Chapter 3

“Sure do I,” Honey said cheerfully. “Only remember one thing, Billy. That wasn’t a dream any more than this is.”

“All right,” Billy exclaimed. “You don’t have to show me. A funny thing happened to me last night. I’m not telling the others. They won’t believe it and - well, my nerves are all on end. I know I’d get mad if they began to jolly. I was sleeping like the dickens - a sure-for-certain Rip Van Winkle - when all of a sudden - Did you ever have a pet cat, Honey?”

“Nope.”

“Well, I’ve had lots of them. I like cats. I had one once that used to wake me up at two minutes past seven every morning as regularly as two minutes past seven came - not an instant before, not an instant after. He turned the trick by jumping up on the bed and looking steadily into my face. Never touched me, you understand. Well, l waked this morning just after sunrise with a feeling that Kilo was there staring at me. Somebody was - “ Billy paused. He swallowed rapidly and wet his lips. “But it wasn’t Kilo.” Billy paused again.

“I’m listening, bo,” said Honey, shying another stone.

“It was a girl looking at me,” Billy said, simply as though it were something to be expected. He paused. Then, “Get that? A girl! She was bending over me - pretty close - I could almost touch her. I can see her now as plainly as I see you. She was blonde. One of those pale-gold blondes with hair like honey and features cut with a chisel. You know the type. Some people think it’s cold. It’s a kind of beauty that’s always appealed to me, though.” He stopped.

“Well,” Honey prodded him with a kind of non-committal calm, “what happened?”

“Nothing. If you can believe me - nothing. I stared - oh, I guess I stared for a quarter of a minute straight up into the most beautiful pair of eyes that I ever saw in my life. I stared straight up into them and I stared straight down into them. They were as deep as a well and as gray as a cloud and as cold as ice. And they had lashes - “ For a moment the quiet directness of Billy’s narrative was disturbed by a whiff of inner tumult. “Whew! what eyelashes! Honey, did you ever come across a lonely mountain lake with high reeds growing around the edge? You know how pure and unspoiled and virginal it seems. That was her eyes. They sort of hypnotized me. My eyes closed and - when I awoke it was broad daylight. What do you think?”

“Well,” said Honey judicially, “I know just how you feel. I could have killed the boys for joshing me the way they did. I was sure. I was certain I heard a woman laugh that night. And, by God, I did hear it. Whenever I contradict myself, something rises up and tells me I lie. But - .” His radiant brown smile crumpled his brown face. “Of course, I didn’t hear it. I couldn’t have heard it. And so I guess you didn’t see the peroxide you speak of. And yet if you Punch me in the jaw, I’ll know exactly how you feel.” His face uncrumpled, smoothed itself out to his rare look of seriousness.” The point of it is that we’re all a little touched in the bean. I figure that you and I are alike in some things. That’s why we’ve always hung together. And all this queer stuff takes us two the same way. Remember that psychology dope old Rand used to pump into us at college? Well, our psychologies have got all twisted up by a recent event in nautical circles and we’re seeing things that aren’t there and not seeing things that are there.”

“Honey,” said Billy, “that’s all right. But I want you to understand me and I don’t want you, to make any mistake. I saw a girl.”

“And don’t forget this,” answered Honey. “I heard one.”

Billy made no allusion to any of this with the other three men. But for the rest of the day, he had a return of his gentle good humor. Honey’s spirits fairly sizzled.

That night Frank Merrill suddenly started out of sleep with a yelled, “What was that?”

“What was what?” everybody demanded, waking immediately to the panic in his voice.

“That cry,” he explained breathlessly, “didn’t you hear it?” Frank’s eyes were brilliant with excitement; he was pale.

Nobody had heard it. And Ralph Addington and Pete Murphy, cursing lustily, turned over and promptly fell asleep again. But Billy Fairfax grew rapidly more and more awake. “What sort of a cry?” he asked. Honey Smith said nothing, but he stirred the fire into a blaze in preparation for a talk.

“The strangest cry I ever heard, long-drawn-out, wild - eerie’s the word for it, I guess,” Frank Merrill said. As he spoke, he peered off into the darkness. “If it were possible, I should say it was a woman’s voice.”

