soundly.

CHAPTER VI

ABOVE THE STORM

John had slept well in the Arrow, and that fact coupled with his
extraordinary situation kept him wide-awake. It was true that he had
returned from the dizzy heights of the air, but he was still on the
dizzy side of a mountain.

He stood up and tensed and flexed his muscles until he was sure of his
physical self. He remembered the weakness in his knees that had sent him
down like a little child, and he was so ashamed of himself that he was
resolved it should not happen again.

Then he walked to the edge of the little valley which in the far
distance had looked like a cleft in the side of the mountain. It was
rimmed in by a line of stunted pines, and holding to a pine with each
hand he looked over. He saw that sheer stone wall which he had beheld
first from above when he was in the Arrow, and far below was the ripple
of silvery white that he knew to be the river. To the north lay rolling
hills and green country melting under the horizon, the old Europe that
men had cultivated for twenty centuries and that was now about to be
trodden to pieces by the iron heel of tremendous war.

John understood it. It seemed at the moment that his mind expanding to
such an extent could comprehend the vastness of it all, the kingdoms and
republics, the famous and beautiful old cities, and the millions of men
who did not hate one another involved in a huge whirlpool of
destruction. And yet, expand as his mind did, it could not fully
comprehend the crime of those who had launched such a thunderbolt of
death.

His eyes turned toward the south. It was perhaps not correct to call
that little nest in which the Arrow lay a valley. It was a pocket
rather, since the cliffs, unscalable by man rose a full half mile above
it, and far beyond glimmering faintly in the sunshine he saw the crest
of peaks clad in eternal snow.

Truly his view of the Alps was one of which he had never dreamed, and
Lannes was right in saying that no man had ever before come into that
valley or pocket, unless he had taken wings unto himself as they had
done. They were secure where they were, except from danger that could
come through the air.

He took the glasses, an uncommonly powerful pair from the locker and
examined every corner of the heavens that he could reach. But he saw
none of those ominous, black dots, only little white clouds shot with
gold from the morning sun, floating peacefully under the blue arch, an