the chance to tell them the whole tremendous truth, and then to
shoot suddenly up into the air far beyond their hearing. It was the
artistic finish that appealed to me as much as the announcement. Tell
your great news and then disappear or become silent. Don't linger over
it, or you will mar the effect."

"We're leaving the valley out of sight, and I judge by the sun that our
course is northwesterly."

"Right my brave aviator, but I don't think you'll be able to use the sun
much longer for reckoning. The worthy burgomaster was right. Look behind
you and see how the clouds are gathering!"

John gazed at the vast mass of the Alps, stretching their tremendous
rampart across the very heart of Europe. The _Arrow_ had gone higher,
and deep down in the south he saw the ridges and sharp peaks stretching
on apparently to infinity. But it was a wild and desolate world. Even as
he looked the far edges dropped away in the gloom of advancing clouds.
The gray of the horizon became black and sinister.

But he looked on, his gaze held by the sublimity of the mountains and
the powerful spell, cast by an historic imagination. He was not only
gazing upon the heart of Europe, but upon the heart of great history.
There, where that long black line led through the clefts the army of
Hannibal was passing. He shut his eyes and he saw the dark Carthaginian
with his deep eyes, his curly perfumed beard, a scarlet robe wrapped
around him, its ends dropping upon his horse, his brothers and the
captains riding just behind him, and behind them the Carthaginian sacred
band, the Spaniards, the Gauls, the Celts, the wild Numidians shivering
on their barebacked horses, the monstrous elephants, the women, and all
the strange and heterogeneous elements which the fire and genius of the
great leader fused into an army unconquerable by the bravest and best
soldiers of antiquity, a great man holding a great nation at bay for
half a life time.

Mind and eye ran down the long line of the ages. He saw Goths and
Vandals, Germans and Gauls pouring through the passes upon Italy, and
then almost in his own time he saw that other, the equal of Hannibal,
almost exactly the same age, leading another army over the mighty
mountains into the rich plains below. He watched the short figure of
Napoleon, and behind him the invincible French youth, born of the
republic, dragging their cannon through the snow to victory.

"Open your eyes, John, are you going to sleep?"