"Well," Honey prodded him with a kind of non-committal calm, "what happened?"

"Nothing. If you can believe me--nothing. I stared--oh, I guess I stared for a quarter of a minute straight up into the most beautiful pair of eyes that I ever saw in my life. I stared straight up into them and I stared straight down into them. They were as deep as a well and as gray as a cloud and as cold as ice. And they had lashes--" For a moment the quiet directness of Billy's narrative was disturbed by a whiff of inner tumult. "Whew! what eyelashes! Honey, did you ever come across a lonely mountain lake with high reeds growing around the edge? You know how pure and unspoiled and virginal it seems. That was her eyes. They sort of hypnotized me. My eyes closed and--when I awoke it was broad daylight.

What do you think?"

"Well," said Honey judicially, "I know just how you feel. I could have killed the boys for joshing me the way they did. I was sure. I was certain I heard a woman laugh that night. And, by G.o.d, I did hear it.

Whenever I contradict myself, something rises up and tells me I lie.

But--." His radiant brown smile crumpled his brown face. "Of course, I didn't hear it. I couldn't have heard it. And so I guess you didn't see the peroxide you speak of. And yet if you Punch me in the jaw, I'll know exactly how you feel." His face uncrumpled, smoothed itself out to his rare look of seriousness. "The point of it is that we're all a little touched in the bean. I figure that you and I are alike in some things.

That's why we've always hung together. And all this queer stuff takes us two the same way. Remember that psychology dope old Rand used to pump into us at college? Well, our psychologies have got all twisted up by a recent event in nautical circles and we're seeing things that aren't there and not seeing things that are there."

"Honey," said Billy, "that's all right. But I want you to understand me and I don't want you, to make any mistake. I saw a girl."

"And don't forget this," answered Honey. "I heard one."

Billy made no allusion to any of this with the other three men. But for the rest of the day, he had a return of his gentle good humor. Honey's spirits fairly sizzled.

That night Frank Merrill suddenly started out of sleep with a yelled, "What was that?"

"What was what?" everybody demanded, waking immediately to the panic in his voice.

"That cry," he explained breathlessly, "didn't you hear it?" Frank's eyes were brilliant with excitement; he was pale.

n.o.body had heard it. And Ralph Addington and Pete Murphy, cursing l.u.s.tily, turned over and promptly fell asleep again. But Billy Fairfax grew rapidly more and more awake. "What sort of a cry?" he asked. Honey Smith said nothing, but he stirred the fire into a blaze in preparation for a talk.

"The strangest cry I ever heard, long-drawn-out, wild--eerie's the word for it, I guess," Frank Merrill said. As he spoke, he peered off into the darkness. "If it were possible, I should say it was a woman's voice."

The three men walked away from the camp, looked off into every direction of the starlit night. Nowhere was there sign or sound of life.

"It must have been gulls," said Honey Smith.

"It didn't sound like gulls," answered Frank Merrill. For an instant he fell into meditation so deep that he virtually forgot the presence of the other two. "I don't know what it was," he said finally in an exasperated tone. "I'm going to sleep."

They walked back to camp. Frank Merrill rolled himself up in a blanket, lay down. Soon there came from his direction only the sound of regular, deep breathing.

"Well, Honey," Billy Fairfax asked, a note of triumph in his voice, "how about it?"

"Well, Billy," Honey Smith said in a baffled tone, "when you get the answer, give it to me."

n.o.body mentioned the night's experience the next day. But a dozen times Frank Merrill stopped his work to gaze out to sea, an expression of perplexity on his face.

The next night, however, they were all waked again, waked twice. It was Ralph Addington who spoke first; a kind of hoa.r.s.e grunt and a "What the devil was that?"

"What?" the others called.

"d.a.m.ned if I know," Ralph answered. "If you wouldn't think I was off my conch, I'd say it was a gang of women laughing."

Pete Murphy, who always woke in high spirits, began to joke Ralph Addington. The other three were silent. In fifteen minutes they were all asleep; sixty, they were all awake again.

It was Pete Murphy who sounded the alarm this time. "Say, something spoke to me," he said. "Or else I'm a nut. Or else I have had the most vivid dream I've ever had." Evidently he did not believe that it was a dream. He sat up and listened; the others listened, too. There was no sound in the soft, still night, however. They talked for a little while, a strangely subdued quintette. It was as though they were all trying to comment on these experiences without saying anything about them.