The three men walked away from the camp, looked off into every direction of the starlit night. Nowhere was there sign or sound of life.

“It must have been gulls,” said Honey Smith.

“It didn’t sound like gulls,” answered Frank Merrill. For an instant he fell into meditation so deep that he virtually forgot the presence of the other two. “I don’t know what it was,” he said finally in an exasperated tone. “I’m going to sleep.”

They walked back to camp. Frank Merrill rolled himself up in a blanket, lay down. Soon there came from his direction only the sound of regular, deep breathing.

“Well, Honey,” Billy Fairfax asked, a note of triumph in his voice, “how about it?”

“Well, Billy,” Honey Smith said in a baffled tone, “when you get the answer, give it to me.”

Nobody mentioned the night’s experience the next day. But a dozen times Frank Merrill stopped his work to gaze out to sea, an expression of perplexity on his face.

The next night, however, they were all waked again, waked twice. It was Ralph Addington who spoke first; a kind of hoarse grunt and a “What the devil was that?”

“What?” the others called.

“Damned if I know,” Ralph answered. “If you wouldn’t think I was off my conch, I’d say it was a gang of women laughing.”

Pete Murphy, who always woke in high spirits, began to joke Ralph Addington. The other three were silent. In fifteen minutes they were all asleep; sixty, they were all awake again.

It was Pete Murphy who sounded the alarm this time. “Say, something spoke to me,” he said. “Or else I’m a nut. Or else I have had the most vivid dream I’ve ever had.” Evidently he did not believe that it was a dream. He sat up and listened; the others listened, too. There was no sound in the soft, still night, however. They talked for a little while, a strangely subdued quintette. It was as though they were all trying to comment on these experiences without saying anything about them.

They slept through the next night undisturbed until just before sunrise. Then Honey Smith woke them. It was still dark, but a fine dawn-glow had begun faintly to silver the east. “Say, you fellows,” he exclaimed. “Wake up!” His voice vibrated with excitement, although he seemed to try to keep it low. “There are strange critters round here. No mistake this time. Woke with a start, feeling that something had brushed over me - saw a great bird - a gigantic thing - flying off heard one woman’s laugh - then another - .”

It was significant that nobody joked Honey this time. “Say, this island’ll be a nut-house if this keeps up,” Pete Murphy said irritably. “Let’s go to sleep again.”

“No, you don’t!” said Honey. “Not one of you is going to sleep. You’re all going to sit up with me until the blasted sun comes up.”

People always hastened to accommodate Honey. In spite of the hour, they began to rake the fire, to prepare breakfast. The others became preoccupied gradually, but Honey still sat with his face towards the water, watching.

It grew brighter.

“It’s time we started to build a camp, boys,” Frank Merrill said, withdrawing momentarily from deep reflection. “We’ll go crazy doing nothing all the time. We’ll - .”

“Great God,” Honey interrupted. “Look!”

Far out to sea and high in the air, birds were flying. There were five of them and they were enormous. They flew with amazing strength, swiftness, and grace; but for the most part they about a fixed area like bees at a honey-pot. It was a limited area, but within it they dipped, dropped, curved, wove in and out.

“Well, I’ll be - .”

“They’re those black spots we saw the first day, Pete,” Billy Fairfax said breathlessly. “We thought it was the sun.”

“That’s what I heard in the night,” Frank Merrill gasped to Ralph Addington.

“But what are they?” asked Honey Smith in a voice that had a falsetto note of wonder. “They laugh like a woman - take it from me.”

“Eagles - buzzards - vultures - condors - rocs - phoenixes,” Pete Murphy recited his list in an or of imaginative conjecture.

“They’re some lost species - something left over from a prehistoric era,” Frank Merrill explained, shaking with excitement. “No vulture or eagle or condor could be as big as that at this distance. At least I think so.” He paused here, as one studying the problem in the scientific spirit. “Often in the Rockies I’ve confused a nearby chicken-hawk, at first, with a far eagle. But the human eye has its own system of triangulation. Those are not little birds nearby, but big birds far off. See how heavily they soar. Do you realize what’s happened? We’ve made a discovery that will shake the whole scientific world. There, there, they’re going!”

“My God, look at them beat it!” said Honey; and there was awe in his voice.

