Chapter 3 - Eleanor Hardcastle

Jim left the party in search for the abandoned aerodrome at Hungjao, from which the Chinese had attacked the Japanese army advancing on Shanghai in 1937. As he ran through the fields to the aerodrome he passed lidless coffins. He looked inside at "The yellowing skeletons" each "one an individual" and comments that "these skeletons were more alive than the peasant-farmers who had briefly tenanted [occupied] their bones." I think he says this because he has seen how hard the farmers have to work, almost in human like, so as the skeletons lie peacefully in the sun they are more alive than ever. Jim ran across the rice paddy and into the aerodrome which was "a place of magic for" him and he launched his balsa model aircraft into the air and caught it. He walked through the overgrown field and reached a ditch where the remains of a rusting Japanese fighter lay, most sections had been removed but the cockpit was still there and Jim climbed inside. He imagined the pilot that had once flown the plane, and he pretended to work the controls and peeled off a tape of Japanese characters from the dashboard. He climbed out of the cockpit and with excitement launched his model fighter into the air again, which flew very fast and nearly crashed into a concrete blockhouse. He ran through the fields to get it and noticed the battleground of 1937, where dead Chinese soldiers "sat side by side" in the trenches and Jim remarks that it is "as if the had fallen asleep together in a deep dream of war."
Jim climbed on top of the blockhouse to look for his aircraft and when he sees the broken model and is about to jump down he notices that a full armed Japanese soldier is looking at him from the trenches. Jim looked along the trench and realised that it was filled with Japanese soldiers and other camps of soldiers were squatting in earth bunkers and wild nettles. A sergeant strolled past the blockhouse, and at that moment Jim's father came running into the airfield calling for him urgently, trying not to unsettle the Japanese. The sergeant took Jim's model aircraft and threw it into the nettles, but Jim's father told him to leave it and come quickly. They returned to the party where everyone was leaving, Jim was annoyed that he had lost his plane and was surprised to see his father was glad for putting him in danger at the aerodrome.
Back in the Packard, Jim and his family did not go home but instead they went to his fathers company suite in the Palace Hotel. On his way he looked out of the window at the sights of Shanghai and after tried to stay awake to dream of the coming of the war...