'I've never seen the things before,' said the first.
'Bigger than I thought,' said the second.
The third comer arrived. He stared for a moment at the bombs and then
turned his eyes to the dead man with a crushed chest who lay in a muddy
place among the green stems under the centre of the machine.
'One can take no risks,' he said, with a faint suggestion of apology.
The other two now also turned to the victims. 'We must signal,' said the
first man. A shadow passed between them and the sun, and they looked up
to see the aeroplane that had fired the last shot. 'Shall we signal?'
came a megaphone hail.
'Three bombs,' they answered together.
'Where do they come from?' asked the megaphone.
The three sharpshooters looked at each other and then moved towards the
dead men. One of them had an idea. 'Signal that first,' he said, 'while
we look.' They were joined by their aviators for the search, and all
six men began a hunt that was necessarily brutal in its haste, for
some indication of identity. They examined the men's pockets, their
bloodstained clothes, the machine, the framework. They turned the bodies
over and flung them aside. There was not a tattoo mark. . . . Everything
was elaborately free of any indication of its origin.
'We can't find out!' they called at last.
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