"We'll tower by bare inches, it seemed. into level flight again. do that better than you soon, my friend," he said. A faint, far-off, humming vibration of the air, felt rather than heard, caused them to look up over the walls to where, against the eau-de-nil sky, three aircraft showed like midges. "There they are," said Pat, getting to her feet and unstrapping the camera. "Horse and foot and .. birds.' I wonder if the dust of dead kings is stirred?" The aeroplanes drew nearer, B.E. 28, prehistoric machines to Western eyes, but the last word in flying for India. They swung out on a circle to Humayon's tomb, and then turning, bore down on Indrapat, looking like long thin dragonflies gleaming in the sinking sun. "I told Adam to come low over the South Gate," said Pat, as she focussed the camera. Adam Smythe was her cousin, a keen lad fresh from home, who had recently been posted to Billy's squadron. I thought that would give us a real fasoinating photo, the wall and gates of the oity of dead kings and 'planing above them, the living realisation of mankind's eternal dream." "It's a fine symbol, dear, and it's good for mankind to see its dreams realised sometimes, even if only partly, lest it lose heart altogether. Look out; here he comes.' The leading 'plane swooped down to the gate, the pilot pulling her up at the last moment-clearing the gate "Good lad," murmured Manning, who liked to see olean well-judged work. "Got him, Pat?" "Nicely, thank you," she replied, as she turned on the film. The whole amphitheatre of the old walls seemed full of sound as the machines circled low above them, and the steady hum of the engines woke the kites to remonstrance as one 'plane even lower than the rest swept past the Sher Mandal, Pat waving back in response to the observer's raucous greeting on the Klaxon. She secured another snap of one that swept round over the mosque, and a final one as Adam Smythe, cart-wheeling above the west gate, slid back over the river and then banked left handed towards Delhi Fort, the other two close behind. "Well, Pat, there's some display for the ghosts of the old kings. I wonder if Baber and Humayon and Akbar are anywhere about at the moment? I'm sure Akbar would have been as keen as nuts to see that display." "Or Baber, who held that no knowledge could come amiss to a king," said Pat, closing the camera. "They were a sporting lot anyway," remarked Billy, as he seated himself on the edge of the low ciroling wall. I think these old buildings of theirs always seem friendly to people like you and me, dreamers of dreams." He watched the 'planes turn Sort of 'bridge-the-centuries' west towards the aerodrome pioture." out at New Cantonments, and pointed to the white blur that marks Imperial Delhi. "The eighth city," he said. "I wonder if Qatb-ud-Din Aybek gets up o' nights to look at it from Mahrauli, or Tughlak Shah from his ruined city, or Prithvi Raj from the tumbled walls by the Qutb, and how long they give it to last. 'After me cometh a builder, Tell him, I, too, have known.' Myself I prefer this; they knew how to build in those days, and didn't infliot 'temporary' rubbish on one. I'll bet the Lath will outlast the eighth city, as it's outlasted the other seven.” A ear rumbled in under the massive archway, and a short fat man got out and walked up towards the Sher Mandal. "Capt. Walker," said Pat. "He said he might be out this way to-night, so I told him to look for us here." He came up the plinth and waved to the Mannings. "Come up and have drinks," called Pat. "You're too late for tea." "Ta muohly," he shouted, and vanished into the staircase built in the thickness of the wall to emerge presently on the top. "What's the stunting display for? Some one going on leave?" "No; only a special séance for the wife who wanted some allegorical photos of the old walls with a bus over them. Walker settled himself in comfort with a long peg and lit a eheroot. "Interesting lecture that of yours last night, Majer, but I don't follow the part about the birds when you said we're not flying really, only making a fictitious imitation. Surely the cases are not parallel. The bird is a living thing in its own element, and that makes all the difference." "But the fact of its being the bird's element, as you call it, can't alter the fundamental laws of gravity, of action and reaction, of air pressure and resistance. The fact still remains, that certain classes of birds achieve continuous soaring flight without any apparent expenditure of force; whereas we, to do the same, have to fit a huge engine and expend thousands of foot-pounds of energy. There must be something we haven't found yet." "And you and Mrs Manning are going to find it? Well, wish you luok; but I think you're looking for the impossible. Besides, even if it does exist and you find it, what will it enable you to do that our modern machines can't?" "Save weight firstly—the weight of the engine and fuel; secondly, make a reliable machine instead of an unreliable one; and thirdly, give us the silent aeroplane. The next war is going to be won in the air; and an absolutely reliable silent machine with no engine to go wrong and the weight of the engine put into armouring and armament, is going to knock every other kind of bus out of sky. And then God help civil population of the losers, for they'll get it night and day until they chuck their hand in! Five hundred conventions won't stop it, now that every one has realised that the old idea of armies is dead-armies as opposed to non-combatants, that is. Now and henceforward wars are going to be the affair of the whole nation." Walker looked at him. "Go it, Major. Faney enthusing like that!" Manning smiled. "Rather diffusion of words to the mouth, I'm afraid; but it's my pet lunacy, and the memsahib shares it." "But," put in Walker, "I thought wars were going to be off in the future. League of Nations; eternal embracings, &o., &e." "I think not, until we render war so utterly terrible that no nation will dare to make it. When you execute the nation that goes to war, as you hang the man who outs his neighbour's throat, methodically and inexorably, then war will go out of fashion; and there, it seems to me, that the perfected aeroplane is the obvious instrument to suppress war. If, for instance, on Germany