“No.  I think you’ll have to stand by while I fly to Kot Ghazi and bring the necessary things for a temporary job, and then return and try to guide an ambulance waggon here.  Oh, for an aeroplane-ambulance!  This job brings it home to you pretty clearly, doesn’t it?  Or I might first go and have a look at the alleged dak-bungalow and see if we could possibly run him over there on a charpoy[30] or an improvised camel-stretcher.  It’ll be a ghastly job getting down.  I don’t know that you hadn’t better stick to him up here while I go straight back for proper splints and bandages and so forth, and bring another chap too ...  Where the devil have I seen him before?  I shall forget my own name next.”

The Colonel pondered a moment.

“Look here,” he decided.  “This case is urgent enough to justify a risky experiment.  He’s been here a devil of a time and if he’s not in a pukka hospital within the next few hours it’s all up with him.  He’s going to have the distinction of being the first casualty removed to hospital by flying-machine.  I’ll tie him on somewhere.  We’ll splint him up as well as possible, and then make him into a blooming cocoon with the cord, and whisk him away.”

“Pity we haven’t a few planks,” observed Captain Digby-Soames.  “We could make one big splint of his whole body and sling him, planks and all, underneath the aeroplane.”

“Well, you start splinting that right leg on to the left and stiffen the knees with something (you’ll probably be able to get a decent stick or two off that small tree), and shove the arm inside his leather legging.  We’ve two pairs of putties you can bandage with, and there are puggries on all three topis.  Probably his gun’s somewhere about, for another leg-splint, too.  I’ll get down to the machine for the cord and then I’ll skirmish around for anything in the nature of poles or planks.  I can get over to that hut and back before you’ve done.  It’ll be the camelling that’ll kill him.”

At the distant building the Colonel found an abandoned broken-wheeled bullock-cart, from which he looted the bottom-boards, which were planks six feet long, laid upon, but not fastened to, the framework of the body of the cart.  From the compound of the place (an ancient and rarely-visited dak-bungalow, probably the most outlying and deserted in India) he procured a bamboo pole that had once supported a lamp, the long leg-rests of an old chair, and two or three sticks, more or less serviceable for his purpose.

Returning to the camel, he ascended to where his passenger and pupil awaited him.  Over his shoulder he bore the planks, pole and sticks that the contemptuous but invaluable camel had borne to a point a few yards below the scene of the tragedy.

“Good egg,” observed the younger man.  “We’ll do him up in those like a mummy.”

“Yes,” returned the Colonel, “then carry him to the oont and bind him along one side of the saddle, and then lead the beast down.  Easily sling him on to the machine, and there we are.  Lucky we’ve got the coil of cord.  Fine demonstration for the Kot Ghazi fellers!  Show that the thing can be done, even without the proper kind of ’plane and surgical outfit.  What luck we spotted him—­or that he fell just in our return track!”