“Yes, they did find a dress-suit case with a false bottom; a feminine wig--some further disguise--was stowed away in it.”
“But who--captured--him?” It was a low, thrilled uproar of question. “Not--not the camouflaged dory?”
“No, the Coast Guard captain. The launch was showing her heels to the old self-bailer. The spy shifted his course--put about--was trying to dodge back towards the river--tidal river--down which he came. The steel boat headed him off, and--and the dory, too! Then he jumped overboard, tried to swim. But the captain yelled at him to halt--surrender--or he’d fire. Ex-ci-ting! Well! I should say so.... Good of you to let me take your boat--if she is the most ‘witchetty’ thing that ever floated!”
“You--you upheld shipping.”
Within the radiant ring of the powerful flash-light belting the sands, a boy and girl--Atlas and the Flame who had defied him--looked into each other’s feverish eyes with comradeship, not challenge now--comradeship that might well grow to something more charming, as the years went on--when the white flag of Peace should float once more over a progressive world.
Misunderstanding was of the past--mockery, too! They had come through the Game “with their wings,”--the patient, toiling service-game for freedom and Country; they were one with their brothers of the skies--with the heroes of trench and top, over there.
Or, to change the figure, all had done their bit, and, in two instances, by might and magic of service, automatically swelling, it had become the main bitt to which the main-sheet of safety, the mainsail of progress, were belayed.
And yet--yet--in another minute even that failed to satisfy the girl in the case--left her with a hollow feeling of dissatisfaction--for she was a creature of moods shading like her eyelashes, and suffering from reaction, too!
The flash-light winked itself out in her hand--and all her exultation with it.
She hid her now pale face in the curve of an arm in a green-stained middy-blouse.