m that his descent had revived and
roused to flames again a discussion, a topic, that had been burning
continuously, that had smouldered only through sheer exhaustion of
material during the temporary diversion of the gramophone, a discussion
that had drawn these men together, rifle in hand, the one supreme topic
of the whole world, the War and the methods of the War. He found any
question of his personality and his personal adventures falling into the
background, found himself taken for granted, and no more than a source
of information. The ordinary affairs of life, the buying and selling
of everyday necessities, the cultivation of the ground, the tending
of beasts, was going on as it were by force of routine, as the common
duties of life go on in a house whose master lies under the knife of
some supreme operation. The overruling interest was furnished by those
great Asiatic airships that went upon incalculable missions across the
sky, the crimson-clad swordsmen who might come fluttering down demanding
petrol, or food, or news. These men were asking, all the continent was
asking, "What are we to do? What can we try? How can we get at them?"
Bert fell into his place as an item, ceased even in his own thoughts to
be a central and independent thing.

After he had eaten and drunken his fill and sighed and stretched and
told them how good the food seemed to him, he lit a cigarette they gave
him and led the way, with some doubts and trouble, to the flying-machine
amidst the larches. It became manifest that the gaunt young man, whose
name, it seemed, was Laurier, was a leader both by position and natural
aptitude. He knew the names and characters and capabilities of all the
men who were with him, and he set them to work at once with vigour and
effect to secure this precious instrument of war. They got the thing
down to the ground deliberately and carefully, felling a couple of trees
in the process, and they built a wide flat roof of timbers and tree
boughs to guard their precious find against its chance discovery by any
passing Asiatics. Long before evening they had an engineer from the next
township at work upon it, and they were casting lots among the seventeen
picked men who wanted to take it for its first flight. And Bert found
his kitten and carried it back to Logan's store and handed it with
earnest admonition to Mrs. Logan. And it was reassuringly clear to him
that in Mrs. Logan both he and the kitten had found a congeni