Chapter 7

After one night of wrangling, they came to the agreement that no one of them would take steps towards capture until all five had consented to it. They drew up a paper to this effect and signed it.

Their cabins were nearly completed now. Boundless leisure threatened to open before them. More and more in the time which they were alone they fell into the habits which their individual tastes developed. Frank still worked on his library. He had transferred the desk and the bookcases to the interior of his hut. He spent all his spare time there arranging, classifying, and cataloguing his books. Billy fell into an orgy of furniture-making and repairing. Addington began, unaided, to build a huge cabin, bigger than the others, and separated a little distance from them. Nobody asked him what it was for. Honey took long solitary walks into the interior of the island. He returned with great bunches of uprooted flowers which he planted against the cabin-walls. Pete dragged out from an unexplored trunk a box of water-colors, a block of paper. Now, when he was not working on a symphonic poem, he was coping with the wonders of the semi-tropical coloring. His companions rallied and harried him, especially about the poem; but he could always silence them with a threat to read it aloud. All the Celt in him had come to the surface. They heard him chanting his numbers in the depths of the forest; sometimes he intoned them, swinging on the branch of a high tree. He even wandered over the reefs, reciting them to the waves.

One day, late in the afternoon, Billy lay on his favorite spot on the southern reef, dreaming. High up in the air, Julia flashed and gyrated, revolved and spun. It seemed to Billy that he had never seen her go so high. She looked like a silver feather. But as he looked, she went higher and higher, so high that she disappeared vertically.

A strange sense of loneliness fell on Billy. This was the first time since she had begun to come regularly to the island that she had cut their tryst short. He waited. She did not appear. A minute went by. Another and another and another. His sense of loneliness deepened to uneasiness. Still there was no sign of Julia. Uneasiness became alarm. Ah, there she was at last - a speck, a dot, a spot, a splotch. How she was flying! How - .

Like a bullet the conviction struck him.

She was falling!

Memories of certain biplanic explorations surged into his mind. “She’s frozen,” he thought to himself. “She can’t move her wings!” Terror paralyzed him; horror bound him. He stood still-numb, dumb, helpless.

Down she came like an arrow. Her wings kept straight above her head, moveless, still. He could see her breast and shoulders heave and twist, and contort in a fury of effort. Underneath her were the trees. He had a sudden, lightning-swift vision of a falling aviator that he had once seen. The horror of what was coming turned his blood to ice. But he could not move; nor could he close his eyes.

“Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!” he groaned. And, finally, “Oh, thank God!”

Julia’s wings were moving. But apparently she still had little control of them. They flapped frantically a half-minute; but they had arrested her fall; they held her up. They continued to support her, although she beat about in jagged circles. Alternately floating and fluttering, she caught on an air-current, hurled herself on it, floated; then, as though she were sliding through some gigantic pillar of quiet air, sank earthwards. She seized the topmost bough of one of the high trees, threw her arms across it and hung limp. She panted; it seemed as if her breasts must burst. Her eyes closed; but the tears streamed from under her eyelids.

Billy ran close. He made no attempt to climb the tree to which she clung, so weakly accessible. But he called up to her broken words of assurance, broken phrases of comfort that ended in a wild harangue of love and entreaty.

After a while her breath came back. She pulled herself up on the bough and sat huddled there, her eyelids down, her silvery fans drooping, the great mass of her honey-colored hair drifting over the green branches, her drapery of white lilies, slashed and hanging in tatters, the tears still streaming. Except for its ghastly whiteness, her face showed no change of expression. She did not sob or moan, she did not even speak; she sat relaxed. The tears stopped flowing gradually. Her eyelids lifted. Her eyes, stark and dark in her white face, gazed straight down into Billy’s eyes.

And then Billy knew.

He stood moveless staring up at her; never, perhaps, had human eyes asked so definite a question or begged so definite a boon.

She sat moveless, staring straight down at him. But her eyes continued to withhold all answer, all reassurance.

