"Pardon me, sir, are you intending to lay a mine, floating or otherwise?"
Bob had not waited for the conclusion of the question, but hurried to the little private store behind the house, from which he returned presently with a quantity of dynamite. The Babu was too slow for him. He sent Chunda Beg and Shan Tai hunting for tins, and as they were prepared according to his directions, he carefully filled them up with dynamite and securely fastened the lids. When he had fifteen ready, he put them into a basket, and carried them himself along the pathway to the aeroplane. Fazl had meanwhile got everything ready for another flight.
"You know what a bomb is, Fazl?" said Bob.
The Gurkha grinned.
"Well, these tins are bombs. Put them just below your seat: take care not to drop one. We are going up the river: give me the tins one by one as I ask for them."
They started. For the first mile or two Bob kept very low over the river, seeing here and there, at long intervals, traces of the fight waged between the Pathans and the Kalmucks--figures lying prone and motionless, others sitting with their backs against the rocks, one or two limping painfully along. Presently he heard the dull cracks of rifles, though as yet he could not see the combatants. As the sounds grew louder, he rose higher: with his explosive cargo on board it was more than ever necessary that he should keep out of range. Experience had already shown him that the aeroplane in full flight was a very difficult object to hit with ordinary weapons; but nothing must be left to chance now.
CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH
RALLYING THE PATHANS
Six or seven miles above the mine the gorge contracted, leaving a space that barely exceeded twice the breadth of the aeroplane. In his first flights along the river Bob had felt rather nervous in threading this narrow passage. It was here that he found the two parties of miners. He reduced the speed of the aeroplane as much as he could, and at the altitude to which he had now ascended he was able to get a pretty good general view of the position of affairs as he flew over. It was impossible to distinguish details. The figures of the men were like dots on a map. The track and the adjacent ground seemed absolutely flat and level, though Bob knew that it was really much broken, and of constantly varying height. But he made rapid inferences from what he saw, and by the time he had passed over both the parties of combatants he was in no doubt as to his course of action.
What he saw was, up-stream, a small group, stationary, in the narrowest part of the valley: some little distance from them, down-stream, a larger group, also stationary, and a number of scattered individuals, moving southward, looking like flies crawling slowly over a dish, but all in the same direction. The inference he drew from these observations was that the Pathans, having been kept on the run to this point, had taken advantage of the nature of the ground to turn at bay, either in desperation, or to snatch a rest before continuing their retreat: and that the Kalmucks had separated, one party holding the track, the other scaling the hill-side above in order to turn the Pathans' flank. At the moment of his passing over he heard a faint crackle like the rustling of paper, and saw puffs of smoke among each band of combatants. The men were firing briskly, no doubt from behind the shelter of rocks.