Going down that side of the escarpment, crossing the valley floor and scrambling up the other side was no easy task. Bush thorns caught at their uniforms, and jagged points of rock inflicted more than a couple of bruises on their bodies. They sacrificed body safety for speed, however, and presently they were flat on their stomachs on the top of the other escarpment and peering ahead at the dune-humped stretches of sun-painted sand.
The Italian plane was now down very low. It wasn't more than three or four hundred feet above the surface of the sand. It was a good five miles away from them, however—much, much too far for them to make out the pilot seated in the pit. Breathlessly they watched the plane nose down even lower. Then suddenly Dave let out a startled cry and nudged Freddy with his elbow.
"Look!" he cried. "He's dumped something over the side. Looked like some kind of a box to me. Did you see it?"
"I saw it," Freddy replied in a voice reverberating with excitement. "And I see something else, too, to the left of where that box-shaped thing appeared to hit the ground. Look hard, Dave. See those—those little humps? They look like little sand dunes, but I'll bet anything they're not."
"No bet!" Dave breathed after a long moment of silence. "Freddy, there's something very screwy going on. Those humps are little shacks, or huts. So help me, that's a village over there. Yet darned if I can spot a single palm tree."
"And there's somebody there!" Freddy whispered tensely. "There must be, or that plane's pilot wouldn't be dumping anything over the side. Look! He's climbing now, and heading back where he came from. Dave, we're the luckiest two chaps in all Libya right now."
"Maybe," Dave admitted grudgingly. Then, giving him a keen look, "What makes you say it?"
Freddy didn't answer at once. He chewed on his lower lip and kept his eyes fixed on the distant scene.
"Do you think you could spot those humps from say five or ten thousand feet in the air?" he suddenly asked.
"Five or ten thousand?" Dave echoed with a laugh. "Unless I knew they were there, like that Italian bird must have known, I would probably sail right over them at five hundred feet, and not know the difference."