“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.
“Well, don’t worry,” Ralph answered him, “we haven’t any guns. I did
think of bows and arrows, though.” He said this in the tone of one who
throws out a suggestion and he stopped to study the faces of his fellow
conspirators. Equally they expressed horror and disgust. “All right,” he
said with equanimity. “I see you’re like all human nature. You’re
determined to pull off this caveman stunt, but you want to do it with
every appearance of chivalry and generosity. You’re saving face. All
right! I’m agreeable - although personally I think the quickest way the
most merciful. Has anybody a better plan? ”
Nobody had. It was obvious, though, from the talk that followed, that
they had all been secretly considering the matter.
“The only thing for us to do,” Honey said at once, “is to lie in wait.
Conceal ourselves in the bushes and leap out on them.”
“That sounds easy,” Ralph said. “But has it occurred to you that these
girls have the ears of wild animals? Has it occurred to you that they
have all the instincts and cunning of the animal and all the intuition
and prescience of the woman? Has it occurred to you that they always
approach from above?”
“The only thing I can think of,” said Billy, “is to lasso them. Only
we’ve got to get them to alight and walk round first. But either they
can’t walk or they don’t like to walk. We must off offer them some bait.
Now, what in thunder would tempt a creature that’s one-third woman,
one-third bird, and one-third angel to come down to earth?”
For a moment they were all silent considering this question. “By Jove,”
Ralph burst out finally, “what are we all sitting here like dopes for?
Those trunks are full of women’s clothes. Did you ever see a woman yet
who wouldn’t fall for ribbons and laces?”
“Good shot!” exclaimed Honey. “Let’s go through the women-truck
to-morrow and pick out some things that would please a girl. We’ll put
them on the beach a good distance off from us, so they’ll not think it’s
a trap. If we do that every day for a week or two they’ll get accustomed
to walking round while we’re working. It’s our play to take no notice of
them whatever.”
“That’s the answer,” Ralph said in a tone of satisfaction.
Immediately after breakfast, the next morning, they made for the file of
trunks so contemptuously rejected the first week of their stay. Honey,
who was always head and shoulders in front of the others, broke open the
first one.
“By jiminy, boys!” he shouted, seizing something that lay on top and
waving it over his head, “we’ve got them on the go-off. By George,” he
went on, lowering his voice, “I bet that belonged to some darned pretty
woman.”
The men crowded about him; and, as they examined his find, their faces
softened. Nothing could more subtly have emanated femininity. It was a
hand-mirror of silver. Two carved Cupids held the glass between them.
Their long wings made the handle.
“Put it down there on the hard sand,” Ralph said, “where they can’t fail
to see it.”
“Hold!” exclaimed Honey in a tone of burlesque warning. “There must be
five mirrors. He knows nothing of women who thinks that one mirror may
be divided among five girls. I hope Lulu cops this one.”
His companions did not laugh. Apparently they were impressed with the
sapience of his remark. They searched the trunks until they had gathered
the five that Honey demanded. They placed them in a row just above the
high-water line. The mirrors caught the sunlight, reflected it.
“They won’t do a thing to those girls,” said Honey. There was the glee
in his voice of a little boy who is playing a practical joke.
The girls came in a group in the middle of the afternoon.
“They’ve spotted them already,” said Honey.
“Trust a woman and a looking-glass.”
The discovery ruined discipline; it broke ranks; the five girls flew
high, flew low, flew separated, flew grouped, crowded about Julia,
obviously asking her advice. Obviously she gave it; for following her
quick, clear tones of advice came a confused chattering - remonstrance.
Then Peachy, Clara, Chiquita, and Lulu dropped a little. Julia alone
came no nearer. She alone showed no excitement.
The men meantime watched. They could not, as they had so loftily
resolved, pretend to ignore the situation. But they kept silent and
still. Once or twice the girls glanced curiously in their direction. But
in the main they ignored them. Descending in big, slow, cautious,
sliding curves, they circled nearer and nearer the sand.
Suddenly Lulu screamed. Still screaming, she bounded - it was almost
that she bounced - straight up. The others streamed to the zenith in the
wake of her panic, caught up, closed about her. There floated down the
shrillness of agitated question and answer.
