"Then," she added calmly, "we have captured the Thermosaurus."
"Your father," said I at length, "must have spent years of labour over
this preparation."
"It is the work of a lifetime," she said simply.
My face, I suppose, showed my misgivings.
"It must not fail," she added.
"But--but we are nowhere near the Gulf Stream," I ventured.
Her face brightened, and she frankly held the sunshade over us both.
"Ah, you don't know," she said, "what else papa has discovered. Would
you believe that he has found a loop in the Gulf Stream--a genuine
loop--that swings in here just outside of the breakers below? It is
true! Everybody on Long Island knows that there is a warm current off
the coast, but nobody imagined it was merely a sort of backwater from
the Gulf Stream that formed a great circular mill-race around the
cone of a subterranean volcano, and rejoined the Gulf Stream off Cape
Albatross. But it is! That is why papa bought a yacht three years ago
and sailed about for two years so mysteriously. Oh, I did want to go
with him so much!"
"This," said I, "is most astonishing."
She leaned enthusiastically toward me, her lovely face aglow.
"Isn't it?" she said; "and to think that you and papa and I are the
only people in the whole world who know this!"
To be included in such a triology was very delightful.
"Papa is writing the whole thing--I mean about the currents. He also
has in preparation sixteen volumes on the Thermosaurus. He said this
morning that he was going to ask you to write the story first for some
scientific magazine. He is certain that Professor Bruce Stoddard, of
Columbia, will write the pamphlets necessary. This will give papa time
to attend to the sixteen-volume work, which he expects to finish in
three years."
"Let us first," said I, laughing, "catch our Thermosaurus."
"We must not fail," she said wistfully.
"We shall not fail," I said, "for I promise to sit on this sand hill
as long as I live--until a Thermosaurus appears--if that is your wish,
Miss Holroyd."
Our eyes met for an instant. She did not chide me, either, for not
looking at the ocean. Her eyes were bluer, anyway.
"I suppose," she said, bending her head and absently pouring sand
between her fingers--"I suppose you think me a blue-stocking, or
something odious?"
"Not exactly," I said. There was an emphasis in my voice that made her
colour. After a moment she laid the sunshade down, still open.
"May I hold it?" I asked.
She nodded almost imperceptibly.
The ocean had turned a deep marine blue, verging on purple, that
heralded a scorching afternoon. The wind died away; the odour of cedar
and sweet bay hung heavy in the air.
In the sand at our feet an iridescent flower beetle crawled, its
metallic green and blue wings burning like a spark. Great gnats, with
filmy, glittering wings, danced aimlessly above the young golden-rod;
burnished crickets, inquisitive, timid, ran from under chips of
driftwood, waved their antennæ at us, and ran back again. One by one
the marbled tiger beetles tumbled at our feet, dazed from the exertion
of an aërial flight, then scrambled and ran a little way, or darted
into the wire grass, where great brilliant spiders eyed them askance
from their gossamer hammocks.
Far out at sea the white gulls floated and drifted on the water, or
sailed up into the air to flap lazily for a moment and settle back
among the waves. Strings of black surf ducks passed, their strong wings
tipping the surface of the water; single wandering coots whirled from
the breakers into lonely flight toward the horizon.
We lay and watched the little ring-necks running along the water's
edge, now backing away from the incoming tide, now boldly wading
after the undertow. The harmony of silence, the deep perfume, the
mystery of waiting for that something that all await--what is it?
love? death? or only the miracle of another morrow?--troubled me with
vague restfulness. As sunlight casts shadows, happiness, too, throws a
shadow, and the shadow is sadness.
And so the morning wore away until Freda came with a cool-looking
hamper. Then delicious cold fowl and lettuce sandwiches and champagne
cup set our tongues wagging as only very young tongues can wag. Daisy
went back with Freda after luncheon, leaving me a case of cigars, with
a bantering smile. I dozed, half awake, keeping a partly closed eye
on the ocean, where a faint gray streak showed plainly amid the azure
water all around. That was the Gulf Stream loop.
About four o'clock Frisby appeared with a bamboo shelter tent, for
which I was unaffectedly grateful.
After he had erected it over me he stopped to chat a bit, but the
conversation bored me, for he could talk of nothing but bill-posting.
"You wouldn't ruin the landscape here, would you?" I asked.
"Ruin it!" repeated Frisby nervously. "It's ruined now; there ain't a
place to stick a bill."
"The snipe stick bills--in the sand," I said flippantly.
There was no humour about Frisby. "Do they?" he asked.