Hard as the men worked, they had always the appearance of those who await the expected. But the expected did not occur; and gradually the sharp edge of anticipation wore dull. Emotionally they calmed. Their nerves settled to a normal condition. The sudden whirr of a bird’s flight attracted only a casual glance. In Ralph Addington alone, expectation maintained itself at the boiling point. He trained himself to work with one eye searching the horizon. One afternoon, when they had scattered for a siesta, his hoarse cry brought them running to the beach from all directions.
So suddenly had the girls appeared that they might have materialized from the air. This time they had not come from the sea. When Ralph discovered them, they were hovering back of them above the trees that banded the beach. The sun was setting, blood-red; the whole western sky had broken away. The girls seemed to be floating in a sea of crimson-amber ether. Its light brought lustre to every feather; it turned the edges of their wings to flame; it changed their smoothly piled hair to helmets of burnished metal.
The men tore from the beach to the trees at full speed. For a moment the violence of this action threw the girls into a panic. They fluttered, broke lines, flew high, circled. And all the time, they uttered shrill cries of distress.
“They’re frightened,” Billy Fairfax said. “Keep quiet, boys.”
The men stopped running, stood stock-still.
Gradually the girls calmed, sank, took up the interweaving figures of their air-dance. If at their first appearance they seemed creatures of the sea, this time they were as distinctively of the forest. They looked like spirits of the trees over which they hovered. Indeed, but for their wings they might have been dryads. Wreaths of green encircled their heads and waists. Long leafy streamers trailed from their shoulders. Often in the course of their aerial play, they plunged down into the feathery tree-tops.
Once, the blonde with the blue wings sailed out of the group and balanced herself for a toppling second on a long, outstretching bough.
“Good Lord, what a picture!” Pete Murphy said.
As if she understood, she repeated her performance. She cast a glance over her shoulder at them—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!”