he had flown after a party of them one day , just to see , and they were only going to a quarry to cut out bits of stone , and then bringing the bits of stone back to town in waggon-carts , which seemed quite absurd and inefficient to him : he could have carried five cartloads in a single flight of perhaps ten minutes , but when he had landed to offer his assistance , the convicts had all run away , and the soldiers had come to complain to laurence stiffly afterwards .