found an abandoned broken-wheeled
bullock-cart, from which he looted the bottom-boards, which were
planks six feet long, laid upon, but not fastened to, the framework of
the body of the cart. From the compound of the place (an ancient and
rarely-visited dak-bungalow, probably the most outlying and deserted
in India) he procured a bamboo pole that had once supported a lamp,
the long leg-rests of an old chair, and two or three sticks, more or
less serviceable for his purpose.

Returning to the camel, he ascended to where his passenger and pupil
awaited him. Over his shoulder he bore the planks, pole and sticks
that the contemptuous but invaluable camel had borne to a point a few
yards below the scene of the tragedy.

"Good egg," observed the younger man. "We'll do him up in those like a
mummy."

"Yes," returned the Colonel, "then carry him to the oont and bind him
along one side of the saddle, and then lead the beast down. Easily
sling him on to the machine, and there we are. Lucky we've got the
coil of cord. Fine demonstration for the Kot Ghazi fellers! Show that
the thing can be done, even without the proper kind of 'plane and
surgical outfit. What luck we spotted him--or that he fell just in our
return track!"

"Doubtless he was born to that end," observed the Captain, who was apt
to get a little peevish when hungry and tired.

And when the Army Aeroplane _Hawk_ returned from its "ground-scouring
for casualties" trip, lo, it bore, beneath and beside the pilot and
passenger, a real casualty slung in a kind of crude coffin-cradle of
planks and poles, a casualty in whose recovery the Colonel took the
very deepest interest, for was he not a heaven-sent case, born to the
end that he might be smashed to demonstrate the Colonel's theories?
But no credit was given to the vultures, without whom the "casualty"
would never have been found.

CHAPTER XIII.

FOUND.

Colonel John Decies, I.M.S. (retired), visiting the Kot Ghazi Station
Hospital, whereof his friend and pupil, Captain Digby-Soames, was
Commandant, scanned the temperature chart of the unknown, the
desperately injured "case," retrieved by his beloved flying-machine,
who, judging by his utterances in delirium, appeared to be even worse
damaged in spirit than he was in body.

"Very high again last night," he observed to Miss Norah O'Neill of the
Queen Alexandra Military Nursing Sisterhood.

"Yes, and very violent," replied Miss O'Neill. "I had to cal