se!"

Chapter IX

Dropped from the Sky

Lieutenant Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick, Royal Air Service, was on
reconnaissance. A report, or it would be better to say a rumor,
had come to the British headquarters in German East Africa that
the enemy had landed in force on the west coast and was marching
across the dark continent to reinforce their colonial troops. In
fact the new army was supposed to be no more than ten or twelve days'
march to the west. Of course the thing was ridiculous--preposterous--but
preposterous things often happen in war; and anyway no good general
permits the least rumor of enemy activity to go uninvestigated.

Therefore Lieutenant Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick flew low toward
the west, searching with keen eyes for signs of a Hun army. Vast
forests unrolled beneath him in which a German army corps might
have lain concealed, so dense was the overhanging foliage of the
great trees. Mountain, meadowland, and desert passed in lovely
panorama; but never a sight of man had the young lieutenant.

Always hoping that he might discover some sign of their passage--a
discarded lorry, a broken limber, or an old camp site--he continued
farther and farther into the west until well into the afternoon.
Above a tree-dotted plain through the center of which flowed a
winding river he determined to turn about and start for camp. It
would take straight flying at top speed to cover the distance before
dark; but as he had ample gasoline and a trustworthy machine there
was no doubt in his mind but that he could accomplish his aim. It
was then that his engine stalled.

He was too low to do anything but land, and that immediately,
while he had the more open country accessible, for directly east of
him was a vast forest into which a stalled engine could only have
plunged him to certain injury and probable death; and so he came
down in the meadowland near the winding river and there started to
tinker with his motor.

As he worked he hummed a tune, some music-hall air that had been
popular in London the year before, so that one might have thought
him working in the security of an English flying field surrounded
by innumerable comrades rather than alone in the heart of an unexplored
African wilderness. It was typical of the man that he should be
wholly indifferent to his surroundings, although his looks entirely
belied any assumption that he was of particularly heroic strain.

Lieutenant Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick