Strange how, out of the stirred waves of her subconscious self, the epithet used by her soldier-brother, when the gas, catching a disobedient “doughboy,” had temporarily withered a fiery officer’s holiday, sprang--a kindred flame now--to her parted, stiffening lips, as she turned to the night-breeze for an answer!
But the sea-wind replied, “Not guilty!” pleading an alibi for the seal-hunter of the uneven blink, one of whose eyes was just an iota quicker on the cool wink than the other--who had missed his shot at the big dog-seal, although he had made a traveling arsenal of himself to invade the bar.
For, as the temperate gust argued, what possible object could a grown-up man have in giving a harmless little merry-andrew of a dory a luminous figurehead, visible, with the naked eye, only for a few yards--even if his present place of sojourn had not, according to Captain Andy, been miles away, at a little town far up a tidal river, which rang with the noise of shipbuilders’ mallets--or launching axes--where Olive Deering’s rich boy-cousin was working as a draftee of labor, to replace the gaps made in shipping by raiding submarines, and apparently not in love with his chosen job.
“No! That hunter’s face haunts me, not--not with a ‘comfy’ sort of feeling either, though, for the life of me, I can’t tell why. But I don’t think he’s the blighter--in this case. And it was a good joke my camouflaging that little dory, if somebody hadn’t gone an’ spoiled it--turned her into--into a toothless bead-eye,”--with a raving chuckle--“into a miserable little guy of a dragon-dory!”
A gurgle faintly tickled the air, like water bubbling out of an over-full bottle.
Sara Davenport wheeled about, her flame suspended.
Forth from between two low sand-mounds near by shot an arm, a bare, round arm, scintillating with six tiny twinkling white stars--a mundane Milky Way!
The dory’s owner caught her breath. For a brief second the “creeps”--the goose-flesh--almost came back. Then she leaped and grasped it.
The air gurgled like a cataract--a foamy cataract--suddenly shot by a wail!
“Oh, don’t--don’t! You’re h-hurting me!” screamed Sybil Deering. “O dear! how mad you are! Ha! ha! ha! R-rough you are--uh-huh-huh!... Don’t! You’re--hurting!”