Bonaparte did not see the machine. It had come from the west, possibly skirting the northern edge of the hill range. Had it come from the north or north-west, he could not have failed to see it in the picture framed within a leafy arch of Gothic type.

The sound of the aircraft engine had faded to a low buzz, but the crows in the branches above Bonaparte refused to leave, although they must have known he was not more than twelve feet beneath them. They continued their noisy defiance of the machine, which had been to them an even greater terror than a human being could be.

Bonaparte removed the letter from his swag and began itsrestrapping, his hands working automatically, his gaze directed at that part of the road where next the car would appear.

The car did appear, and at the same time Bonaparte heard the aeroplane returning. Its pilot could not be searching for a landing otherwise he would have selected the plain. He could hardly be lost, for there was the road to follow. The machine certainly had come from the west, yet westward stretched hundreds of miles of open semi-desert country, empty of settlement. Why fly in the direction of Shaw’s Lagoon for perhaps twenty miles, then turn and come back?

The frightened crows clung determinedly to their sanctuary. Bony lifted the swag from his legs to put it aside. His action was too much for the birds. They cawed and fluttered among the branches, but still were too frightened by the oncoming plane to leave. Theircawings were shut off by the thundering menace rushing towards them in their own element. They saw the vast hawk swooping upon their retreat, clung to the branches and shrieked defiance as it passed low above them. They saw the steel egg it dropped.

Fortunately for Bonaparte it was a small bomb. Fortunately for him, too, he was holding the swag in front of his body whilst seated on the ground. The bomb burst on the site of the now dead camp fire. Its explosion filled the shelter with dust and fumes, and sent outward steel fragments that lanced upward and severed leaves, to drop them through the dusty air.