“Why, they’re monster size,” Frank Merrill went on, and his voice had grown almost hysterical. “They could carry one of us off. We’re not safe. We must take measures at once to protect ourselves. Why, at night - We must make traps. If we can capture one, or, better, a pair, we’re famous. We’re a part of history now.”

They watched the strange birds disappear over the water. For more than an hour, the men sat still, waiting for them to return. They did not come back, however. The men hung about camp all day long, talking of nothing else. Night came at last, but sleep was not in them. The dark seemed to give a fresh impulse to conversation. Conjecture battled with theory and fact jousted with fancy. But one conclusion was as futile as another.

Frank Merrill tried to make them devise some system of defense or concealment, but the others laughed at him. Talk as he would, he could not seem to convince them of their danger. Indeed, their state of mind was entirely different from his. Mentally he seemed to boil with interest and curiosity, but it was the sane, calm, open-minded excitement of the scientist. The others were alert and preoccupied in turn, but there was an element of reserve in their attitude. Their eyes kept going off into space, fixing there until their look became one brooding question. They avoided conversation. They avoided each other’s gaze.

Gradually they drew off from the fire, settled themselves to rest, fell into the splendid sleep that followed their long out-of-doors days.

In the middle of the night, Billy Fairfax came out of a dream to the knowledge that somebody was shaking him gently, firmly, furtively. “Don’t move!” Honey Smith’s voice whispered; “keep quiet till I wake the others.”

It was a still and moon-lighted world. Billy Fairfax lay quiet, his wide-open eyes fixed on the luminous sky. The sense of drowse was being brushed out of his brain as though by a mighty whirlwind, and in its place came a vague sensation of confusion, of excitement, of a miraculous abnormality. He heard Honey Smith crawl slowly from man to man, heard him whisper his adjuration once, twice, three times. “Now,” Honey called finally.

The men looked seawards. Then, simultaneously they leaped to their feet.

The semi-tropical moon was at its full. Huge, white, embossed, cut out, it did not shine - it glared from the sky. It made a melted moonstone of the atmosphere. It faded the few clouds to a sapphire-gray, just touched here and there with the chalky dot of a star. It slashed a silver trail across a sea jet-black except where the waves rimmed it with snow. Up in the white enchantment, but not far above them, the strange air-creatures were flying. They were not birds; they were winged women!

Darting, diving, glancing, curving, wheeling, they interwove in what seemed the premeditated figures of an aerial dance. If they were conscious of the group of men on the beach, they did not show it; they seemed entirely absorbed in their flying. Their wings, like enormous scimitars, caught the moonlight, flashed it back. For an interval, they played close in a group inextricably intertwined, a revolving ball of vivid color. Then, as if seized by a common impulse, they stretched, hand in hand, in a line across the sky-drifted. The moonlight flooded them full, caught glitter and gleam from wing-sockets, shot shimmer and sheen from wing-tips, sent cataracts of iridescent color pulsing between. Snow-silver one, brilliant green and gold another, dazzling blue the next, luminous orange a fourth, flaming flamingo scarlet the last, their colors seemed half liquid, half light. One moment the whole figure would flare into a splendid blaze, as if an inner mechanism had suddenly turned on all the electricity; the next, the blaze died down to the fairy glisten given by the moonlight.

As if by one impulse, they began finally to fly upward. Higher and higher they rose, still hand in hand. Detail of color and movement vanished. The connotation of the sexed creature, of the human thing, evaporated. One instant, relaxed, they seemed tiny galleons, all sails set, that floated lazily, the sport of an aerial sea; another, supple and sinuous, they seemed monstrous fish whose fins triumphantly clove the air, monarchs of that aerial sea.

A little of this and then came another impulse. The great wings furled close like blades leaping back to scabbard; the flying-girls dropped sheer in a dizzying fall. Half-way to the ground, they stopped simultaneously as if caught by some invisible air plateau. The great feathery fans opened - and this time the men got the whipping whirr of them - spread high, palpitated with color. From this lower level, the girls began to fall again, but gently, like dropping clouds.

Nearer they came to the petrified group on the beach, nearer and nearer. Undoubtedly they had known all the time that an audience was there; undoubtedly they had planned this; they looked down and smiled.

