole and went to sleep, a heap of torn silk, fit only for
souvenir neckties.