"As I said we won't abandon the Arrow, so our passage will be through the air. John, I mean that we shall run the gantlet. We'll pass their air fleet and reach our own."
He spoke in low tones, but they contained the ring of daring. John responded. With the ending of the era, the changing of the world, he had changed, too. Shy and sensitive the spirit of adventure flamed up in him. Those flights in the air had touched him with the magic of achievements, impossible, but which yet had been done.
"Suppose we launch the Arrow at once," he said. "I'm ready to try anything with you."
"I knew that, too. One thing in our favor is the number of clouds hanging low in the west, where their air fleet is. It's likely that most of the planes and dirigibles have gone to the ground, but they'll keep enough above to watch. The clouds may enable us to slip by."
"If I had my way I'd wrap myself in the thickest and blackest of the clouds and float westward with it."
"We'll have to go slowly to keep down the drumming of the motor. Now a big push and a long push. So! There! Now we're rising!"
The Arrow, the strength and delicacy of which justified all of Lannes' pride, rose like a feather, and floated gracefully above the trees, where it hung poised for a few minutes. Then, as they were not able to see anything, Lannes took it a few hundred yards higher. There they caught the gleam of steel beyond the wood, and looked down on the camp of Uhlans.
With the aid of the glasses they saw most of the men asleep on the ground, but twenty on horseback kept watch about the field.
"One look is enough," said Lannes. "I hope I'll never see 'em again."
"Maybe not, but there are millions of Germans."