“Good afternoon!” he called for the third time.

Still she made no response. He gently pinched the lobe of her left ear. It was warm to the touch, but his act failed to arouse her.

“Come, come! Wake up!” he said loudly, and this time he shook her, finding her body flexible with life. He failed, however, to awaken her.

Nor, he assured himself, was the rear cockpit occupied, although here were the controls of the plane.

“Is she dead?” asked Elizabeth from the car.

“No, but there is something peculiar about her. Come here, and have a look.” Then, when she had joined him: “She looks exactly as though she is asleep, but if she is I can’t wake her. Where, I wonder, is the pilot?”

“Walked away for assistance, I suppose. The plane appears to be quite undamaged. Ought we not to lift her out? She may be merely in a faint.”

“Wait… one moment! Don’t move about!”

Nettlefold’s bush-acquired instincts now came into play. His gaze was directed to the ground in the vicinity of the machine. As mentioned, the grass butts were widely spaced, and between each cropped butt the lake surface was composed of fine reddish sand. Their own boot and shoe prints from the car were plainly discernible, but there were no other tracks left by a human being. The pilot had not jumped from the machine to the ground on their side. Neither had the girl.

Having walked round to the far side of the machine, the cattleman discovered that neither the girl nor the pilot had dropped to the ground on that side. When he rejoined Elizabeth he had made a complete circuit, and he at once proceeded to make a second, this time one of greater circumference.

“There wasn’t a pilot,” he said when he again joined his daughter. “That girl must have piloted the aeroplane herself. No one has left it after it landed here.”