They slept through the next night undisturbed until just before sunrise.

Then Honey Smith woke them. It was still dark, but a fine dawn-glow had begun faintly to silver the east. "Say, you fellows," he exclaimed.

"Wake up!" His voice vibrated with excitement, although he seemed to try to keep it low. "There are strange critters round here. No mistake this time. Woke with a start, feeling that something had brushed over me--saw a great bird--a gigantic thing--flying off heard one woman's laugh--then another--."

It was significant that n.o.body joked Honey this time. "Say, this island'll be a nut-house if this keeps up," Pete Murphy said irritably.

"Let's go to sleep again."

"No, you don't!" said Honey. "Not one of you is going to sleep. You're all going to sit up with me until the blasted sun comes up."

People always hastened to accommodate Honey. In spite of the hour, they began to rake the fire, to prepare breakfast. The others became preoccupied gradually, but Honey still sat with his face towards the water, watching.

It grew brighter.

"It's time we started to build a camp, boys," Frank Merrill said, withdrawing momentarily from deep reflection. "We'll go crazy doing nothing all the time. We'll--."

"Great G.o.d," Honey interrupted. "Look!"

Far out to sea and high in the air, birds were flying. There were five of them and they were enormous. They flew with amazing strength, swiftness, and grace; but for the most part they about a fixed area like bees at a honey-pot. It was a limited area, but within it they dipped, dropped, curved, wove in and out.

"Well, I'll be--."

"They're those black spots we saw the first day, Pete," Billy Fairfax said breathlessly. "We thought it was the sun."

"That's what I heard in the night," Frank Merrill gasped to Ralph Addington.

"But what are they?" asked Honey Smith in a voice that had a falsetto note of wonder. "They laugh like a woman--take it from me."

"Eagles--buzzards--vultures--condors--rocs--phoenixes," Pete Murphy recited his list in an or of imaginative conjecture.

"They're some lost species--something left over from a prehistoric era,"

Frank Merrill explained, shaking with excitement. "No vulture or eagle or condor could be as big as that at this distance. At least I think so." He paused here, as one studying the problem in the scientific spirit. "Often in the Rockies I've confused a nearby chicken-hawk, at first, with a far eagle. But the human eye has its own system of triangulation. Those are not little birds nearby, but big birds far off.

See how heavily they soar. Do you realize what's happened? We've made a discovery that will shake the whole scientific world. There, there, they're going!"

"My G.o.d, look at them beat it!" said Honey; and there was awe in his voice.

"Why, they're monster size," Frank Merrill went on, and his voice had grown almost hysterical. "They could carry one of us off. We're not safe. We must take measures at once to protect ourselves. Why, at night--We must make traps. If we can capture one, or, better, a pair, we're famous. We're a part of history now."

They watched the strange birds disappear over the water. For more than an hour, the men sat still, waiting for them to return. They did not come back, however. The men hung about camp all day long, talking of nothing else. Night came at last, but sleep was not in them. The dark seemed to give a fresh impulse to conversation. Conjecture battled with theory and fact jousted with fancy. But one conclusion was as futile as another.

Frank Merrill tried to make them devise some system of defense or concealment, but the others laughed at him. Talk as he would, he could not seem to convince them of their danger. Indeed, their state of mind was entirely different from his. Mentally he seemed to boil with interest and curiosity, but it was the sane, calm, open-minded excitement of the scientist. The others were alert and preoccupied in turn, but there was an element of reserve in their att.i.tude. Their eyes kept going off into s.p.a.ce, fixing there until their look became one brooding question. They avoided conversation. They avoided each other's gaze.

Gradually they drew off from the fire, settled themselves to rest, fell into the splendid sleep that followed their long out-of-doors days.

In the middle of the night, Billy Fairfax came out of a dream to the knowledge that somebody was shaking him gently, firmly, furtively.

"Don't move!" Honey Smith's voice whispered; "keep quiet till I wake the others."

It was a still and moon-lighted world. Billy Fairfax lay quiet, his wide-open eyes fixed on the luminous sky. The sense of drowse was being brushed out of his brain as though by a mighty whirlwind, and in its place came a vague sensation of confusion, of excitement, of a miraculous abnormality. He heard Honey Smith crawl slowly from man to man, heard him whisper his adjuration once, twice, three times. "Now,"

Honey called finally.

The men looked seawards. Then, simultaneously they leaped to their feet.