hen, we'll have to eat, later on. There's food here in a tiny
locker that you can't see, but it may be better for us to drop down to
the earth when we eat. Besides, while we're sailing through the sky, I'd
like to observe as much as I can of this German mobilization and take
the news of it to France. That, of course, leaves you out of
consideration, John, but I'm bound to do it."

"Don't regard me. I've no right to ask anything of you. I'm a guest or a
prisoner, and in either capacity it behooves me to take what comes to
me."

"But I got you into it, and so I feel obligations, but, heavy as they
are, they're not heavy enough to keep me from seeing what I can see. I
told you that we were going toward France, but we're not taking the
direct course. I mean to fly over the ancient city of Nuremburg, and
then over Frankfort-on-the-Main. Look out, now, John, we're going to
drop fast!"

The machine descended rapidly in a series of wide spirals, until it was
within seven or eight hundred feet of the earth.

"Look down now," said Lannes, "and without the glasses you can see a
town."

But he had taken the glasses himself, and while he held one hand on the
steering rudder he made a long and attentive examination of the place,
and of low works about it, which he knew contained emplacements for
cannon.

"It's a fortified town and a center for mobilization," he said. "All day
long the recruits have been pouring in here, responding to the call.
They receive their uniforms, arms and ammunition at that big barracks on
the hill, and tomorrow they take the trains to join the giant army which
will be hurled on my France."

John heard a sigh. Lannes was afraid after all that the mighty German
war machine, the like of which the world had never seen before would
crush everything.

"It will be hard to stop that army," he could not keep from saying.

"So it will. The Germans have prepared for war. The French have not.
John, John, I wish I knew the secrets of our foes! For more than forty
years they've been using their best minds and best energies for this. We
don't even know their weapons. I've heard strange tales of monster
cannon that the Krupps have sent out of Essen, and of new explosives of
unimagined power, I don't know whether to believe these tales or not.
But I do know that the Germans will be ready to the last cartridge."

"But something in the machine may go wrong, Phil."

"That's our hope. We've got to smash some of th