After a while, she stirred and the spell broke. She opened and shut her wings, half a dozen times before she ventured to leave her perch. But once, in the air, all her strength, physical and mental, seemed to come back. She shook the hair out of her eyes. She pulled her drapery together. For a moment, she lingered near, floating, almost moveless, white, shining, carved, chiseled: like a marvelous piece of aerial sculpture. Then a flush of a delicate dawn-pink came into her white face. She caught the great tumbled mass of hair in both hands, tied it about her head. Swift as a flash of lightning, she turned, wheeled, soared, dipped. And for the first time, Billy heard her laugh. Her laughter was like a child’s - gleeful. But each musical ripple thrust like a knife into his heart.

He watched her cleave the distance, watched her disappear. Then, suddenly, a curious weakness came over him. His head swam and he could not see distinctly. Every bone in his body seemed to repudiate its function; his flexed muscles slid him gently to the earth. Time passed. After a while consciousness came back. His dizziness ceased. But he lay for a long while, face downward, his forehead against the cool moss. Again and again that awful picture came, the long, white, girl-shape shooting earthwards, the ghastly, tortured face, the frenzied, heaving shoulders. It was to come again many times in the next week, that picture, and for years to make recurrent horror in his sleep.

He returned to the camp white, wrung, and weak. Apparently his companions had been busy at their various occupations. Nobody had seen Julia’s fall; at least nobody mentioned it. After dinner, when the nightly argument broke into its first round, he was silent for a while. Then, “Oh, I might as well tell you, Frank, and you, Pete,” he said abruptly, “that I’ve gone over to the other side. I’m for capture, friendship by capture, marriage by capture - whatever you choose to call it - but capture.”

The other four stared at him. “What’s happened to you and Ju - “ Honey began. But he stopped, flushing.

Billy paid no attention to the bitten-off end of Honey’s question. “Nothing’s happened to me,” he lied simply and directly. “I don’t know why I’ve changed, but I have. I think this is a case where the end justifies the means. Women don’t know what’s best for them. We do. Unguided, they take the awful risks of their awful ignorance. Moreover, they are the conservative sex. They have no conscious initiative. These flying-women, for instance, have plenty of physical courage but no mental or moral courage. They hold the whip-hand, of course, now. Anything might happen to them. This situation will prolong itself indefinitely unless - unless we beat their cunning by our strategy.” He paused. “I don’t think they’re competent to take care of themselves. I think it’s our duty to take care of them. I think the sooner - .” He paused again. “At the same time, I’m prepared to keep to our agreement. I won’t take a step in this matter until we’ve all come round to it.”

“If it wasn’t for their wings,” Honey said.

Billy shuddered violently. “If it wasn’t for their wings,” he agreed.

Frank bore Billy’s defection in the spirit of classic calm with which he accepted everything. But Pete could not seem to reconcile himself to it. He was constantly trying to draw Billy into debate.

“I won’t argue the matter, Pete,” Billy said again and again. “ I can’t argue it. I don’t pretend even to myself that I’m reasonable or logical, or just or ethical. It’s only a feeling or an instinct. But it’s too strong for me. I can’t fight it. It’s as if I’d taken a journey drugged and blindfolded. I don’t know how I got on this side - but I’m here.”

The effect of this was to weaken a little the friendship that had grown between Billy and Pete. Also Honey pulled a little way from Ralph and slipped nearer to his old place in Billy’s regard.

But now there were three warring elements in camp. Honey, Ralph, and Billy hobnobbed constantly. Frank more than ever devoted himself to his reading. Pete kept away from them all, writing furiously most of the day.

“We’re going to have a harder time with him than with Frank,” Billy remarked once.

“I guess we can leave that matter to take care of itself,” Ralph said with one of his irritating superior smiles. “How about it, Honey?”

“Surest thing you know,” Honey answered reassuringly. All you’ve got to do is wait - believe muh!”

“It does seem as if we’d waited pretty long,” Honey himself fumed two weeks later, “I say we three get together and repudiate that agreement.”

“That would be dishonorable,” Billy said, “and foolish. You can see for yourself that we cannot stir a step in this matter without co-operation. As opponents, Pete and Frank could warn the girls off faster than we could lure them on.”