“What the Hades - “ Ralph said in a mystified tone.
“I’ve got it,” said Honey. “She caught a look at herself in one of the
mirrors and she’s scared. Don’t be afraid, Lulu,” he called in a
reassuring tone; “it won’t hurt you.”
Lulu evidently got what he intended to convey. Again she sank slowly,
hovered an instant close to the sand, brought her face near to a mirror,
bounced up, dipped down, brought her face nearer, fluttered, put out one
hand, withdrew it, put out the other, withdrew it, put out both, seized
a mirror firmly, darted to the zenith.
“Well, what do you know about that!” said Billy. And, “Oh, the angels!”
exclaimed Pete. Ralph’s face opened in the fatuous grin which always
meant satisfaction with him. Honey turned somersaults of delight. Even
Frank twinkled.
For, high up in the heaven, five heads positively bumped over the meager
oval of silver.
Lulu finally pulled out of the crowd and flew away. But all the time she
held the mirror straight before her, clasped tightly in two hands,
ecstatically “eating herself up” as Honey described it.
The men continued to watch.
Gradually, one after another, the other four girls fell under the lure
of their vanity and their acquisitiveness.
Clara dove first, clutched a long-handled oval of yellow celluloid. Next
Chiquita swam lazily downward, made a brief scarlet flutter on the
beach, seized an elaborate double mirror set in gilded wood. Peachy
followed; she chose a heart-shaped glass, ebony-framed. Last of all,
Julia came floating slowly down. She took the only one that was left: it
was, of course, the smallest; it was framed in carved ivory.
For the next ten minutes, the sky presented a picture of five winged
women, stationed at various points of the compass, ecstatically studying
their own beautiful faces in mirrors held in their white, strong-looking
hands.
Then, flying together again, they discovered that the mirrors reflected.
At first, this created panic, then amusement. Ensued a delicious
girl-frolic. Darting through the air, laughing, jabbering, they played
tag, throwing the light into each other’s eyes. A little later Peachy
gathered them into a bunch and whispered instructions. Immediately they
began flashing the mirrors into the men’s faces. To escape this
bombardment, their victims had finally to throw themselves face downward
on the sand.
In the midst of this excitement came disaster.
Lulu dropped her mirror.
It hit square and shattered on the sand to many brilliant splinters.
Lulu fell like a stone, seized the empty frame, gazed into it for a
heart-broken second, burst into tears.
It was the first time that the men as a group had ever seen in the
flying-girls an exhibition of this feminine faculty. For a moment, they
watched her, deeply interested, as though confronted by an unfamiliar
phenomenon. Then Billy wriggled.
“Say, stop her, somebody,” he begged, “I hate to hear a woman cry.”
“So do I,” said Peter, his face twisted into creases of discomfort.
“She’s your girl, Honey. Stop her, for God’s sake.”
“How’s he going to stop her, I’d like to know?” demanded Ralph. “We
don’t converse very fluently yet, you know.”
“Well, I know how to stop her,” said Honey, leaping up. “I say, Lulu,”
he called. “Stop that crying, that’s a good girl. It makes us all sick.
I’ll find you another mirror in a moment.”
Lulu did not stop crying. Perhaps she was not too primitive to realize
that tears are the argument a woman negotiates best. She wailed and wept
assiduously.
Honey, in the meantime, flew to the trunks. He dumped one after another;
clothes flew from either energetic hand like gravel from a shovel.
Suddenly he gave a yell of triumph and brandished - . It was cheap and
brass-bound, but it reflected the sunlight as well as though it had been
framed in massy gold.
“Here you are, Lulu!” he called. He ran down the beach and held it up to
her. Lulu caught the reflection. She dropped sheer. In her eagerness,
she took it from Honey’s very hand. And as she seized it, a tear dropped
on his upturned cheek. And as the tear dropped, her face broke into
smiles.
“Well,” exclaimed Ralph an instant later, “if I’d had any idea that they
were angels and not females, this would settle the question for me. Good
Lord! Well, you have got a temper, my lady.”
It was of Julia he spoke.
