ss than armies. Do you think the _Arrow_ has had sufficient rest?"

"A plenty. It's a staunch little flying machine."

"Then we'll start again, and I think we'll have an easy trip, save for
the currents which are numerous and varied in high mountains."

"What country are we in now?"

"A corner of Switzerland, and I mean for us to descend at a neat little
hamlet I've visited before. They don't know war has begun yet, and we
can get there provisions and everything else we need."

They launched the Arrow, and once more took flight, now into the maze of
mountains. Their good craft frequently rocked and swayed like a ship at
sea and John remembered Lannes' words about the currents. Reason told
him that intervening peaks and ridges would make them break into all
forms of irregularity, and he was glad when they hovered over a valley
and began to descend.

He saw about half a mile below them a small Swiss village, built on both
sides of a foaming little river, and, using the glasses as they dropped
down, he also saw the whole population standing in the streets, their
heads craned back, staring into the skies. The effect was curious, that
of the world turned upside down.

"The place has four or five hundred inhabitants, and it is a good
village," said Lannes. "I have been here four times before, and they
know me. Also they trust me, though through no merit of mine. They have
seen flying machines often enough to know that they are not demons or
monsters, but not often enough to lose their curiosity concerning them.
We shall descend in the midst of an audience, inquisitive but friendly."

"Which you like."

Lannes laughed.

"You judge me right," he said. "I do love the dramatic. Maybe that's one
reason why I'm so fond of flying. What could appeal to the soul more
than swimming through the air, held up on nothing, with a planet
revolving at your feet? Why a man who is not thrilled by it has no soul
at all! And how grand it is to swoop over a village, and then settle
down in it softly and peacefully like some magnificent bird, folding its
wings and dropping to the ground! Isn't it far more poetical than the
arrival of a train which comes in with a clang, a rattle, and smoke and
soot?"

John laughed in his turn.

"You do put it well for yourself, Philip," he said, "but suppose our
machine broke a wing or something else vital. A mile or a half mile
would be a long drop."

"But you'd have such a nice clean death. There