Angel Island, Inez Haynes Gillmore [the two towers ebook txt] 📗

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. Halfway 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

A.

 

Dawn on Angel Island.

 

A gigantic rose bloomed at the horizon-line; half its satin petals lay

on the iron sea, half on the granite sky. The gold-green morning star

was fading slowly. From the island came a confusion of bird-calls.

 

Addington emerged from the Clubhouse. Without looking about him, he

staggered down the path to the Camp. The fire was still burning. The

other men lay beside it, moveless, asleep with their clothes on. They

waked as his footsteps drew near. Livid with fatigue, their eyelids

dropping in spite of their efforts, they jerked upright.

 

“How are they?” Billy asked.

 

“The turn has come,” Ralph answered briefly. As he spoke he crumpled

slowly into a heap beside the fire. “They’re going to live.”

 

The others did not speak; they waited.

 

“Julia did it. She had dozed off. Suddenly in the middle of the night,

she sat upright. She was as white as marble but there was a light back

of her face. And with all that wonderful hair falling down - she looked

like an angel. She called to them one by