For, descending slowly and deliberately, Julia hovered an instant above
a big rock. Then, with a tremendous slashing impulse of a powerful arm,
she hurled her mirror on it. She flew in a very frenzy of haste into the
west.
The girls returned the next morning early.
“After the graft,” Ralph commented cynically.
Honey had been rifling the trunks again. He walked down to the beach
with an armful of fans, piled them there, returned to camp. The girls
descended, eyed them, ascended, gathered together, talked, descended,
ascended again.
“What’s the row?” Billy asked.
“They don’t know what they’re for,” said Pete. He ran down on to the
beach, seized a fan of feathers, opened it, and stood fanning himself.
Then he put it down and ran back.
He had hardly returned to the group of men when Chiquita swooped down
and seized the fan that he had dropped. The feathers were the exact
scarlet of her wings. She floated about, fanning herself slowly, her
teeth flashing white in her dusky face.
“By jiminy, if she only had a mantilla, she’d be a Spanish angel,” Billy
commented whimsically.
The other girls dropped down after a while and seized a fan, or in
Clara’s case two, and Peachy’s three. They sailed off into the west,
fanning themselves slowly.
“Say, we’ve got to have our ammunition all ready the next time they
come,” said Ralph. “I bet they’re here this afternoon. They’ve never had
any of these lover-like little attentions, apparently. And they’re
falling for them so quick that it’s fairly embarrassing. Pete, you’ll
have to be muckraking this island before we get through.”
In their search for what Honey called “bait,” they came across a trunk
filled with scarfs of various descriptions; gauze, satin, chiffon;
embroidered, sequined, fringed; every color, fabric, and decoration;
every shape and size. “Drummers’ samples!” Honey commented.
“I tell you what we’ll do now,” Ralph suggested. “Put the first five
scarfs on the beach where they can get them. But if they want any more,
make them take them from our hands. Be careful, though, not to frighten
them. One move in their direction and we’ll undo everything we’ve
accomplished.”
As Ralph prophesied, the girls came again that day, but they waited
until after sunset. It was full-moon night, however; the island was as
white as day. They must have seen the gay-colored heaps from a distance;
they pounced on them at once. The air resounded with cooings of delight.
There was no doubt of it; the scarfs pleased them almost as much as the
mirrors. Before the first flush of their delight had passed, Honey ran
down the beach, bearing aloft a long, shimmering, white streamer. Ralph
followed with a scarf of black and gold. Billy, Pete, and Frank joined
them, each fluttering a brilliant silk gonfalon.
The girls drew away in alarm at first. Then they drew together for
counsel. All the time the men stood quiet, waving their delicately hued
spoils. One by one - Clara first, then Chiquita, Lulu, Peachy, Julia -
they succumbed; they sank slowly. Even then they floated for a long
while, visibly swinging between the desire for possession and the
instinct of caution. But in the end each one of them took from her mate
the scarf he held up to her. Followed the prettiest exhibition of flying
that Angel Island had yet seen. The girls fastened the long gauzes to
their heads and shoulders. They flicked and flitted and flittered, they
danced and pirouetted and spun through the air, trailing what in the
aqueous moonlight looked like mist, irradiated, star-sown.
“Well,” said Ralph that night after the girls had vanished, “I don’t see
that this business of handing out loot is getting us anywhere. We can
keep this up until we’ve given those harpies every blessed thing in the
trunks. Then where are we? They’ll have everything we have to give, and
we’ll be no nearer acquainted. We’ve got to do something else.”
“If we could only get them down to earth - if we could only accustom
them to walking about,” Honey declared, “I’m sure we could rig up some
kind of trap.”
“But you can’t get them to do that,” Billy said.
And the answer’s obvious. They can’t walk. You see how tiny, and
useless-looking their feet are. They’re no good to them, because they’ve
never used them. It never occurs to them apparently even to try to
walk.”
“Well, who would walk if he could fly?” demanded Pete pugnaciously.
“Well said, son,” agreed Ralph, “but what are we going to do about it?”
“I’ll tell you what we can do about it,” said Frank quietly, “if you’ll
listen to me.” The others turned to him. Their faces expressed varying
emotions - surprise, doubt, incredulity, a great deal of amusement. But
they waited courteously.
