It was Clara again.
This time, apparently, she had come from the ocean. Sea-kelp, still glistening with brine, encased her close as with armor. A little pointed cap of kelp covered her tawny hair as with a helmet. That gave her a piquant quality of boyishness. She was flying lower than he had ever seen her, and as Pete’s eyelids came up she dropped nearer, threw herself into one of her sinuous poses, arms and legs outstretched close, hands and feet cupped, wrists, ankles, hips, shoulders all moving. She looked straight down into Pete’s eyes; and this time she smiled.
Pete stared for another long moment. Then as though summoning all his resolution, he withdrew his eyes, nailed them to his paper. Clara peppered him with shells and pebbles; but he continued to ignore her. He did not look up again until a whir-r-r-r-r—loud at first but steadily diminishing—apprised him of her flight.
Pete again wrote the rest of the day and by firelight far into the night. In the middle of the morning he stopped suddenly, weighted his paper down with a stone, rolled over on to the pine-needles, and fell immediately into a deep sleep. He lay for hours, his face down, resting on his arm.
Whir-r-r-r-r!
Pete awoke with a start. His manuscript was gone. He leaped to his feet, stared wildly about. Not far off Clara was flying, almost on the ground. As he watched, she ascended swiftly. She held his poem in her hands. She studied it, her head bent. She did not once look up or back; her eyes still jealously glued to the pencil-scratchings, she drifted out to sea, disappeared.
Pete did not move. He watched Clara intently until she melted into the sky. But as he watched, his creative mood broke and evaporated. And suddenly another emotion, none the less fiercely ravaging, sluiced the blood into his face, filled his eyes with glitter, shook him as though a high wind were blowing, sent him finally speeding at a maniacal pace over the reefs.
“Say, do you think we’d better organize a search-party?” Honey asked finally.
“Not yet,” said Ralph, “here he comes.”
Pete was running down the trail like a deer.