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

unmistakably noting the effect.

 

“Hates herself, doesn’t she?” commented Honey Smith. “They’re talking!”

he added after an interval of silence. “Some one of them is giving

directions - I can tell by the tone of her voice. Can’t make out which

one it is though. Thank God, they can talk!”

 

“It’s the quiet one - the blonde - the one with the white wings,” Billy

Fairfax explained. “She’s captain. Some bean on her, too; she

straightened them out a moment ago when they got so frightened.”

 

“I now officially file my claim,” said Ralph Addington, “to that peachy

one - the golden blonde - the one with the blue wings, the one who tried

to stand on the bough. That girl’s a corker. I can tell her kind of

pirate craft as far as I see it.”

 

“Me for the thin one!” said Pete Murphy. “She’s a pippin, if you please.

Quick as a cat! Graceful as they make them. And look at that mop of red

hair! Isn’t that a holocaust? I bet she’s a shrew.”

 

You win, all right,” agreed Ralph Addington. “I’d like nothing better

than the job of taming her, too.”

 

“See here, Ralph,” bantered Pete, “I’ve copped Brick-top for myself. You

keep off the grass. See!”

 

“All right,” Ralph answered. “Katherine for yours, Petruchio. The golden

blonde for mine!” He smiled for the first time in days. In fact, at

sight of the flying-girls he had begun to beam with fatuous good nature.

 

Two blondes, two brunettes, and a red-top” said Honey Smith, summing

them up practically. “One of those brunettes, the brown one, must be a

Kanaka. The other’s prettier - she looks like a Spanish woman. There’s

something rather taking about the plain one, though. Pretty snappy - if

anybody should fly up in a biplane and ask you!”

 

“It’s curious,” Frank Merrill said with his most academic manner, “it

has not yet occurred to me to consider those young women from the point

of view of their physical pulchritude. I’m interested only in their

ability to fly. The one with the silver-white wings, the one Billy calls

the ‘quiet one,’ flies better than any of the others, The dark one on

the end, the one who looks like a Spaniard, flies least well. It is

rather disturbing, but I can think of them only as birds. I have to keep

recalling to myself that they’re women. I can’t realize it.”

 

“Well, don’t worry,” Ralph Addington said with the contemptuous accent

with which latterly he answered all Frank Merrill’s remarks. “You will.”

 

The others laughed, but Frank turned on them a look of severe reproof.

 

“Oh, hell!” Honey Smith exclaimed in a regretful tone; “they’re beating

it again. I say, girls,” he called at the top of his lungs, “don’t go!

Stay a little longer and we’ll buy you a dinner and a taxicab.”

 

Apparently the flying-girls realized that he was addressing them. For a

hair’s breadth of a second they paused. Then, with a speed that had a

suggestion of panic in it, they flew out to sea. And again a flood of

girl-laughter fell in bubbles upon them.

 

“They distrust muh!” Honey commented. But he smiled with the indolent

amusement of the man who has always held the master-hand with women.

 

“Must have come from the east, this time,” he said as they filed soberly

back to camp. “But where in thunder do they start from?”

 

They had, of course, discussed this question as they had discussed a

hundred other obvious ones. “I’m wondering now,” Frank Merrill answered,

“if there are islands both to the east and the west. But, after all, I’m

more interested to know if there are any more of these winged women, and

if there are any males.”

 

Again they talked far into the night. And as before their comment was of

the wonder, the romance, the poetry of their strange situation. And

again they drew imaginary pictures of what Honey Smith called “the young

Golden Age” that they would soon institute on Angel Island.

 

“Say,” Honey remarked facetiously when at length they started to run

down, “what happens to a man if he marries an angel? Does he become

angel-consort or one of those seraphim arrangements?”

 

Ralph Addington laughed. But Billy Fairfax and Pete Murphy frowned.

Frank Merrill did not seem to hear him. He was taking notes by the

firelight.

 

The men continued to work at the high rate of speed that, since the

appearance of the women, they had set for themselves. But whatever form

their labor took, their talk was ever of the flying-girls. They referred

to them individually now as the “dark one,” the “plain one,” the “thin

one,” the “quiet one,” and the “peachy one.” They theorized eternally

about them. It was a long time, however, before they saw them again, so

long that they had begun to get impatient. In Ralph Addington this

uneasiness took the form of irritation. “If I’d had a gun,” he snarled

more than once, “by the Lord Harry, I’d have winged one of them.” He sat

far into the night and waited. He arose early in the morning and

watched. He went for long, slow, solitary, silent, prowling hikes into

the interior. His eyes began to look strained from so minute a study of

the horizon-line. He grew haggard. His attitude in the matter annoyed

Pete Murphy, who maintained that he had no right to spy on women.

Argument broke out between them, waxing hot, waned to silence, broke out

again and with increased fury. Frank Merrill and Billy Fairfax listened

to all this, occasionally smoothing things over between the disputants.

But Honey Smith, who seemed more amused than bothered, deftly fed the

flame of controversy by agreeing first with one and then with the other.

 

Late one afternoon, just as the evening star flashed the signal of

twilight, the girls came streaming over the sea toward the island.