“The trouble has been heretofore,” Frank went on in his best academic
manner, “that you’ve gone at this problem in too obvious a way. You’ve
appealed to only one motive - acquisitiveness. There’s a stronger one
than that - curiosity.”
The look of politely veiled amusement on the four faces began to give
way to credulity. “But how, Frank?” asked Billy.
“I’ll show you how,” said Frank. “I’ve been thinking it out by myself
for over a week now.”
There was an air of quiet certainty about Frank. His companions looked
furtively at each other. The credulity in their faces changed to
interest. “Go on, Frank,” Billy said. They listened closely to his
disquisition.
“What ever gave you the idea, Frank?” Billy asked at the end.
“The fact that I found a Yale spring-lock the other day,” Frank answered
quietly.
The next morning, the men arose at sunrise and went at once to work.
They worked together on the big cabin - the Clubhouse - and they dug and
hammered without intermission all day long. Halfway through the morning,
the girls came flying in a group to the beach. The men paid no attention
to them. Many times their visitors flew up and down the length of the
crescent of white, sparkling sand, each time dropping lower, obviously
examining it for loot. Finding none, they flew in a body over the roof
of the Clubhouse, each face turned disdainfully away. The men took no
notice even of this. The girls gathered together in a quiet group and
obviously discussed the situation. After a little parley, they flew off.
Later in the afternoon came Lulu alone. She hovered at Honey’s shoulder,
displaying all her little tricks of graceful flying; but Honey was
obdurate. Apparently he did not see her. Came Chiquita, floating lazily
back and forth over Frank’s head like a monstrous, deeply colored
tropical bloom borne toward him on a breeze. She swam down close,
floated softly, but Frank did not even look in her direction. Came
Peachy with such marvels of flying, such diving and soaring, such
gyrating and flashing, that it took superhuman self-control not to drop
everything and stare. But nobody looked or paused. Came Clara, posturing
almost at their elbows. Came all save Julia, but the men ignored them
equally.
“Gee,” said Honey, after they had all disappeared, “that took the last
drop of resolution in me. By Jove, you don’t suppose they’ll get sore
and stay away for good?”
Frank shook his head.
Day by day the men worked on the Clubhouse; they worked their hardest
from the moment of sunrise to the instant of sunset. It was a square
building, big compared with the little cabins. They made a wide, heavy
door at one end and long windows with shutters on both sides. These were
kept closed.
“Only one more day’s work,” Frank said at the end of a fortnight, “and
then - .”
They finished the Clubhouse, as he prophesied, the next day.
“Now to furnish it,” Frank said.
They put up rough shelves and dressing-tables. They put in chairs and
hammocks. Then, working secretly at night when the moon was full, or in
the morning just after sunrise - at any time during the day when the
girls were not in sight - they transferred the contents of a half a
dozen women’s trunks to the Clubhouse. They hung the clothes
conspicuously in sight; they piled many small toilet articles on tables
and shelves; they placed dozens of mirrors about.
“It looks like a sale at the Waldorf,” Honey said as they stood
surveying the effect. “Tomorrow, we begin our psychological siege. Is
that right, Frank?”
“Psychological siege is right,” answered Frank with an unaccustomed
gayety and an unaccustomed touch of slang.
In the meantime the girls had shown their pique at this treatment in a
variety of small ways. Peachy and Clara made long detours around the
island in the effort not to pass near the camp. Chiquita and Lulu flew
overhead, but only in order to throw pebbles and sand down on the men
while they were working.
Julia alone took no part in this feud. If she was visible at all, it was
only as a glittering speck in the far-off reaches of the blue sky.
The next time the four girls approached the island, the men arose
immediately from their work. With an ostentatious carelessness, they
went into the Clubhouse. With an ostentatious carefulness, they closed
the door. They stayed there for three hours.
Outside, the girls watched this maneuver in visible astonishment. They
drew together and talked it over, flew down close to the Clubhouse, flew
about it in circles, examined it on every side, made even one perilous
trip across the roof, the tips of their feet tapping it in vicious
little dabs. But flutter as they would, jabber as they would, the
Clubhouse preserved a tomb-like silence. After a while they banged on
the shutters and knocked against the door; but not a sound or movement
manifested itself inside.
