THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 







H. M. s. "canning" and its kite baboon 



The captive balloon is the all-seeing eye of a warship. It not only gives warning of 

 approaching enemy fleets, but it readily detects the lurking submarine. It also directs the 

 fire of long-range guns. 



of the crowd, but a little later he had a 

 most terrifying experience. While cross- 

 ing the lines he had to pass over a very- 

 intense battle raging on the ground. 

 Shells were dropping everywhere and he 

 knew that in flying over this ground he 

 was passing through air which was liter- 

 ally full of shells in their flight. 



Suddenly, with an awful sound, a shell 

 struck his machine about two feet behind 

 where he sat, passing clean through the 

 body of the machine without exploding. 

 The unfortunate part of it was that in 

 passing through the machine it practically 

 severed all his control wires, which meant 

 that all the mechanism which directed the 

 machine — except a few strands of the 

 cable — had been destroyed. 



His machine immediately went into a 

 spinning nose dive and fell, out of con- 

 trol. Simply by means of the most deli- 



cate handling and great skill he managed, 

 when only 2,000 feet from the ground, to 

 regain control of his machine and headed 

 it in the direction of home. Any ordinary 

 pilot would have been content to come 

 down and land in the first field ; but not 

 so Ball. His aerodrome was still twenty 

 miles away ; yet he flew this damaged 

 machine all the way to it and landed there 

 without further damage. 



His flight home must have been a terri- 

 ble experience, as the shell in passing 

 through his machine had strained it and 

 damaged it tremendously, and at any 

 moment the whole machine might have 

 collapsed and fallen in pieces ; yet Ball, 

 with his customary coolness and courage, 

 brought it back home to his aerodrome 

 and landed. Twenty minutes later he was 

 in another machine and on his way to the 

 lines to look for another fight. 