 

At the first faraway glimpse, the men dropped their tools and ran to

the water’s edge. Honey Smith waded out, waist-deep.

 

“Well, what do you know about that?” he called out. “Pipe the

formation!”

 

They came massed vertically. In the distance they might have been a

rainbow torn from its moorings, borne violently forward on a high wind.

The rainbow broke in spots, fluttered, and then came together again. It

vibrated with color. It pulsed with iridescence.

 

“How the thunder - ” Addington began and stopped. “Well, can you beat

it?” he concluded.

 

The human column was so arranged that the wings of one of the air-girls

concealed the body of another just above her.

 

The “dark one” led, flying low, her scarlet pinions beating slowly back

and forth about her head.

 

Just above, near enough for her body to be concealed by the scarlet

wings of the “dark one,” but high enough for her pointed brown face to

peer between their curves, came the “plain one.”

 

Higher flew the “thin one.” Her body was entirely covered by the orange

wings of the “plain one,” but her copper-colored hair made a gleamy spot

in their vase-shaped opening.

 

Still higher appeared the “peachy one.” She seemed to be holding her

lustrous blonde head carefully centered in the oval between the “thin

one’s” green-and-yellow plumage. She looked like a portrait in a frame.

 

Highest of them all, floating upright, a Winged Victory of the air, her

silver wings towering straight above her head, the cameo face of the

“quiet one” looked level into the distance.

 

Their wings moved in rotation, and with machine-like regularity. First

one pair flashed up, swept back and down, then another, and another. As

they neared, the color seemed the least wonderful detail of the picture.

For it changed in effect from a column of glittering wings to a column

of girl-faces, a column that floated light as thistle-down, a column

that divided, parted, opened, closed again.

 

The background of all this was a veil of dark gauze at the horizon-line,

its foil a golden, virgin moon, dangling a single brilliant star.

 

“They’re talking!” Honey Smith exclaimed. “And they’re leaving!”

 

The girls did not pause once. They flew in a straight line over the

island to the west, always maintaining their columnar formation. At

first the men thought that they were making for the trees. They ran

after them. The speed of their running had no effect this time on their

visitors, who continued to sail eastward. The men called on them to

stay. They called repeatedly, singly and in chorus. They called in every

tone of humble masculine entreaty and of arrogant masculine command. But

their cries might have fallen on marble ears. The girls neither turned

nor paused. They disappeared.

 

“Females are certainly alike under their skins, whether they’re angels

or Hottentots,” Ralph Addington commented. ” That tableau appearance was

all cooked up for us. They must have practised it for hours.”

 

“It has the rose-carnival at Tetaluma, Cal., faded,” remarked Honey

Smith.

 

“The ‘quiet one’ was giving the orders for that wing-movement,” said

Billy Fairfax. “She whispered them, but I heard her. She engineered the

whole thing. She seems to be their leader.”

 

“I got their voices this time,” said Pete Murphy. “Beautiful, all of

them. Soprano, high and clear. They’ve got a language, all right, too.

What did you think of it, Frank?”

 

“Most interesting,” replied Frank Merrill, “most interesting. A

preponderance of consonants. Never guttural in effect, and as you say,

beautiful voices, very high and clear.”

 

“I don’t see why they don’t stop and play,” complained Honey. His tone

was the petulant one of a spoiled child. It is likely that during the

whole course of his woman-petted existence, he had never been so

completely ignored. “If I only knew their lingo, I could convince them

in five minutes that we wouldn’t hurt them.”

 

“If we could only signal,” said Billy Fairfax, “that if they’d only come

down to earth, we wouldn’t go any nearer than they wanted. But the deuce

of it is proving to them that we don’t bite.”

 

“It is probably that they have known only males of a more primitive

type,” Frank Merrill explained. “Possibly they are accustomed to

marriage by capture.”

 

“That would be a very lucky thing,” Ralph explained in an aside to

Honey. “Marriage by capture isn’t such a foolish proposition, after all.

Look at the Sabine women. I never heard tell that there was any kick

coming from them. It all depends on the men.”

 

“Oh, Lord, Ralph, marriage by capture isn’t a sporting proposition,”

said Honey in a disgusted tone. “I’m not for it. A man doesn’t get a run

for his money. It’s too much like shooting trapped game.”

 

“Well, I will admit that there’s more fun in the chase,” Ralph answered.

 

“Oh, well, if the little darlings are not accustomed to chivalry from

men,” Pete Murphy was in the meantime saying, “that explains why they

stand us off.”

 

It was typical of Pete to refer to the flying-girls as “little

darlings.” The shortest among them was, of course, taller than he. But

to Pete any woman was “little one,” no matter what her stature, as any

woman was “pure as the driven snow” until she proved the contrary. This

impregnable simplicity explained much of the disaster of his married

life.

 

“I am convinced,” Frank Merrill said meditatively, “we must go about

winning their confidence with the utmost care. One false step might be

fatal. I know what your impatience is though - for I can hardly school

myself to wait - that extraordinary phenomenon of the wings interests me

so much. The great question in my mind is