The semi-tropical moon was at its full. Huge, white, embossed, cut out, it did not shine--it glared from the sky. It made a melted moonstone of the atmosphere. It faded the few clouds to a sapphire-gray, just touched here and there with the chalky dot of a star. It slashed a silver trail across a sea jet-black except where the waves rimmed it with snow. Up in the white enchantment, but not far above them, the strange air-creatures were flying. They were not birds; they were winged women!

Darting, diving, glancing, curving, wheeling, they interwove in what seemed the premeditated figures of an aerial dance. If they were conscious of the group of men on the beach, they did not show it; they seemed entirely absorbed in their flying. Their wings, like enormous scimitars, caught the moonlight, flashed it back. For an interval, they played close in a group inextricably intertwined, a revolving ball of vivid color. Then, as if seized by a common impulse, they stretched, hand in hand, in a line across the sky-drifted. The moonlight flooded them full, caught glitter and gleam from wing-sockets, shot shimmer and sheen from wing-tips, sent cataracts of iridescent color pulsing between. Snow-silver one, brilliant green and gold another, dazzling blue the next, luminous orange a fourth, flaming flamingo scarlet the last, their colors seemed half liquid, half light. One moment the whole figure would flare into a splendid blaze, as if an inner mechanism had suddenly turned on all the electricity; the next, the blaze died down to the fairy glisten given by the moonlight.

As if by one impulse, they began finally to fly upward. Higher and higher they rose, still hand in hand. Detail of color and movement vanished. The connotation of the s.e.xed creature, of the human thing, evaporated. One instant, relaxed, they seemed tiny galleons, all sails set, that floated lazily, the sport of an aerial sea; another, supple and sinuous, they seemed monstrous fish whose fins triumphantly clove the air, monarchs of that aerial sea.

A little of this and then came another impulse. The great wings furled close like blades leaping back to scabbard; the flying-girls dropped sheer in a dizzying fall. Half-way to the ground, they stopped simultaneously as if caught by some invisible air plateau. The great feathery fans opened--and this time the men got the whipping whirr of them--spread high, palpitated with color. From this lower level, the girls began to fall again, but gently, like dropping clouds.

Nearer they came to the petrified group on the beach, nearer and nearer.

Undoubtedly they had known all the time that an audience was there; undoubtedly they had planned this; they looked down and smiled.

And now the men had every detail of them--the brown seaweeds and green sea-gra.s.ses that swathed them, their bodies just short of heroic size, deep-bosomed, broad-waisted, long-limbed; their arms round like a woman's and strong like a man's; their hair that fell, a braid over each ear, twined with brilliant flowers and green vines; their faces super-humanly beautiful, though elvish; the gaminerie in their laughing eyes, which sparkled through half-closed, thick-lashed lids, the gaminerie in their smiling mouths, which showed twin rows of pearl gleaming in tricksy mirth; their big, strong-looking, long-fingered hands; their slimly smooth, exquisitely shaped, too-tiny, transparent feet; their strong wrists; their stem-like, breakable ankles. Closer and closer and closer they came. And now the men could almost touch them. They paused an instant and fluttered--fluttered like a swarm of b.u.t.terflies undecided where to fly. As though choosing to rest, they hovered-hovered with a gentle, slow, seductive undulation of wings, of hands, of feet.

Then another impulse took them.

They broke handclasps and up they went, like arrows straight up--up--up--up. Then they turned out to sea, streaming through the air in line still, but one behind the other. And for the first time, sound came from them; they threw off peals of girl-laughter that fell like handfuls of diamonds. Their mirth ended in a long, eerie cry. Then straight out to the eastern horizon they went and away and off.

They were dwindling rapidly.

They were spots.

They were specks.

They were nothing.

II

Silence, profound, portentous, protracted, followed.

Finally, Honey Smith absently stooped and picked up a pebble. He threw it over the silver ring of the flat, foam-edged, low-tide waves. It curved downwards, hissed across a surface of water smooth as jade, skipped four times, and dropped.

The men strained their eyes to follow the progress of this tangible thing.

"Where do you suppose they've gone?" Honey said as unexcitedly as one might inquire directions from a stranger.

"When do you suppose they'll come back?" Billy Fairfax added as casually as one might ask the time.

"Did you notice the red-headed one?" asked Pete Murphy. "My first girl had red hair. I always jump when I see a carrot-top." He made this intimate revelation simply, as if the time for a conventional reticence had pa.s.sed.

"They were lookers all right," Ralph Addington went on. "I'd pick the golden blonde, the second from the right." He, too, spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, as though he were selecting a favorite from the front row in the chorus.

"It must have happened if we saw it," Frank Merrill said. There was in his voice a note of petulance, almost childish. "But we ought not to have seen it. It has no right to be. It upsets things so."

"What are we all standing up like gawks for?" Pete Murphy demanded with a sudden irritability.

"Sit down!"