And now the men had every detail of them - the brown seaweeds and green sea-grasses that swathed them, their bodies just short of heroic size, deep-bosomed, broad-waisted, long-limbed; their arms round like a woman’s and strong like a man’s; their hair that fell, a braid over each ear, twined with brilliant flowers and green vines; their faces super-humanly beautiful, though elvish; the gaminerie in their laughing eyes, which sparkled through half-closed, thick-lashed lids, the gaminerie in their smiling mouths, which showed twin rows of pearl gleaming in tricksy mirth; their big, strong-looking, long-fingered hands; their slimly smooth, exquisitely shaped, too-tiny, transparent feet; their strong wrists; their stem-like, breakable ankles. Closer and closer and closer they came. And now the men could almost touch them. They paused an instant and fluttered - fluttered like a swarm of butterflies undecided where to fly. As though choosing to rest, they hovered-hovered with a gentle, slow, seductive undulation of wings, of hands, of feet.

Then another impulse took them.

They broke handclasps and up they went, like arrows straight up - up - up - up. Then they turned out to sea, streaming through the air in line still, but one behind the other. And for the first time, sound came from them; they threw off peals of girl-laughter that fell like handfuls of diamonds. Their mirth ended in a long, eerie cry. Then straight out to the eastern horizon they went and away and off.

They were dwindling rapidly.

They were spots.

They were specks.

They were nothing.

II

Silence, profound, portentous, protracted, followed.

Finally, Honey Smith absently stooped and picked up a pebble. He threw it over the silver ring of the flat, foam-edged, low-tide waves. It curved downwards, hissed across a surface of water smooth as jade, skipped four times, and dropped.

The men strained their eyes to follow the progress of this tangible thing.

“Where do you suppose they’ve gone?” Honey said as unexcitedly as one might inquire directions from a stranger.

“When do you suppose they’ll come back?” Billy Fairfax added as casually as one might ask the time.

“Did you notice the red-headed one?” asked Pete Murphy. “My first girl had red hair. I always jump when I see a carrot-top.” He made this intimate revelation simply, as if the time for a conventional reticence had passed.

“They were lookers all right,” Ralph Addington went on. “I’d pick the golden blonde, the second from the right.” He, too, spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, as though he were selecting a favorite from the front row in the chorus.

“It must have happened if we saw it,” Frank Merrill said. There was in his voice a note of petulance, almost childish. “But we ought not to have seen it. It has no right to be. It upsets things so.”

“What are we all standing up like gawks for?” Pete Murphy demanded with a sudden irritability.

“Sit down!”

Everybody dropped. They all sat as they fell. They sat motionless. They sat silent.

“The name of this place is ‘Angel Island,’” announced Billy Fairfax after a long time. His tone was that of a man whose thoughts, swirling in phantasmagoria, seek anchorage in fact.

They did not sleep that night.

When Frank Merrill arose the next morning, Ralph Addington was just returning from a stroll down the beach. Ralph looked at the same time exhausted and recuperated. He was white, tense, wild-eyed, but recently aroused interior fires glowed through his skin, made up for his lost color and energy. Frank also had a different look. His eyes had kindled, his face had become noticeably more alive. But it was the fire of the intellect that had produced this frigid glow.

“Seen anything?” Frank Merrill inquired.

“Not a thing.”

“You don’t think they’re frightened enough not to come back?”

The gleam in Ralph Addington’s eye changed to flame. “I don’t think they’re frightened at all. They’ll come back all right. There’s only one thing that you can depend on in women; and that is that you can’t lose them.”

“I can scarcely wait to see them again,” Frank exclaimed eagerly. “Addington, I can write a monograph on those flying-maidens that will make the whole world gasp. This is the greatest discovery of modern times. Man alive, don’t you itch to get to paper and pencil?”

“Not so I’ve noticed it,” Ralph replied with contemptuous emphasis. “I shall lie awake nights, just the same though.”

“Say, fellers, we didn’t dream that, did we?” Billy Fairfax called suddenly, rolling out of the sleep that had followed their all-night talk.

“Well, I reckon if it wasn’t for the other four, no one of us would trust his own senses,” Frank Merrill said dryly.

