The two boys watched the specks in silence. At last one began to grow larger, seemed to be falling in wide spirals. The other had vanished. The falling aeroplane started rising again into the middle sky, then stopped suddenly, burst into flames, and fluttered down behind the hills, leaving an irregular trail of smoke.
"More garbage," said the ruddy-faced youth, as he rose to his feet.
"Shrapnel. What a funny place to shoot shrapnel!"
"They must have got the bead on that bunch of material the genie's bringing in."
There was an explosion and a vicious whine of shrapnel bullets among the trees. On the road a staff-car turned round hastily and speeded back.
Martin got up from where he was lying on the grass under a pine tree, looking at the sky, and put his helmet on; as he did so there was another sharp bang overhead and a little reddish-brown cloud that suddenly spread and drifted away among the quiet tree-tops. He took off his helmet and examined it quizzically.
"Tom, I've got a dent in the helmet."
Tom Randolph made a grab for the little piece of jagged iron that had rebounded from the helmet and lay at his feet.
"God damn, it's hot," he cried, dropping it; "anyway, finding's keepings." He put his foot on the shrapnel splinter.