Everybody dropped. They all sat as they fell. They sat motionless. They sat silent.

"The name of this place is 'Angel Island,'" announced Billy Fairfax after a long time. His tone was that of a man whose thoughts, swirling in phantasmagoria, seek anchorage in fact.

They did not sleep that night.

When Frank Merrill arose the next morning, Ralph Addington was just returning from a stroll down the beach. Ralph looked at the same time exhausted and recuperated. He was white, tense, wild-eyed, but recently aroused interior fires glowed through his skin, made up for his lost color and energy. Frank also had a different look. His eyes had kindled, his face had become noticeably more alive. But it was the fire of the intellect that had produced this frigid glow.

"Seen anything?" Frank Merrill inquired.

"Not a thing."

"You don't think they're frightened enough not to come back?"

The gleam in Ralph Addington's eye changed to flame. "I don't think they're frightened at all. They'll come back all right. There's only one thing that you can depend on in women; and that is that you can't lose them."

"I can scarcely wait to see them again," Frank exclaimed eagerly.

"Addington, I can write a monograph on those flying-maidens that will make the whole world gasp. This is the greatest discovery of modern times. Man alive, don't you itch to get to paper and pencil?"

"Not so I've noticed it," Ralph replied with contemptuous emphasis. "I shall lie awake nights, just the same though."

"Say, fellers, we didn't dream that, did we?" Billy Fairfax called suddenly, rolling out of the sleep that had followed their all-night talk.

"Well, I reckon if it wasn't for the other four, no one of us would trust his own senses," Frank Merrill said dryly.

"If you'd listened to me in the beginning," Honey Smith remarked in a drowsy voice, not bothering to open his, eyes, "I wouldn't be the I-told-you-so kid now."

"Well, if you'd listened to me and Pete!" said Billy Fairfax; "didn't we think, way back there that first day, that our lamps were on the blink because we saw black spots? Great Scott, what dreams I've had," he went on, "a mixture of 'Arabian Nights,' 'Gulliver's Travels,' 'Peter Wilkins,' 'Peter Pan,' 'Goosie,' Jules, Verne, H. G. Wells, and every dime novel I've ever read. Do you suppose they'll come back?"

"I've just talked that over with Ralph," Frank Merrill answered him.

"If we've frightened them away forever, it will be a terrible loss to science."

Ralph Addington emitted one of his cackling, ironic laughs. "I guess I'm not worrying as much about science as I might. But as to their coming back--why, it stands to reason that they'll have just as much curiosity about us as we have about them. Curiosity's a woman's strong point, you know. Oh, they'll come back all right! The only question is, How soon?"

"It made me dream of music--of Siegfried." It was Pete Murphy who spoke and he seemed to plump from sleep straight into the conversation. "What a theme for grand opera. Women with wings! Flying-girls! Will you tell me what the Hippodrome! has on Angel Island?"

"Nothing," said Honey Smith, "except this--you can get acquainted with a Hippodrome girl--how long is it going to take us to get acquainted with these angels?"

"Not any longer than usual," said Ralph Addington with an expressive wink. "Leave that to me. I'm going now to see what I can see." He walked rapidly down the beach, scaled the southern reef, and stood there studying the horizon.

The others remained sitting on the sand. For a while they watched Ralph.

Then they talked the whole thing over with as much interest as if they had not yet discussed it. Ralph rejoined them and they went through it again. It was as though by some miracle of mind-transference, they had all dreamed the same dream; as though, by some miracle of sight-transference they had all seen the same vision; as though, by some miracle of s.p.a.ce-transference, they had all stepped into the fourth dimension. Their comment was ever of the wonder of their strange adventure, the beauty, the thrill, the romance of it. It had brought out in them every instinct of chivalry and kindness, it had developed in them every tendency towards high-mindedness and idealism. Angel Island would be an Atlantis, an Eden, an Arden, an Arcadia, a Utopia, a Milleamours, a Paradise, the Garden of Hesperides. Into it the Golden Age would come again. They drew glowing pictures of the wonderful friendships that would grow up on Angel Island between them and their beautiful visitors. These poetic considerations gave way finally to a discussion of ways and means. They agreed that they must get to work at once on some sort of shelter for their guests, in case the weather should turn bad. They even discussed at length the best methods of teaching the English language. They talked the whole morning, going over the same things again and again, questioning each other eagerly without listening for an answer, interrupting ruthlessly, and then adding nothing.

The day pa.s.sed without event. At the slightest sound they all jumped.

Their sleeplessness was beginning to tell on them and their nerves were still obsessed by the unnaturalness of their experience. It was a long time before they quieted down, but the night pa.s.sed without interruption. So did the next day. Another day went by and another, and during this time they did little but sit about and talk.

"See here, boys," Ralph Addington said one morning. "I say we get together and build some cabins. There's no calculating how long this grand weather'll keep up. The first thing we know we'll be up against a rainy season. Isn't that right, Professor?"