The Foot of Time: A Novel of Australia and the South Seas: (1933)

248 THE FOOT OF TIME
The girl was country-bred—she was Australian—
she knew her bush.
And then she saw him—saw that eagle for which
mainly she had been searching, and made for him
as bullet makes for target. The enormous bird of
prey felt the pulsations of the plane in the air before
he noticed it. A greater than he was on wing.
and it behoved him to leave the booty while the
going was good. The eagle hawks saw him go in a
thunder of steel-strong wings. It was ominous, and
like one man they left the field with him. The
crows were last to leave, only because their intelligences
were slower in the uptake than those of the
eagle family. Then they left, and the earth
breathed anew.
And now Edith was near the spot, but she saw no
Bruce. The eagle had flown off rather soon, leaving
his hoped-for victim difficult to find. The plane
circled round and round, cleverly covering new
fields of vision with each section traversed, and all
the time Edith was looking for any possible landing
place which gave encouragement as a possibility for
taking off again. At last she found it—bumpy,
hilly, but cleared. It was some distance from the
place in which the girl imagined Bruce to be, and
the only possible take-off again would need to be
of a totally unusual character, and a more than
hazardous one. The aeronaut would need to approach
a precipice drop of full three thousand feet
at whatever lifting speed the comparatively short
run permitted—go right over the precipice, angling
volplane fashion, thereby hoping to acquire from
THE FOOT OF TIME 249
gravity more flying speed wherewith to straighten
up and climb before the crash. It was neck or
nothing, and Edith, with a prayer on her lips, took
the chance offered and landed. Bruno, an airsick
animal, was disembarked with difficulty, and instructed
to "seek him out, boy! Find him, then."
The huge animal, much below the weather, sat
on its haunches gazing at the girl, so peremptorily
ordering him about. Most unusual and improper!
Bruno cocked one ear up, leant his massive head
over sideways in a most comical manner, trying to
grasp what the trouble was all about. From the
pocket of her leather flying coat, Edith extracted
an old cap belonging to the hound's master, which
she had snatched up in her tempestuous exit from
the house at Vaucluse. She gave it to Bruno to
smell. "Fetch him out, then. Good boy! Seek
him. Find him, Bruno," she enjoined. At this
Bruno became intensely excited. Standing upright
he let out a series of deep-throated baying, long
drawn-out barks, then setting nose to ground he
began to grasp the import of the situation. "Oh!
you lovely great monster, Bruno! Seek him, pup;
find your master, boy; seek him, boy!"
Then Bruno put nose to air, sniffing the ether.
A slight breeze passed them, a few feet from the
ground—a typical mountain eddy. The dog grew
frantic with excitement, then leapt high in the air
to catch it. The monster had imagined he detected
in it some semblance of the owner of the cap, but
fell to earth again disappointed. Then he recommenced
his air sniffing. The ground he evidently