They flew away finally.
The next day the same thing happened - and the next - and the next.
But on the fourth day, something quite different occurred.
The instant the men saw the girls approaching, they carefully closed the
door and windows of the Clubhouse, and then marched into the interior of
the island. Close by the lake, there was a thick jungle of trees - a
place where the branches matted together, in a roof-like structure,
leaving a cleared space below. The men crawled into this shelter on
their hands and knees for an eighth of a mile. They stayed there three
hours.
The girls had followed this procession in an air-course that exactly
paralleled the trail. When the men disappeared under the trees, they
came together in a chattering group, obviously astonished, obviously
irritated. Hours went by. Not a thing stirred in the jungle; not a sound
came from it. The girls hovered and floated, dipped, dove, flew along
the edge of the lake close to the water, tried by looking under the
trees, to get what was going on. It was useless. Then they alighted on
the tree-tops and swung themselves down from branch to branch until they
were as near earth as they dared to come. Again they peered and peeped.
And again it was useless. In the end, flying and floating with the
disconsolate air of those who kill time, they frankly waited until the
men emerged from the jungle. Then, again the girls took up the airy
course that paralleled the trail to the camp.
For two weeks the men rigidly followed a program. Alternately they shut
themselves inside the Clubhouse and concealed themselves in the forest.
They stayed the same length of time in both places - never less than
three hours.
For two weeks, the girls rigidly followed a program. When the men
retired to the Clubhouse, they spent the three hours hovering over it,
sometimes banging viciously with feet and hands against the walls,
sometimes dropping stones on the roof. When the men retired to the
jungle, they spent the three hours beating about the branches of the
trees, dipping lower and lower into the underbrush, taking, as time went
on, greater and greater risks. But, as in both cases, the men were
screened from observation, all their efforts were useless.
Finally came a day with a difference. The men retired to the forest as
usual but, by an apparent inadvertence, they left the door of the
Clubhouse open a crack.
As usual the girls followed the men to the lake, but this time there was
a different air about them; they seemed to bubble with excitement. The
men crawled under the underbrush and waited. The girls made a
perfunctory search of the jungle and then, as at a concerted signal,
they darted like bolts of lightning back in the direction of the camp.
“I think we’ve got them, boys,” said Frank. There was a kind of
Berserker excitement about him, a wild note of triumph in his voice and
a white flare of triumph in his face. His breath came in excited gusts
and his nostrils dilated under the strain.
“I’m sure of it,” agreed Ralph. “And, by Jove, I’m glad. I’ve never had
anything so get on my nerves as this chase.” Ralph did, indeed, look
worn. Haggard and wild-eyed, he was shaking under the strain.
“Lord, I’m glad - but, Lord, it’s some responsibility,” said Honey
Smith. Honey was not white or drawn. He did not shake. But he had
changed. Still radiantly youthful, there was a new look in his face -
resolution.
“I feel like a mucker,” groaned Billy. He lay face down on a heap of
vines, his forehead pressed against the cool leaves. “But it is right,”
he added as one arguing fiercely with himself. “It is right. There’s no
other way.”
“I feel like a white slaver,” said Pete. He was unshaven and the black
shadow of his beard contrasted sharply with the white set look in his
face. “It’s hell to live, isn’t it? But the worst of it is, we must
live.”
“Time’s up.” Frank breathed these words on the long gust of his outgoing
breath. “Now, don’t go to pieces. Remember, it must be done.”
One behind the other, they crawled through the narrow tunnel that they
had cut into the underbrush - found the trail.
“Let’s swim across the lake,” Honey suggested; “I’m losing my nerve.”
“Good idea,” Billy said. They plunged into the water. Fifteen minutes
later, they emerged on the other side, cool, composed, ready for
anything.
The long trip back to the camp was taken almost in silence. Once in a
while, a mechanical “That’s a new bird, isn’t it?” came from Billy and,
a perfunctory “Look at that color,” from Pete. Frank walked ahead. He
towered above the others. He kept his eyes to the front. Ralph followed.