“If you’d listened to me in the beginning,” Honey Smith remarked in a drowsy voice, not bothering to open his, eyes, “I wouldn’t be the I-told-you-so kid now.”

“Well, if you’d listened to me and Pete!” said Billy Fairfax; “didn’t we think, way back there that first day, that our lamps were on the blink because we saw black spots? Great Scott, what dreams I’ve had,” he went on, “a mixture of ‘Arabian Nights,’ ‘Gulliver’s Travels,’ ‘Peter Wilkins,’ ‘Peter Pan,’ ‘Goosie,’ Jules, Verne, H. G. Wells, and every dime novel I’ve ever read. Do you suppose they’ll come back?”

“I’ve just talked that over with Ralph,” Frank Merrill answered him. “If we’ve frightened them away forever, it will be a terrible loss to science.”

Ralph Addington emitted one of his cackling, ironic laughs. “I guess I’m not worrying as much about science as I might. But as to their coming back - why, it stands to reason that they’ll have just as much curiosity about us as we have about them. Curiosity’s a woman’s strong point, you know. Oh, they’ll come back all right! The only question is, How soon?”

“It made me dream of music - of Siegfried.” It was Pete Murphy who spoke and he seemed to plump from sleep straight into the conversation. “What a theme for grand opera. Women with wings! Flying-girls! Will you tell me what the Hippodrome! has on Angel Island?”

“Nothing,” said Honey Smith, “except this - you can get acquainted with a Hippodrome girl - how long is it going to take us to get acquainted with these angels?”

“Not any longer than usual,” said Ralph Addington with an expressive wink. “Leave that to me. I’m going now to see what I can see.” He walked rapidly down the beach, scaled the southern reef, and stood there studying the horizon.

The others remained sitting on the sand. For a while they watched Ralph. Then they talked the whole thing over with as much interest as if they had not yet discussed it. Ralph rejoined them and they went through it again. It was as though by some miracle of mind-transference, they had all dreamed the same dream; as though, by some miracle of sight-transference they had all seen the same vision; as though, by some miracle of space-transference, they had all stepped into the fourth dimension. Their comment was ever of the wonder of their strange adventure, the beauty, the thrill, the romance of it. It had brought out in them every instinct of chivalry and kindness, it had developed in them every tendency towards high-mindedness and idealism. Angel Island would be an Atlantis, an Eden, an Arden, an Arcadia, a Utopia, a Milleamours, a Paradise, the Garden of Hesperides. Into it the Golden Age would come again. They drew glowing pictures of the wonderful friendships that would grow up on Angel Island between them and their beautiful visitors. These poetic considerations gave way finally to a discussion of ways and means. They agreed that they must get to work at once on some sort of shelter for their guests, in case the weather should turn bad. They even discussed at length the best methods of teaching the English language. They talked the whole morning, going over the same things again and again, questioning each other eagerly without listening for an answer, interrupting ruthlessly, and then adding nothing.

The day passed without event. At the slightest sound they all jumped. Their sleeplessness was beginning to tell on them and their nerves were still obsessed by the unnaturalness of their experience. It was a long time before they quieted down, but the night passed without interruption. So did the next day. Another day went by and another, and during this time they did little but sit about and talk.

“See here, boys,” Ralph Addington said one morning. “I say we get together and build some cabins. There’s no calculating how long this grand weather’ll keep up. The first thing we know we’ll be up against a rainy season. Isn’t that right, Professor?”

On most practical matters Ralph treated Frank Merrill’s opinion with a contempt that was offensively obvious to the others. In questions of theory or of abstruse information, he was foolishly deferential. At those times, he always gave Frank his title of Professor.

“I hardly think so,” Frank Merrill answered. “I think we’ll have an equable, semi-tropical climate all the year round - about like Honolulu.”

“Well, anyway,” Ralph Addington went on, “it’s barbarous living like this. And we want to be prepared for anything.” His gaze left Frank Merrill’s face and traveled with a growing significance to each of the other three. “Anything,” he repeated with emphasis. “We’ve got enough truck here to make a young Buckingham Palace. And we’ll go mad sitting round waiting for those air-queens to pay us a visit. How about it?”

“It’s an excellent idea,” Frank Merrill said heartily. “I have been on the point of proposing it many times myself.”