Gradually a faint haze gathered in the chair.  Dim, brownish fog congealed there.  The chair became clouded with it; and behind that chair objects grew troubled, turbid, vague.

The ace felt inhibitions leaving him.  His eyes began to blink; his half-opened mouth closed with a snap; a long, choking groan escaped his lips.

“Nom de Dieu” he gulped, and fell weakly to rubbing his arms and legs that still prickled with a numb tingling. “Mais, nom de Dieu!”

The Master, now swiftly becoming visible, stood up again, smiled, advanced toward his guest—­or prisoner, if you prefer.

A moment he stood there, till every detail had grown as clear as before this astounding demonstration of his powers.  Then he stretched forth his hand.

“Leclair,” said he, in a voice of deep feeling, “I know and appreciate you for a man of parts, of high courage and devotion to duty in the face of almost certain death.  The manner in which you came ahead, even after all your companions had fallen—­in which you boarded us, with the strong probability of death confronting you, proves you the kind of man who wins and keeps respect among fighting men.

“If you still desire my arrest and the delivery to you of this air-liner, I am at your complete disposal.  You have only to sign the receipt I have already written.  If—­” and for a moment the Master paused, while his dark eyes sought and held the other’s, “if, monsieur, you desire to become one of the Flying Legion, and to take part in the greatest adventure ever conceived by the mind of man, in the name of all the Legion I welcome you to comradeship!”

“Dieu!” choked the lieutenant, gripping the Master’s hand.  “You mean that I—­I—­”

“Yes, that you can be one of us.”

“Can that be true?”

“It is!”

The Master’s right hand closed firmly on Leclair’s.  The Master’s other hand went out and gripped him by the shoulder.

To his feet sprang the Frenchman.  Though still shaken and trembling, he drew himself erect.  His right hand loosened itself from the Master’s; it went to his aviator’s helmet in a sharp salute.

“J’y suis!  J’y reste!” cried he. “Mon capitaine!”

The day passed uneventfully, at high altitudes, steadily rushing into the eye of the East.  In the stillness and solitude of the upper air-lanes, Nissr roared onward, invincibly, with sun and sky above, with shining clouds piled below in swiftly retreating masses that spun away to westward.

Far below, sea-storm and rain battled over the Atlantic.  Upborne on the wings of the eastward-setting wind, Nissr felt nothing of such trivialities.  Twice or thrice, gaps in the cloud-veil let dim ocean appear to the watchers in the glass observation pits; and once they spied a laboring speck on the waters—­a great passenger-liner, worrying toward New York in heavy weather.  The doings of such, and of the world below, seemed trivial to the Legionaries as follies of dazed insects.