What a glorious revelation was that—the revelation of countless spires and needles of rock, all dwarfed by his altitude, and seeming but a magic forest rising from the eternal snows. Had he been a mountaineer, he would have named many of them, and before all others the Aiguille du Géant, with its numberless satellites. But he had no knowledge of the valley, and all his interest centred upon Mont Blanc. Viewed at such a height, the mighty monarch appeared rather a great mound of snow above diverging rivers of ice than the proud mountain of the school-day fables; but such was the truth; and when he looked down upon the grand plateau, that spreading field of snow where so many have perished, it reminded him of nothing so much as the plateau at Andana, where his friends awaited him. Benny thought of them with a smile as he headed the ship right over the mountain. It seemed impossible to believe that he had left them just an hour and a half ago. He flew very close to the summit of Mont Blanc and dropped upon it three weighted bags, each containing his message to the Aero Club of Switzerland. A sense of humour reminded him that those bags would hardly be sought by any climber at this season of the year, and that their very fabric might be rotted when the great thaw came; but he liked the idea of a message, and would scatter others before the flight was done. When they were delivered, he wheeled his machine right-about, and espying the white buildings of the valley, he began to go down toward them. Now, for the first time that day, he could realise the immensity of the precipices he had defied and their danger. Vast walls of rock appeared to engulf him as he descended; he could feel a bitter cold wind rising up from the monster glaciers which had become lakes of the clearest blue ice; pine-woods shaped and declared the contours of trees. He became aware of the presence of people in the valley—thousands of them, moving in great throngs, now this way, now that, as they attempted to follow his movements. In the end he heard a roar of voices swelling upward, and this magnified in notes of a falsetto often ridiculous, but unmistakable. Called as by a messenger, he sought out a landing-place, and his eyes searched the snow-fields ceaselessly. Where was Émile—the faithful Émile? Ah, he stood yonder where the flags were waving. And thither the willing machine swept downward, gliding at last with wings outstretched and touching the snow as caressingly as a young girl may kiss her lover.