Away to the west, a flock of the gigantic birds were flying. And now, from this point in the centre of the valley, we were near enough to realise fully the stupendous proportions of those creatures. Not only were they bigger by far than any bird now extant in the outer world: they must have eclipsed even the greatest of the winged reptiles that have come down to us fossilised in the Jurassic lime-stones. Poyning had halted, grasping the edge of the litter and staring spellbound. One of the attendants jogged him gently by the elbow, and pointed ahead, but Poyning shook the man off, sweeping the western sky with his arm and uttering something in the language of the valley. I saw the ghost of a smile on the attendant's face, and heard him answer. Poyning stumbled on, biting his lips. 'What does he say?' I cried. 'Have they a name for the things?' 'Yes,' said Stephen Poyning, 'and a very simple one. They are not birds at all. They are men.' CHAPTER IX THE WOMAN OF MYSTERY I stared at the great wheeling, swooping forms till I thought my eyes would have dropped out of my head. We moved on, but I was still gazing when the low gable of a building came between and shut them from our view, yet not by any manner of means could I bring myself to believe I'd been looking at men. That could only mean men flying on artificial wings. The flight of those creatures was, on a grand scale, the graceful, easy, perfectly poised flight of a gull or a swallow, which no human ingenuity could imitate. Clearly Poyning had mistaken what the attendant said to him--an explanation credible enough when I remembered that he himself admitted there were words in the language of this people that he could merely guess. And there, for the time being, I had to be content to let the mystery rest.