The aeroplanes, which had been skimming low as swallows along the front of the line (theirs must have been a superb view) ascended leisurely, and "waited on" like hawks.

We can imagine Necessity, the mother of invention, looking up at a sky all criss-crossed with flying machines, and then saying, with a shake of her old head and with a contented smile: "'Of all my family, the aeroplane has been the hardest to raise.'

Apparently these natives believed that the aeroplane must be a visitor from another world, or else some monster bird of a family long understood to be extinct.