planks and poles, a casualty in whose recovery the Colonel took the
very deepest interest, for was he not a heaven-sent case, born to the
end that he might be smashed to demonstrate the Colonel's theories?
But no credit was given to the vultures, without whom the "casualty"
would never have been found.




CHAPTER XIII.

FOUND.


Colonel John Decies, I.M.S. (retired), visiting the Kot Ghazi Station
Hospital, whereof his friend and pupil, Captain Digby-Soames, was
Commandant, scanned the temperature chart of the unknown, the
desperately injured "case," retrieved by his beloved flying-machine,
who, judging by his utterances in delirium, appeared to be even worse
damaged in spirit than he was in body.

"Very high again last night," he observed to Miss Norah O'Neill of the
Queen Alexandra Military Nursing Sisterhood.

"Yes, and very violent," replied Miss O'Neill. "I had to call two
orderlies and they could hardly hold him. He appeared to think he was
fighting a huge snake or fleeing from one. He also repeatedly
screamed: 'It is under my foot! It is moving, moving, moving _out_.'"

"_Got it_, by God!" cried the Colonel, suddenly smiting his forehead