"I'll come back tomorrow," he heard himself saying.
"Flash! It looks as if the World Economic Conference may soon adjourn,
mouthing jeers at old Uncle Sam who is generally referred to as Uncle
Shylock."
Jack felt a numbness on his neck. The room seemed to be darkening, the
girl growing stranger still.
"You must go before they see you."
"Flash! Wiley Post has just completed his solo circuit of the Globe,
after a record-breaking flight of 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes.
Asked how he felt after the energy-draining feat, Post quipped...."
* * * * *
He was halfway across the lawn before he realized the terror into which
the grating radio voice had thrown him.
He leaped for the branch over-hanging the fence, vaulted up with the
risky help of a foot on the barbed top. A surprised squirrel, lacking
time to make its escape up the trunk, sprang to the ground ahead of
him. With terrible suddenness, two steel-jawed semicircles clanked
together just over the squirrel's head. Jack landed with one foot to
either side of the sprung trap, while the squirrel darted off with a
squeak.
Jack plunged down the slope to the rocky spine and ran across it, spray
from the rising waves spattering him to the waist. Panting now, he
stumbled up into the oaks and undergrowth of the first island, fought
his way through it, finally reached the silent cove. He loosed the line
of the _Annie O._, dragged it as near to the cove's mouth as he could,
plunged knee-deep in freezing water to give it a final shove, scrambled
aboard, snatched up the boathook and punched at the rocks.
As soon as the _Annie O._ was nosing out of the cove into the cross
waves, he yanked up the sail. The freshening wind filled it and sent
the sloop heeling over, with inches of white water over the lee rail,
and plunging ahead.
For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind
and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his
attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't
have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion,
and wonder about flappers and hidden traps.
When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how
tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland.
Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly
overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in
the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair
that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that
it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches
over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to
the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle.
But just then the motorboat swung around in a turn that sent waves
drenching over it, and headed back toward the island. He watched it for
a minute in wonder, then his attention was jolted by an angry hail.
Three fishing smacks, also headed toward town, were about to cross
his bow. He came around into the wind and waited with shaking sail,
watching a man in a lumpy sweater shake a fist at him. Then he turned
and gratefully followed the dark, wide, fanlike sterns and age-yellowed
sails.