It is one of the drawbacks of aerial travel that conversation can only be carried on in shouts.  Smith would have liked to talk over things with Rodier, but the noise of the engine and the boom of the air as the machine cut through it smothered his voice unless he bellowed.  Only a few words passed between them as they flew along a little distance out to sea.  Rodier bathed two slight wounds he had received in the scuffle with water from the pots filled during the storm, and assured Smith that they were nothing to trouble about.

Some few minutes after leaving the inhospitable village they noticed the smoke of a steamer, a good deal nearer the shore than the dhows which they had seen occasionally on the Gulf.  It was too far distant for them to determine its size and nationality, or to guess the direction in which it was bound.  Smith decided to speak it in passing, but, observing that the stay had not been thoroughly fixed in the hurry of their departure, he looked about for a suitable landing-place, where the finishing touches might be given.  The coast was rocky and precipitous, and the tops of the cliffs were strewn for a considerable distance inland with innumerable boulders, large and small, which would render landing dangerous, and starting perhaps more dangerous still.  At length, however, just as he was thinking of running inland, in spite of the loss of time, Rodier caught sight of a large expanse of smooth rock, left bare by the falling tide.  He pointed it out to Smith, who made a hasty calculation of its extent, and judged that it would serve his purpose.  Steering to it, he circled round it and dropped gently upon its western end, scaring off a flamingo that was sunning itself there in solitary state.

“We came well out of that, Roddy,” he said, as they set to work on the stay.

“But we lose time by all these stops, mister,” replied Rodier.  “We can perhaps make it up if you keep your gold in your pocket.”

“I made a mistake there, certainly.  If anything of the kind occurs again our motto must be ‘take it or leave it.’”

“Just as you say to a cabby.”

“You are sure you are not hurt much?”

“No more than with a cat’s scratches.  You came in the stitch of time, though.”

“‘A stitch in time saves nine,’” quoted Smith, smiling a little at the Frenchman’s mistake.  “That’s why we had better make a good job of this.  We don’t want to stop again.”

Ten minutes’ work sufficed to fix the stay firmly in its place.  Smith again started the engine, the aeroplane taking the air when it was only half-way across the rock.  They looked around for the steamer when they were again going at full speed, but it was no longer visible.  In a few minutes, however, the smoke again came into view, and as they rapidly approached it Smith was delighted to see that it came from the funnel of a small gunboat, which was steaming in the same direction as their own flight, making probably for Bombay or Karachi.  The chances were that such a vessel in these waters was British, so Smith steered towards it, shouting to Rodier that they might perhaps arrange a tit-for-tat with the Baluchis.