To Colonel John Decies it seemed that if soldiers schemed to adapt the flying-machine to purposes of death and destruction, doctors might do the same to purposes of life and salvation.  Think of the difference between being jolted for hours in a bullock-cart in the dust and heat and being borne through the air without jerk or jar.  Think of the hundreds of men who, in the course of one campaign, would be saved from the ghastly fate of lying unfound, unseen by the stretcher-bearers, to starve to death, to lie weltering in their blood, to live through days of agony....

He was making quite a name for himself by his experiments at the Kot Ghazi flying-school and by his articles and speeches on the formation and training of a R.A.M.C. flying branch.  Small beginnings would content him (provided they were intended to lead to great developments)—­an aeroplane at first, that could carry one or two special cases to which the ordinary means of transport would be fatal, and that could scour the ground, especially in the case of very broken terrain and hill-country, for overlooked cases, wounded men unable to move or call, and undiscovered by the searchers.

He was hard at work on the invention of a strong collapsible operating-table (that could readily be brought into use in the field and also be used in aerial transport) and a case for the concentration of equipment—­operation instruments, rubber gloves, surgical gauntlets, saline infusion apparatus, sterilizer, aseptic towels, chloroform, bandages, gauze, wool, sponges, drainage-tubing, inhaler, silk skeins, syringes, field tourniquets, waterproof cloth, stethoscope—­everything, and the whole outfit, table and all, weighing forty pounds.  This would be an improvement on the system of having to open half a dozen medical and surgical cases when operating on the line of march, cases requiring the most expert repacking after use ...

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Perhaps it was a sign of advancing years and weakening mind that this fine specimen of a fine service felt that, when flying some thousands of feet above the earth, he was nearer to Lenore in Heaven.  All his science and sad experience had failed to deprive him of a sub-conscious belief in an actual place “above,” a material Hereafter beyond the sky, and, when clouds cut him off from sight of the earth, he had a quaint, half-realized feeling of being in the ante-room of the Great House of many mansions, wherein dwelt Lenore.

Yes, when flying, Colonel John Decies felt that he was nearer to the woman he had lost nearly a quarter of a century before.  In one sense he may have been so, for he was a very reckless airman, and never in greater danger than when engaged in what he called “ground-scouring” among the air-current haunted, mist-haunted mountains of the Border.  He anticipated an early Border-war and realized that here would be a great opportunity for a keen-sighted and iron-nerved medical airman to locate, if not to pick up, overlooked wounded.  Here, too, would be a double need of such service in a country where “the women come out to cut up what remains”!  Imagine, too, cavalry reconnaissances and bad casualties a score of miles from medical help ...