as the
planes went weaving down, the hideous monsters leaped into the cockpits
and began their abominable meal.

* * * * *

Not a single plane came back. Planes and skeletons, and here and there a
shell of a dead beetle, itself completely devoured, were all that was
found afterward.

The gunners stayed at their posts till the last moment, firing round
after round of shell and shrapnel, with insignificant results. Their
skeletons were found not twenty paces from their guns--where the
Gunners' Monument now stands.

Half an hour after the flight had first been sighted the news was being
radioed to Sydney, Melbourne, and all other Australian cities, advising
instant flight to sea as the only chance of safety. That radio message
was cut short--and men listened and shuddered. After that came the
crowding aboard all craft in the harbors, the tragedies of the _Eustis_,
the _All Australia_, the _Sepphoris_, sunk at their moorings. The
innumerable sea tragedies. The horde of fugitives that landed in New
Zealand. The reign of terror when the mob got out of hand, the burning
of Melbourne, the sack of Sydney.

And south and eastward, like a resistless flood, the beetle swarm came
pouring. Well had Bram boasted that he would make the earth a desert!

* * * * *

A hundred miles of poisoned carcasses of sheep, extended outside
Sydney's suburbs, gave the first promise of success. Long mounds of
beetle shells testified to the results; moreover, the beetles that fed
on the carcasses of their fellows, were in turn poisoned and died. But
this was only a drop in the bucket. What counted was that the swift
advance was slowing down. As if exhausted by their efforts, or else
satiated with food, the beetles were doing what the soldiers did.

They were digging in!

Twenty-four miles from Sydney, eighteen outside Melbourne, the advance
was stayed.

Volunteers who went out from those cities reported that the beetles
seemed to be resting in long trenches that they had excavated, so that
only their shells appeared above ground. Trees were covered with
clinging beetles, every wall, every house was invisible beneath the
beetle armor.

Australia had a respite. Perhaps only for a night or day, but still
time to draw breath, time to consider, time for the shiploads of
fugitives to get farther from the continent that had become a shambles.

And then the cry went up, not only fro