"By God!" he croaked. "Mirages—they don't last, this way! That's real—that's real water, by the living God!"
Up from dark profundities of tortured memory arose the cry of Xenophon's bold Greeks when, after their long torment, they had of a sudden fronted blue water. At sight of the little British consular station of Batn el Hayil, on the Gulf of Farsan:
"Thálassa!" he cried. "Thálassa, thálassa!" (The sea, the sea!)
CHAPTER LIII
THE GREATER TREASURE
New York, months later.
Spring had long departed—the spring of the year in which the Eagle of the Air had flung itself aloft from the Palisades, freighted with such vast hopes.
Summer was past and gone. The sparkling wine of autumn had already begun to bubble in the cup of the year.
Sunset, as when this tale began. Sunset, bronzing the observatory of Niss'rosh, on top of the huge skyscraper.
Two of the Legionaries—a woman and a man—were watching that sunset from the western windows of that room where first had been conceived the wonder-flight which had spelled death for so many a stout heart.