United States or Malta ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Standing next the Prince was a brown-faced, wrinkled man with silver spectacles and fluffy, dingy-grey side-whiskers, who regarded Bert with a peculiar and disconcerting attention. The company sat after ceremonies Bert could not understand. At the other end of the table was the bird-faced officer Bert had dispossessed, still looking hostile and whispering about Bert to his neighbour.
"What nex'?" said Bert to himself. "'Orf stage, I suppose. That way," he said. "Go!" The Prince obeyed with remarkable alacrity. When he reached the head of the clearing, he said something quickly to the bird-faced man and they both, with an entire lack of dignity, RAN! Bert was struck with an exasperating afterthought. "Gord!" he cried with infinite vexation. "Why!
The bird-faced officer intervened, saying something in German and pointing skyward. Far away in the southwest appeared a Japanese airship coming fast toward them. Their conflict ended at that. The Prince was first to grasp the situation and lead the retreat. All three scuttled like rabbits for the trees, and ran to and for cover until they found a hollow in which the grass grew rank.
The Prince eyed Bert steadfastly, and Bert quailed under his eye. Slowly the Prince rose to his feet and the bird-faced officer jerked up beside him. Bert remained squatting. "Be quaiat," said the Prince. Bert perceived this was no moment for eloquence. The two Germans regarded him as he crouched there. Death for a moment seemed near.
The Bun Hill method was quite possibly practicable if there was nothing hopeless or incomprehensible in the engine. The Germans returned presently to find him already generously smutty and touching and testing knobs and screws and levers with an expression of profound sagacity. When the bird-faced officer addressed a remark to him, he waved him aside with, "Nong comprong. Shut it! It's no good."
Ever and again, in spite of his efforts to suppress them, certain personal impressions would scamper across the weltering confusion, the horrible mess of the exploded Prince, the Chinese aeronaut upside down, the limping and bandaged bird-faced officer blundering along in miserable and hopeless flight....
"If I do mend it," said Bert, struck by a new thought, "none of us ain't to be trusted to fly it." "I vill fly it," said the Prince. "Very likely break your neck," said Bert, after a pause. The Prince did not understand him and disregarded what he said. He pointed his gloved finger to the machine and turned to the bird-faced officer with some remark in German.
Bert expounded the Bun Hill theory of the relations of grub to efficiency in English, the bird-faced man replied with points about nations and discipline in German. The Prince, having made an estimate of Bert's quality and physique, suddenly hectored. He gripped Bert by the shoulder and shook him, making his pockets rattle, shouted something to him, and flung him struggling back.
He set out in the morning sunshine, gun in hand, scarcely troubling to walk softly. He went round the refreshment shed without finding any one, and then through the trees towards the flying-machine. He came upon the bird-faced man sitting on the ground with his back against a tree, bent up over his folded arms, sleeping, his bandage very much over one eye.
But he said, nevertheless, pointing through the trees, "dead man!" The bird-faced man intervened with a reply in German. "Dead man!" said Bert to him. "There." He had great difficulty in inducing them to inspect the dead Chinaman, and at last led them to him.
Word Of The Day