At intervals, he pulled himself up and peered into the sky or dropped
and tried to pierce the untranslatable distance; all this with the
quiet, furtive, prowling movements of some predatory beast. Next came
Honey, whistling under his breath and all the time whistling the same
tune. Billy and Pete, walking side by side, tailed the procession. At
times, those two caught themselves at the beginning of shuddering fits,
but always by a supreme effort they managed to calm themselves.
They came finally to the point where the jungle-trail joined the
sand-trail.
“There isn’t one in sight,” said Frank.
“They may have flown home,” Honey said doubtfully.
“They’re in the Clubhouse,” said Ralph. And he burst suddenly into a
long, wild cry of triumph. The cry was taken up in a faint shrill echo.
From the distance came shrieks - women’s voices - smothered.
“By God, we’ve got them,” said Frank again.
And then a strange thing happened. Pete Murphy crooked his elbow up to
his face and burst into hysterical weeping.
All this time, the men were moving swiftly towards the Clubhouse. As
they approached, the sound inside grew in volume from a hum of terrified
whisperings accented by drumming wings, to a pandemonium of cries and
sobs and wails.
“They’ll make a rush when we open the door, remember,” Ralph reminded
them. His eyes gleamed like a cat’s.
“Yes, but we can handle them,” said Frank. “There isn’t much nerve left
in them by this time.”
“I say, boys, I can’t stand this,” burst out Billy. “Open the door and
let them out.”
Billy’s words brought murmured echoes of approval from Pete and Honey.
“You’ve got to stand it,” Frank said in a tone of command. He surveyed
his mutinous crew with a stern look of authority.
“I can’t do it,” Honey admitted.
“I feel sick,” Pete groaned.
Just then emerged from the pandemonium within another sound, curt and
sharp-cut, the crash against the door of something heavy.
“That door won’t stand much of that,” Frank warned. “They’ll get out
before we know it.”
The look of irresolution went like a flash from Billy’s face, from
Honey’s, from Pete’s. The look of the hunter took its place, keen,
alert, determined, cruel.
“Keep close behind me,” Frank ordered.
“When I open the door, push in as quick as you can. They’ll try to rush
out.”
Inside the vibrant drumming kept up. Mixed with it came screams more
sharp with terror. There came another crash.
Frank pounded on the door. “Stand back! he called in a quiet tone of
authority as if the girls could understand. He fitted the key to the
lock, turned it, pulled the door open, leaped over the two broken chairs
on the threshold. The others followed, crowding close.
The rush that they had expected did not come.
Apparently at the first touch on the door, the, girls had retreated to
the farthest corner. They stood huddled there, gathered behind Julia.
They stood close together, swaying, half-supporting each other, their
pinions drooped and trailing, their eyes staring black with horror out
of their white faces.
Julia, a little in front, stood at defiance. Her wings, as though
animated by a gentle voltage of electricity, kept lifting with a low
purring whirr. Half-way they struck the ceiling and dropped dead. The
tiny silvery-white feathers near her shoulders rose like fur on a cat’s
back. One hand was clenched; the other grasped a chair. Her face was not
terrified; neither was it white. It glowed with rage, as if a fire had
been built in an alabaster vase.
All about on the floor, on chairs, over shelves lay the gauds that had
lured them to their capture. Of them all, Julia alone showed no change.
Below the scarlet draperies swathing Chiquita’s voluptuous outlines
appeared the gold stockings and the high-heeled gold slippers which she
had tried on her beautiful Andalusian feet. Necklaces swung from her
throat; bracelets covered her arms; rings crowded her fingers. Lulu had
thrown about her leafy costume an evening cape of brilliant blue brocade
trimmed with ermine. On her head glittered a boudoir-cap of web lace
studded with iridescent mock jewels. Over her mail of seaweed, Clara
wore a mandarin’s coat - yellow, with a decoration of tiny mirrors. Her
hair was studded with jeweled hairpins, combs; a jeweled band, a jeweled
aigrette. Peachy had put on a pink chiffon evening gown hobbled in the
skirt, one shoulder-length, shining black glove, a long chain of
fire-opals. Out of this emerged with an astonishing effect of contrast
her gleaming pearly shoulders and her, lustrous blue wings.