starting war in 1914, we had been in a position to own the skies and send over enough wellequipped perfect aircraft to blot out methodically the country from the German border eastward, mile after mile, hour after hour, with explosive and gas, the war would not have lasted a week." "I don't think that would ever be possible. Whatever one side turns out with in the way of new frightfulness, the other side is sure to find a counter. It is only the old old story of the gun and the armour.' "Yes, but it wants time to find the counter-measure. My point is that, if some nation finds out a revolutionising secret like that of true flight, and keeping it really secret get their blow in first without 8 shadow of warning, the other side will never recover in time to find a remedy." "Well, I hope it won't come in my time. I prefer the oldfashioned out-and-thrust type of game with a certain amount of sport in it. Cold-blooded elimination of the other bird doesn't appeal to me. But to come back to our muttons: do you honestly believe there is still some undiscovered force, as you made out in your lecture?" "Every time. It's the only thing that explains an otherwise inexplicable phenomenen." "Don't you think that perhaps it's a question of ascending currents of air? I've noticed kites and ravens soaring in the hills over re-entrants, where the mist, driving up, showed an unmistakable upward wind." "Yes, possibly in some cases that is so. And certainly kites like hovering round a natural breakwater where the wind must drive up, as you can see any day over Delhi Fort walls. But that doesn't explain the birds you see olimbing up and up, without ever a beat beat of wing, in a hot dead calm." "Probably the heated air is ascending and taking them up although there is no wind showing." "All right in theory, but hardly practicable, because as a rule the upward speed of the air would nowhere near suffice to keep the bird in even horizontal flight, assuming him to be gliding with gravity as his motive power, still less to carry him upward, even after allowing for his head resistance being far less than that of any type of aeroplane yet built. A very strong wind deflected sharply upwards, as by a high wall, could do it within a limited area under favourable conditions, but you don't get that where you see the birds ciroling up on a still day in the plains, for instance." "Well, I don't understand it, but I think you're on an impossible quest myself. When you can make feathers and flesh and blood you might find it, always assuming that there is anything to find, which, mind you, I don't by any means concede yet.' "Anyhow, it doesn't cost anything, and it interests us no end, and that's something these days. Talking of interest, what about the prospects of leave?" "Fairish to good. Me for Chamba and the little bears next month. Three months of the best, I hope. I'm bored to death with taking Members of Council for joy-rides, and talking shop about 'commercial aviation' to greasy profiteers in the intervals of doing postman. What are you two going to do in the leave line?" "Laze in a house-boat on the Wular and then drift up to Gandarbal, and after that trek up beyond Sonamarg. Think of the far snows, and the swirl of ice-water down the Sinde valley!" Pat stood up and looked north-east over the plain, where the rim of the sky was rapidly darkening, the blue deepening to indigo and dusky purple as the radiance died out of the western sky. High overhead a flight of cranes barred the sky, ghostly in the fading light. "Time for home, isn't it, Mrs Manning?" said Walker. "It's getting late and you're dining with me before the show tonight." "All right. Call up the coolie-will you, please?-for the things," she replied mechanically. "What are you looking at, child?" asked Billy. Walker was busy shouting to the coolie below. yellow flame from burning hut and byre as the terror drew closer! The last frantic efforts, the sorties, the final culminating horror of the assault with the gateways ohoked with dead and dying as the stormers, drunk with lust of blood, swept in in a sourry of steel. "And now we stand here with half a world talking of endless peace as though men's passions had radically changed. But I think I can feel the dread still, out of the north as ever-vast, formless, menacing." She shivered slightly. "Stupid, aren't I, Billy, dear? Be glad you're not a woman." She turned and followed Walker down the steep stone steps. "Mind you don't imitate old Humayon, Captain Walker, and take all the steps in one," she said with a light laugh. "Even Billy's unknown force wouldn't help you then." III. THE BLUE 'PLANES. In the first light of the dawn, two men were standing on the aerodrome at New Delhi. The elder of the two, a man of medium height, with blue eyes and grey moustache, wore General's badges on his Flying Corps kit. He limped slightly when he walked, but his face was keen and his bearing alert, and he was younglooking for his rank. He turned to the other man, a subaltern, who was ruefully surveying the aerodrome. It seemed to have suffered considerably, being methodically ploughed up with bomb-craters until there was barely a clear fifty-yard run in any direction. Behind them a row of temporary hangars appeared to have shared the damage, two of them being little more than twisted girders and charred timbers. “Lucky we had that underground hangar ready last night, Bob. I wonder they didn't try this aerodrome before." "Hardly worth their while, I suppose, sir. It's more amusing to shoot us out of the skies than wrecking our landinggrounds. And both forms of amusement are equally safe for them, since our machines are, if possible, as antediluvian as our Archies." The subaltern's tone was wrathfully despondent, and with good reason. The unexpected war had found India with but a few squadrons of machines, intended only for work against tribesmen, and utterly outclassed by the enemy's aircraft, thanks to his new petrol turbine-engines, which gave twice the power for weight of any other nation's. The enormous success of his carefully guarded secret had probably been one of the contributing factors to his sudden declaration of war-a war sought for the destruction of our civilisation and all it stands for. New machines were being |