“That’s right, too,” agreed Honey. “But I’m damned tired of this,” he added drearily. “Not more tired than we are,” said Billy.

An incident that varied the monotony of the deadlock occurred the next day. Pete Murphy packed up food and writing materials and, without a word, decamped into the interior. He did not return that day, that night, or the next day, or the next night.

“Say, don’t you think we ought to go after him,” Billy said again and again, “something may have happened.”

And, “No!” Honey always answered. “Trust that Dogan to take care of himself. You can’t kill him.”

Pete worked gradually across the island to the other side. There the beach was slashed by many black, saw-toothed reefs. The sea leaped up upon them on one side and the trees bore down upon them on the other. The air was filled with tumult, the hollow roar of the waves, the strident hum of the pines. For the first day, Pete entertained himself with exploration, clambering from one reef to another, pausing only to look listlessly off at the horizon, climbing a pine here and there, swinging on a bough while he stared absently back over the island. But although his look fixed on the restless peacock glitter of the sea, or the moveless green cushions that the massed trees made, it was evident that it took no account of them; they served only the more closely to set his mental gaze on its half-seen vision.

The second morning, he arose, bathed, breakfasted, lay for an hour in the sun; then drew pencil and paper from his pack. He wrote furiously. If he looked up at all, it was only to gaze the more fixedly inwards. But mainly his head hung over his work.

In the midst of one of these periods of absorption, a flower fell out of the air on his paper. It was a brilliant, orange-colored tropical bloom, so big and so freshly plucked that it dashed his verse with dew. For an instant he stared stupidly at it. Then he looked up.

Just above him, not very high, her green-and-gold wings spread broad like a butterfly’s, floated Clara. Her body was sheathed in green vines, delicately shining. Her hair was wreathed in fluttering yellow orchid-like flowers, her arms and legs wound with them. She was flying lower than usual. And, under her wreath of flowers, her eyes looked straight into his.

Pete stared at her stupidly as he had stared at the flower. Then he frowned. Deliberately he dropped his eyes. Deliberately he went on writing.

Whir-r-r-r-r! Pete looked up again. Clara was beating back over the island, a tempest of green-and-gold.

Again, he concentrated on his work.

Pete wrote all the rest of the day and by firelight far into the night. He wrote all the next morning. In the middle of the afternoon, a seashell struck his paper, glanced off.

It was Clara again.

This time, apparently, she had come from the ocean. Sea-kelp, still glistening with brine, encased her close as with armor. A little pointed cap of kelp covered her tawny hair as with a helmet. That gave her a piquant quality of boyishness. She was flying lower than he had ever seen her, and as Pete’s eyelids came up she dropped nearer, threw herself into one of her sinuous poses, arms and legs outstretched close, hands and feet cupped, wrists, ankles, hips, shoulders all moving. She looked straight down into Pete’s eyes; and this time she smiled.

Pete stared for another long moment. Then as though summoning all his resolution, he withdrew his eyes, nailed them to his paper. Clara peppered him with shells and pebbles; but he continued to ignore her. He did not look up again until a whir-r-r-r-r - loud at first but steadily diminishing - apprised him of her flight.

Pete again wrote the rest of the day and by firelight far into the night. In the middle of the morning he stopped suddenly, weighted his paper down with a stone, rolled over on to the pine-needles, and fell immediately into a deep sleep. He lay for hours, his face down, resting on his arm.

Whir-r-r-r-r!

Pete awoke with a start. His manuscript was gone. He leaped to his feet, stared wildly about. Not far off Clara was flying, almost on the ground. As he watched, she ascended swiftly. She held his poem in her hands. She studied it, her head bent. She did not once look up or back; her eyes still jealously glued to the pencil-scratchings, she drifted out to sea, disappeared.

Pete did not move. He watched Clara intently until she melted into the sky. But as he watched, his creative mood broke and evaporated. And suddenly another emotion, none the less fiercely ravaging, sluiced the blood into his face, filled his eyes with glitter, shook him as though a high wind were blowing, sent him finally speeding at a maniacal pace over the reefs.

