was told, a fortnight afterward, how these same people rose in the night
to strike at these their enemies, and how, so doing, they brought about
the ruination of their city and the summary executions of some hundreds
of themselves, I marveled all the more.

Presently, as we sat there, we heard--above the rumbling of cannon
wheels, the nimble clunking of hurrying hoofs and the heavy thudding of
booted feet, falling and rising all in unison--a new note from overhead,
a combination of whir and flutter and whine. We looked aloft. Directly
above the troops, flying as straight for Brussels as a homing bee for
the hive, went a military monoplane, serving as courier and spy for the
crawling columns below it. Directly, having gone far ahead, it came
speeding back, along a lower air lane and performed a series of circling
and darting gyrations, which doubtlessly had a signal-code meaning for
the troops. Twice or three times it swung directly above our heads, and
at the height at which it now evoluted we could plainly distinguish the
downward curve of its wing-planes and the peculiar droop of the rudder
--both things that marked it for an army model. We could also make out
the black cross painted on its belly as a further distinguishing mark.

To me a monoplane always suggests a bird when it does not suggest an
insect or a winged reptile; and this monoplane particularly suggested
the bird type. The simile which occurred to me was that of the bird
which guards the African rhinoceros; after that it was doubly easy to
conceive of this army as a rhinoceros, having all the brute strength and
brute force which are a part of that creature, and its well-armored
sides and massive legs and deadly horned head; and finally its peculiar
fancy for charging straight at its objective target, trampling down all
obstacles in the way.