Was it going to be a visitor?
Forgotten was the charming purpose of the evening, the main feature of the ceremonial meeting, the initiation of Nébis, little Flamina, now fondling the air with vocal thrills that sobbed joyously, like the softer strings of a violin--as that transporting question sailed, moon-faced, over the top!
“But--but where did you see it first, Sara? Oh! how could you see it, far off--when everything’s getting so dark? I never knew you had--cat’s--eyes!”
Little Owl was blinking like a snake-charmed owlet which could not move its head upon the neck usually so flexible--that slender girlish neck rising from the round setting of the ceremonial dress being bent fixedly backward--the face, white as a moon-flower, shining upward in ultimate expectancy, such as never had been before, never could, felt she, be again, though she live till crack of doom!
“See it! Oh, I don’t know! While--while we were singing--chanting--about the Creature Far Above (oh! wasn’t that funny?) I happened to look off, and saw a speck--dark--against the red! I thought, at first, it was a bird! Then--then it entered that red ripple-cloud ... then.... Oh-h! I believe it is going to land--land on our map--right here on the sands.
“Yes; I can hear the engine buzz--now! Gracious! it looks like a big, dark fish--swimming round in a fog, with a whirligig in its mouth--the revolving propeller, I suppose.”
Olive was stuttering with excitement, too--her hands clasped--staccato excitement that ticked each word off like a dot against the bare, steely possibility that the big biplane, now within a couple of hundred yards of the home-fires, might pass over and on, without descending.
“It may be a naval aëroplane patrolling for submarines, in which case it will probably fly on over the water--on top of the water, maybe!”
Even Gheezies, the Guardian, as she put forth the unwelcome suggestion, was oppressed by a tickling in her throat, a cooing almost babyish, of held-up excitement that did not yet dare to be exultation over the landing of an army battle-plane by their Council Fire--so that maturity dropped from her like a nun’s cloak and her forty years became as the fourteen of the youngest tiptoeing maidens present.
“My! But, mercy! suppose it should be--should be an enemy air-plane? Hostile! Goodness!”