Croft looked out of an embrasure and down. An arrow rattled against the stones beside him, and he drew back. But the one glance had been enough. This was grim reality he faced. In heaps and rows the rotting bodies of uncounted dead lay jumbled in dissolution beyond Atla's walls. He began to think it would be no mean undertaking to defeat the men of an army who fought like that.
"Back!" he said. "Back to my galley, Jadgor! Let us put together the flying device I have brought. Tomorrow I swear we shall give them new death from the skies."
And for the rest of that day Croft sweated and worked, assembling the airplane on Atla's broadest street, which, like Himyra's, faced the river—a splendid concourse, above a terrace, offering him a spot for starting, two hundred feet in width. What of the armored motors remained he had also driven up, and under their metal bodies he installed his batteries, wiring them to the ignition system—explaining to their drivers, how, should the former supply of power be thrown out of service, this auxiliary source might be employed.
Toward evening, however, he altered his plans. To his mind it appeared that the more unseen the destruction which came upon them, the greater on superstitious minds the effect might be. And as he knew even from his association with the Mazzerian serving-caste in the nation he had literally adopted, the Mazzerians were superstitious to a degree.
About twilight he loaded the plane with a good supply of bombs. Ascending from the broad thoroughfare, and returning to it, outlined as it would be by the fire-urns, which, as at Himyra, marked the banks of the Bith along the quays, would be no more than child's play. As a result, he decided to make his first bombing expedition beyond the walls so soon as night came down, carry what consternation he could to the Mazzerian forces. This decision he definitely reached after a conference with Jadgor, who announced that for a great distance before the walls the Mazzerian camps were nightly marked by the flares of many fires.
Jadgor, Medai, the major captains of their armies, and many of the citizens of Atla stood to witness Croft's start. Wearing his flying-suit which he had brought for the purpose, Jason climbed aboard. Then at his instruction two frightened-looking soldiers seized the blades of the propeller and turned the engine round. They let go and scampered well out of the way as it roared. The plane quivered, moved. It darted forward along the perfect pavement, tilted and took the air. In a moment it soared high above the walls. Croft shouted once and then forgot all else in the sight beneath his eyes.
As far as he could see before him, and to either side, the night was dotted with fires. In a wide semicircle they blinked and winked and flared. They outlined the main position of the Mazzerian army. His heart leaped into his breast, as a rising stench told him he was passing those rotting bodies stretched out among a mass of broken weapons at the foot of Atla's walls.
Then the walls were passed, and with the breath of a clean night in his nostrils, the roar of the engine in his ears, he swept toward the line of fires.
Far, far out he swung. It was his intention to circuit the back areas of the Mazzerian line—to come upon them not from in front, but from the rear—to make his coming appear that of some huge, undreamed monster of superstitious seeming, to traverse their main body from one end to the other, dropping bombs which, under the conditions, he felt could hardly fail of a telling effect.