The Master hung up the receiver, arose, and seemed to shake himself
from the kind of torpor into which his thoughts of the woman had
plunged him.

"Enough of this nonsense!" growled he. "There's work to be
done--_work_!"

With fresh energy he flung himself into the task of planning how to
meet and to repel the three air-fleets now already on the westward
wing to capture or annihilate the Flying Legion.




CHAPTER XIV


STORM BIRDS

The first slow light of day, "under the opening eyelids of the morn,"
found the Master up in the screened observation gallery at the tip of
the port aileron. Here were mounted two of the six machine-guns that
comprised _Nissr's_ heavier armament; and here, too, were hung a dozen
of the wonderful life-preservers--combination anti-gravity turbines
and vacuum-belt, each containing a signal-light, a water-distiller and
condensed foods--that, invented by Brixton Hewes, soon after the close
of the war, had done so much to make air-travel safe.

Major Bohannan was with the Master. Both men, now in uniform,
showed little effect of the sleepless night they had passed. Wine of