It was in the earliest flames of sunrise that a dozen, at least, of wakeful girls thronged the white beach--where cranberry vines trailed exquisitely over the sands, laying young cheeks of faintly flushed berries upon snowy pillows--to watch the great battle-plane take off--take the air, in its upward flight.
“Now, I’ll ‘give her the gun’--open the throttle! And see me ‘zoom’!” laughed the pilot--Big Boy--waving renewed farewells from his tiny cock-pit.
“Yes! Watch him ‘zoom’!... Fly upward into the clouds! Oh, see the Bird!” was the responsive challenge of one girl to another.
“We’ll tell the story of this visit by the Council Fire, as long as ever we’re a Group,” said Olive, an envious Blue Heron, her wide, dark eyes catching a pink spark from dawn, as they followed the big war-plane on its zooming--cloud-climbing--flight, straight upward.
“We’ll stencil it on a sheepskin and pass it down to--to our children’s children,” chuckled Sara, “as an incident of the ‘off ’ side of the Great War, when flying was in its youth! But”--she caught her breath, while a speculative dawn flame, a red flush, crept up her neck--“but I don’t believe there was anything ‘off’--vague, I mean--about the purpose of those two aviators; they were air-scouts on patrol-duty--spy-hunters--mark my words--flying low, most of the time, over the shore, while the observer, Goggle Eyes, with his binoculars, leaning out, I suppose--oh! I wonder how he could do it?--searched the woods and all lonely places, like ours, for suspicious huts--secret wireless-stations----”
She broke off, dreamily following the mounting cavalry of the sky.
“Well! As yet, we’ve only seen one strange man around here--that seal-hunter,” began Arline.
“Whose face I have seen somewhere before!... Goody! See them ‘zoom’! Higher--higher!”
Sara’s own face was a puckered flame, lit by a brand from day’s first burning, but by no coveted memory-flash, as she watched the aëroplane, now a rosy speck--a radiant, exploring dragon-fly--upon the far-away edge of dawn.
“Bah! The seal-hunter! Nothing wrong ’bout him!” Lilla blinked drowsily upward, the sleepiest Little Owl ever caught abroad in daylight. “He has a contract, Captain Andy says, to deliver a lot of those spotted skins of hair-seals to some firm, for making babies’ shoes--awf’ly soft an’ nice for that! I wonder if he’ll get that big ‘buster’ which played submarine with us? And whenever he comes down the river, from that little shipbuilding town which he makes his headquarters, or near there, his guide, old America Burnham, who’s as loyal as his name, comes with him--that’s what they told us at the farmhouse where we went for milk.”