“They hit one,” said Mr. Berry.

I let in the clutch, we sped on once more.  Bang! a tire burst.

Motor driving in Serbia is not a profession, it is an art.  We were on another of these first-class Serbian roads.  Presently we came to a long downhill.

“That is the place,” said Mr. Berry to Sister Hammond, “where we spent the night last winter when the motor stuck in the mud.  There, beneath that tree.”

We shrugged our way down the hill, and presently came into the gipsy environments of Kragujevatz.

A man stopped us, holding up a hand.

“Bombe,” he said.

We got out.  In the soft earth at the side of the road was a neat hole, four inches in diameter.  Peering down we could see the steel handle of the unburst bomb.  We next passed a smashed paling, in the garden behind a crowd were searching for relics.  An old woman had been killed, they said.  We turned into the main street and plunged into a large crowd.  The pavement had been torn up, and people were grubbing in the mud; pieces of charred wood were passed from hand to hand.

“That’s a bit of propeller,” said one.  “No; it’s a bit of the frame,” said another.  A girl proudly held up a large piece of map scorched all round the edges.

“And the men?” we asked.

“Nemachke (Germans),” answered the crowd; “both dead; one here, one over there,” pointing to the middle of the road.

We came into the Stobarts’ camp, pitched up on the hill behind the Kragujevatz pleasure ground.

“Did you see the aeroplanes?” they cried, running towards us.

“No,” we answered; “but we saw the shrapnel.”

“One was hit—­it was wonderful.  They were flying just over here, and a shrapnel burst quite close; and then one saw a thin stream of smoke come from the plane; then a little flicker.  It seemed to fall so slowly.  Then it burst into flames and came down like a great comet.”

“D——­n!” we said:  “if only that machine had been working right yesterday.”

We took our car down to the arsenal, and I left Sava to take it to bits and get it opened out, for there had been a bit of a knock in the crank case.  The remains of the smashed aeroplane were piled in the yard, and from the way it had twisted up without breaking one could see from what beautiful metal the machinery was made.  Some of the French experts denied that the guns had hit it—­giving as their reason that one of its own bombs had exploded.  But one of the engineers put his hand into a big hole which was beneath the crank case and drew out a shrapnel ball.  I thought that would settle it, but the Frenchmen were not convinced.  The shells were bursting fifty metres too low, they said.  Fifteen bombs had fallen about the arsenal, and one man, a non-commissioned officer, had been killed.

Met Hardinge and Mawson:  they both saw the aeroplane fall, and were not fifty yards from the place where it struck.