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. Fancy enthusing like that!"

Manning smiled. "Rather diffusion of words to 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., &o."

"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

My

"Yes, but it wants time to find the counter-measure. 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 a 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 phenomenon."

"Don't you think that perhaps it's a question of ascending currents of air? I've noticed kites and ravens scaring 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 climbing up and up, without ever a 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 circling 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 prospeots 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.

'Nothing. Only wondering what it was like, when they stood here and looked out to the north for the invader, year after year, century after century. Can't you picture the old-time sentries leaning on their spears watching, and the wailing women on the walls staring out into the dusk, with the horizon stabbed by the ever-nearing spears

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 choked with dead and dying as the stormers, drunk with lust of blood, swept in in a sourry of steel.

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 Billy's unknown force wouldn't help

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 unexpeoted war had found India with but a few squadrons of machines, intended only for work against tribesmen, and utterly outclassed by the enemy's airoraft, thanks to his new petrol turbine-engines, which 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 oivilisation and all it stands for.

New machines were being

rushed out from home, but could not be expected for another ten days at the earliest, even provided that the Canal remained open. Concentration was consequently being hampered in every way, for the Indian 'planes had been simply swept out of the air, and all day long, and every day, the bridges and main railway janctions were alive with bursting bombs, and heavy with drifting gas-clouds; while at night the burning wreckage of trains and dumps gave the enemy 'planes the most useful of guiding lights.

The enormously increased range of aircraft placed Delhi within reach of the larger machines; and being the capital and an important railway centre, the enemy visited it regularly. During the six days that operations had lasted they only lost one 'plane, and that due more to Archie's luck than good judgment. The native population had largely fled out into the districts where, as in plaguetime, the country - side was scattered all over with little encampments wherein the fat Delhi banias sat shivering, while the blue 'planes circled overhead, dropping an 0008sional gas - bomb for the pleasure of seeing an encampment break up. The people, however, had learnt by now not to come back after the bomb had burst, but to wait until the evening winds had cleared the haze where the contorted, blue-lipped remains lay.

"I'll just go over and ex

plain things to the pioneers, sir," continued the subaltern. "They ought to get a short run clear for you very soon now. Lahore's not reported sighting the beasts yet."

"I'll walk over too and have a look at the 'Hawk,'” replied the General.

At one corner of the aerodrome a working party of Madras pioneers were putting the finishing touches to a ramp running down below ground, evidently leading to some kind of large dug-out. A camouflage soreen just removed had hitherto concealed the entrance from above. At the bottom of the ramp two mechanics were sliding back steel doors which revealed an electrically-lighted concrete-walled shed.

General Manning walked down and entered the shed, leaving Bob Trevor in consultation with the subaltern of pioneers, who was supervising the clearance of a run between the bomb-craters.

Inside the dug-out, or hangar as it really was, stood a grey biplane of an altogether new type. It possessed no propeller, nor as far as could be seen any engine. The wings, folded back on either side, were ridged on top from front to back with laminated plates of a peculiar grey metal; while on the under side, let into the featherweight metal skin which, both on fuselage and wings, replaced the fabric of earlier models, ran row upon row of transparent celluloid tubes enclosing metal fila

ments.

In some respects the machine