An instant the two armies stood staring at each other - at close terms
for the first time. Then, with one tremendous sweep of her arm, Julia
threw something over their heads out the open door. It flashed through
the sunlight like a rainbow rocket, tore the surface of the sea in a
dazzle of sparks and colors.
“There goes five hundred thousand dollars,” said Honey as the Wilmington
“Blue” found its last resting-place. “Shut the door, Pete.”
With another tremendous sweep of her magnificent arm, Julia lifted the
chair, swung it about her head as if it were a whip, rushed - not
running or flying, but with a movement that was both - upon the five
men. Her companions seized anything that was near. Lulu wrenched a shelf
from its fastenings.
The men closed in upon them.
Twenty minutes later, silence had fallen on the Clubhouse, a silence
that was broken only by panted breathing. The five men stood resting.
The five girls stood, tied to the walls, their hands pinioned in front
of them. At intervals, one or the other of them would call in an
agonized tone to Julia. And always she answered with words that
reassured and calmed.
The room looked as if it had housed a cyclone. The furniture lay in
splinters; the feminine loot lay on the floor, trampled and torn.
“I’d like to sit down,” Ralph admitted. It was the first remark that any
one of the men had made. “Lucky they can’t understand me. I’d hate them
to know it, but I’m as weak as a cat.”
“No sitting down, yet,” Frank commanded, still in his inflexible tones
of a disciplinarian. “Open the door, Pete - get some air in here!” He
knelt before a sea-chest which filled one corner of the room, unlocked
it, lifted the cover. The sunlight glittered on the contents.
“My God, I can’t,” said Billy.
“I feel like a murderer,” said Pete.
“You’ve got to,” Frank said in a tone, growing more peremptory with each
word. “Now.”
“That’s right,” said Ralph. “If we don’t do it now, we’ll never do it.’
Frank handed each man a pair of shears.
“I sharpened them myself,” he said briefly.
Heads over their shoulders, the girls watched.
Did intuition shout a warning to them? As with one accord, a long wail
arose from them, swelled to despairing volume, ascended to desperate
heights.
“Now!” Frank ordered.
They had thought the girls securely tied.
Clara fought like a leopardess, scratching and biting.
Lulu struggled like a caged eagle, hysteria mounting in her all the time
until the room was filled with her moans.
Peachy beat herself against the wall like a maniac. She shrieked without
cessation. One scream stopped suddenly in the middle - Ralph had struck
her on the forehead. For the rest of the shearing session she lay over a
chair, limp and silent.
Chiquita, curiously enough, resisted not at all. She only swayed and
shrugged, a look of a strange cunning in her long, deep, thick-lashed
eyes. But of them all, she was the only one who attempted to comfort;
she talked incessantly.
Julia did not move or speak. But at the first touch of the cold steel on
her bare shoulders, she fainted in Billy’s arms.
An hour later the men emerged from the Clubhouse.
“I’m all in,” Honey muttered. “And I don’t care who knows it. I’m going
for a swim.” Head down, he staggered away from the group and zigzagged
over the beach.
“I guess I’ll go back to the camp for a smoke,” Frank said. “I never
realized before that I had nerves.” Frank was white, and he shook at
intervals. But some strange spirit, compounded equally of a sense of
victory and of defeat, flashed in his eyes.
“I’m going off for a tramp.” Pete was sunken as well as ashen; he looked
dead. “Do you suppose they’ll hurt themselves pulling against those
ropes?” he asked tonelessly.
“Let them struggle for a while,” Ralph advised. Like the rest of them,
Ralph was exhausted-looking and pale. But at intervals he swaggered and
glowed. With his strange, new air of triumph and his white teeth
glittering through his dark mustache, he was more than ever like some
huge predatory cat. “Serves them right! They’ve taken it out of us for
three months.”
Billy did not speak, but he swayed as he followed Frank. He fell on his
bed when they reached the camp. He lay there all night motionless,
staring at the ceiling.
There was a tiny spot of blood on one hand.
V