“Say, do you think we’d better organize a search-party?” Honey asked finally.

“Not yet,” said Ralph, “here he comes.”

Pete was running down the trail like a deer.

“I’ve finished my poem,” he yelled jubilantly.

“Every last word of it. And now, boys,” he added briskly before they could recover their breath, I’m with you on this capture question.”

For an instant, the others stared and blinked. “What do you mean, Pete?” Honey asked stupidly, after an instant.

“Well, I’m prepared to go as far as you like.”

“But what changed you? “ Honey persisted.

“Oh, hang it all,” Pete said and never had his little black, fiery Irish face so twisted with irritation, so flamed with spirit, “a poet’s so constituted that he’s got to have a woman round to read his verse to. I want to teach Clara English so she can hear that poem.”

There was a half-minute of silence. Then his listeners broke into roars. “You damned little mick you!” Honey said. He laughed at intervals for an hour.

They immediately broke the news of Pete’s desertion to Merrill. Frank received it without any appearance of surprise. But he announced, with a sudden boom of authority in his big voice, that he expected them all to stand by their agreement. Billy answered for the rest that they had no intention of doing anything else. But the four were now in high spirits. Among themselves, they no longer said, “If we capture them,” but “When we capture them.”

The stress of the situation at once pulled Frank away from his books. Again he took complete charge of the little group. He was a natural disciplinarian, as they had learned at the time of the wreck. Now his sense of responsibility developed a severity that was almost austerity. He kept them constantly at work. In private the others chafed at his tone of authority. But in his presence they never failed of respect. Besides, his remarkable unselfishness compelled their esteem, a shy vein of innocent, humorless sweetness their affection. “Old Frank” they always called him.

One afternoon, Frank started on one of the long walks which latterly he had abandoned. He left three of his underlings behind. Pete painted a water-color; Clara, weaving back and forth, watched his progress. Ralph worked on the big cabin - they called it the Clubhouse - Peachy whirling back and forth in wonderful air-patterns for his benefit. A distant speck of silver indicated Julia; Billy must be on the reef. Honey had left camp fifteen minutes before for the solitary afternoon tramp that had become a daily habit with him.

Frank’s path lay part-way through the jungle. For half an hour he walked so sunk in thought that he glanced neither to the right nor the left. Then he stopped suddenly, held by some invisible, intangible, impalpable force. He listened. The air hummed delicately, hummed with an alien element, hummed with something that was neither the susurrus of insects nor the music of birds. He moved onward slowly and quietly. The hum grew and strengthened. It became a sound. It divided into component parts, whistlings, trillings, twitterings, callings. Bird-like they were - but they could come only from the human throat. Impersonal they were - and yet they were sexed, female and male. Frank looked about him carefully. A little distance away, the trail sent off a tiny feeler into the jungle. It dipped into one of the pretty glades which diversified the flatness of the island. Creeping slowly, Frank followed the sound.

Half-way down the slope, Honey Smith was standing, staring upwards. In his virile, bronzed semi-nudity, he might have been a god who had emerged for the first time into the air from the woods at his back. His lips were open and from them came sound.

Above him, almost within reach, Lulu floated, gazing downward. She had a listening look; and she listened fascinated. She seemed to lie motionless on the air. It was the first time that Merrill had seen Lulu so close. But in some mysterious way he knew that there was something abnormal about her. Her piquant Kanaka face shone with a strange emotion. Her narrow eyes were big with wonder; her blood-red lips had trembled open. She stared at Honey as if she were seeing him from a new angle. She stared, but sound came from her parted lips.

It was Honey who whistled and called. It was Lulu who twittered and trilled. No mating male bird could have put more of entreating tenderness into his voice. No mating female bird could have answered with more perplexity of abandon.

For a moment Frank stared. Then, with a sudden sense of eavesdropping, he moved noiselessly back until he struck the main trail.

