While they still sat around the cooking fires they saw dim shapes in the heavens, and John, out of the depths of his experience, knew that they were the flying machines. Carstairs and Wharton saw him looking up.
"You may want to be there," said Wharton, "but I don't. I'd grow so giddy I'd jump right out of the machine. This sound and rolling earth suits me. I like its green grass, its rivers, its lakes and its mountains, and I don't want to go off, prospecting for other planets."
"It's lucky," said John, "that this army has flying machines of its own. If it didn't the Germans would be raining bombs upon us."
Carstairs shuddered.
"There's something heathenish and uncanny about it," he said. "Soldiers, by Jove, have to watch nowadays. If you're on the ship looking for an enemy of your size the little submarine down under the water may blow you to pieces, and if you're on the land holding your own against another army a little aeroplane away up in the sky may drop a bomb that will shatter you into seven million pieces."
"It's a hard world, Carstairs," said Wharton, "but I think discomfort rather than danger will come out of the sky tonight. The clouds are piling up and there'll be heavy rain. John, you little old flying man, won't that stop the Taubes?"
"They wouldn't venture much in a heavy rain, and I think we're safe from them, but you know that what their fliers can do ours can do too."
"That being the case I'll settle myself for rest and sleep. The French show us a lot of consideration as we've volunteered to fight for them, and there are tents for the Strangers. You're to have a place in ours."
John was grateful and said so. The strain of the last few days would have overpowered him, but luckily he was exceedingly strong and tenacious. Yet he was so tired that he could scarcely walk, and he was very very glad to go into the tent with Carstairs and Wharton. He received two blankets, and, putting one under him and the other over him, he lay near the open flap, where he could get a good view of much that was going on outside.
He soon saw that it was to be no storm of thunder and lightning, but a heavy soaking rain. The air too had turned colder, and he was grateful for the blankets. He was becoming inured to hardship so fast that they and the tent were as luxurious to him as a modern hotel would have seemed two weeks before.