There was Lannes at the rudder, looking a little bent and shrunken now, but his hand was as delicate and true as ever. The machine hummed softly and steadily in his ears, like the string of a violin.
"Philip!" he cried in strong self-reproach, "show me how, and I'll sail the Arrow for a while and you can rest."
Lannes shook his head and smiled.
"You're an apt student," he said, "but you couldn't learn enough in one lesson, at least not for our purpose. Besides, I'll have plenty of rest soon. We're going to land in an hour. Behold your first sunrise, seen from a point a mile above the earth!"
He swept his free hand toward the east, where the suspicion of silver had become a certainty. In the infinity of space a mile was nothing, but all the changes were swift and amazingly vivid to John. The silver deepened, turned to blue, and then orange, gold and red sprang out, terrace after terrace, intense and glowing.
Then the sun came up, so burning bright that John was forced to turn his eyes away.
"Fine, isn't it?" said Lannes appreciatively. "It's good to see the sunrise from a new point, and we're up pretty high now, John. We must be, as I said, nearly a mile above the earth."
"Why do we keep so high?"
"Partly to escape observation, and partly because we're making for a cleft in the mountain straight ahead of us, and about on our own level. In that cleft, which is not really a cleft, but a valley, we'll make our landing. It's practically inaccessible, except by the road we're taking, and our road isn't crowded yet with tourists. Look how the light is growing! See, the new sun is gilding all the mountains now with gold! Even the snow is turned to gold!"
His own wonderful eyes were shining at the tremendous prospect, outspread before them, peak on peak, ridge on ridge, vast masses of green on the lower slopes, and now and then the silver glitter of a lake. The eyes of him who had been so stark and terrible in the battle were now like those of a painter before the greatest picture of the greatest master.