He kept on until he came to the shady side of his favorite reef. He took from his pocket a book and began to read. To his surprise and discomfort, he could not get into it. Something psychological kept coming between him and the printed page. He tried to concentrate on a paragraph, a sentence, a phrase. It was like eating granite. It was like drinking dust. He stared at the words, but they seemed to float off the page.

That, then, was what all the other four men were doing while he was reading and writing, or while, with narrowed, scrutinizing eyes, he followed Chiquita’s languid flight. He had not seen Chiquita for a week; he had been so busy getting the first part of his monograph into shape that he had not come to the reef. And all that week, the other men had been -. A word from the university slang came into his mind - twosing - came into it with a new significance. How descriptive that word was! How concrete! Twosing!

He took up his book again. He glued his eyes to the print. Five minutes passed; he was gazing at the same words. But now instead of floating off the page, they engaged in little dances, dizzyingly concentric. Suddenly something that was not of the mind interposed another obstacle to concentration, a jagged, purple shadow.

It was Chiquita.

Frank leaped to his feet and stood staring. The quickness of his movement - ordinarily he moved measuredly - frightened her. She fluttered, drifted away, paused. Frank stiffened. His immobility reassured her. She drifted nearer. Something impelled Frank to hold his rigid pose. But, for some unaccustomed reason, his hand trembled. His book dropped noiselessly on to the soft grass.

Chiquita floated down, closer than ever before.

She had undoubtedly just waked up. The dew of dreams still lay on her luscious lips and in her great black eyes. Scarlet flowers, flat-petaled, black-stamened, wreathed her dusky hair. Scarlet bands outlined her dusky shoulders. Scarlet streamers trailed in her wake. Never had she seemed more lazy and languid, more velvety and voluptuous, more colorful and sumptuous.

Frank stared and stared. Then, following an inexplicable impulse, he whistled as he had heard Honey whistle; and called as he had heard Honey call, the plaintive, entreating note of the mating male bird.

The same look which had come into Lulu’s face came into Chiquita’s, a look of wonder and alarm and -. She trembled, but she sank slowly, head foremost like a diver.

Frank continued softly to call and whistle. After an interval, another mysterious instinct impelled him to stop. Chiquita’s lips moved; from them came answering sound, faint, breathy, scarcely voiced but exquisitely musical, exquisitely feminine, the call of the mating female bird.

When she stopped, Frank took it up. He raised his hand to her gently. As if that gave her confidence, she floated nearer, so close that he could have touched her. But some new wisdom taught him not to do that. She sank lower and lower until she was just above him. Frank did not move - nor speak now. She fluttered and continued to sink. Now he could look straight into her eyes. Frank had never really looked into a woman’s eyes before. The depth of Chiquita’s was immeasurable. There were dreams on the surface. But his gaze pierced through the dreams, through layer on layer of purple black, to where stars lay. Some emotion that constantly grew in her seemed to melt and fuse all these layers; but the stars still held their shine.

Slowly still, but as though at the urge of a compelled abandon, Chiquita sank lower and lower. Nearer she came and nearer. The pollen from the flowers at her breast sifted on to his face. Now their eyes were level. And now -.

She kissed him.

Billy, Ralph, and Pete sat on the sand bantering Honey, who had returned in radiant spirits from his walk.

“Here comes old Frank,” Billy said. “He’s running. But he’s staggering. By George, I should think he was drunk.”

Frank was drunk, but not with wine. When he came nearer, they saw that his face was white.

“You’re right boys,” he said quietly, “and I’m wrong.” For a moment, he added nothing; but they knew what he meant. “A situation like this is special; it requires special laws. It’s the masculine right of eminent domain. I give my consent - I - I - I - I agree to anything you want to do.”

IV

“The question before the house now is,” said Ralph, “how are we going to do it? Myself, I’d be strong for winging them sometime when they’re flying low.”

The other four men burst into shocked remonstrance.

“Well, don’t go up in the air,” Ralph said in an amused voice. “It wouldn’t hurt them any. And it seems to me if we’ve definitely made up our minds to capture them, the best way is the swiftest and surest.”

“But to shoot a woman!” Pete exclaimed.