She stood tense and still, straining eyes and ears for her answer—but it was not to eyes or ears that it came.
"Oh, of course!" she cried clearly. "Of course, my wanderer! Ready?"
She stood poised for a second, head thrown back, arms flung wide—a small figure of Victory, caught in the flying wind.
And, "Contact, Jerry!" she called joyously into the darkness.
"Contact!"
There was a mighty whirring, a thunder and a roaring above the storm. She stood listening breathlessly to it rise and swell—and then grow fainter—fainter still—dying, dying—dying—
But Janie, her small white face turned to the storm-swept sky behind which shone the stars, was smiling radiantly. For she had sped her wanderer on his way—she had not failed him!
THE CAMEL'S BACK
BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
From The Saturday Evening Post
The restless, wearied eye of the tired magazine reader resting for a critical second on the above title will judge it to be merely metaphorical. Stories about the cup and the lip and the bad penny and the new broom rarely have anything to do with cups and lips and pennies and brooms. This story is the great exception. It has to do with an actual, material, visible and large-as-life camel's back.