Just above, near enough for her body to be concealed by the scarlet wings of the "dark one," but high enough for her pointed brown face to peer between their curves, came the "plain one."

Higher flew the "thin one." Her body was entirely covered by the orange wings of the "plain one," but her copper-colored hair made a gleamy spot in their vase-shaped opening.

Still higher appeared the "peachy one." She seemed to be holding her l.u.s.trous blonde head carefully centered in the oval between the "thin one's" green-and-yellow plumage. She looked like a portrait in a frame.

Highest of them all, floating upright, a Winged Victory of the air, her silver wings towering straight above her head, the cameo face of the "quiet one" looked level into the distance.

Their wings moved in rotation, and with machine-like regularity. First one pair flashed up, swept back and down, then another, and another. As they neared, the color seemed the least wonderful detail of the picture.

For it changed in effect from a column of glittering wings to a column of girl-faces, a column that floated light as thistle-down, a column that divided, parted, opened, closed again.

The background of all this was a veil of dark gauze at the horizon-line, its foil a golden, virgin moon, dangling a single brilliant star.

"They're talking!" Honey Smith exclaimed. "And they're leaving!"

The girls did not pause once. They flew in a straight line over the island to the west, always maintaining their columnar formation. At first the men thought that they were making for the trees. They ran after them. The speed of their running had no effect this time on their visitors, who continued to sail eastward. The men called on them to stay. They called repeatedly, singly and in chorus. They called in every tone of humble masculine entreaty and of arrogant masculine command. But their cries might have fallen on marble ears. The girls neither turned nor paused. They disappeared.

"Females are certainly alike under their skins, whether they're angels or Hottentots," Ralph Addington commented. "That tableau appearance was all cooked up for us. They must have practised it for hours."

"It has the rose-carnival at Tetaluma, Cal., faded," remarked Honey Smith.

"The 'quiet one' was giving the orders for that wing-movement," said Billy Fairfax. "She whispered them, but I heard her. She engineered the whole thing. She seems to be their leader."

"I got their voices this time," said Pete Murphy. "Beautiful, all of them. Soprano, high and clear. They've got a language, all right, too.

What did you think of it, Frank?"

"Most interesting," replied Frank Merrill, "most interesting. A preponderance of consonants. Never guttural in effect, and as you say, beautiful voices, very high and clear."

"I don't see why they don't stop and play," complained Honey. His tone was the petulant one of a spoiled child. It is likely that during the whole course of his woman-petted existence, he had never been so completely ignored. "If I only knew their lingo, I could convince them in five minutes that we wouldn't hurt them."

"If we could only signal," said Billy Fairfax, "that if they'd only come down to earth, we wouldn't go any nearer than they wanted. But the deuce of it is proving to them that we don't bite."

"It is probably that they have known only males of a more primitive type," Frank Merrill explained. "Possibly they are accustomed to marriage by capture."

"That would be a very lucky thing," Ralph explained in an aside to Honey. "Marriage by capture isn't such a foolish proposition, after all.

Look at the Sabine women. I never heard tell that there was any kick coming from them. It all depends on the men."

"Oh, Lord, Ralph, marriage by capture isn't a sporting proposition,"

said Honey in a disgusted tone. "I'm not for it. A man doesn't get a run for his money. It's too much like shooting trapped game."

"Well, I will admit that there's more fun in the chase," Ralph answered.

"Oh, well, if the little darlings are not accustomed to chivalry from men," Pete Murphy was in the meantime saying, "that explains why they stand us off."

It was typical of Pete to refer to the flying-girls as "little darlings." The shortest among them was, of course, taller than he. But to Pete any woman was "little one," no matter what her stature, as any woman was "pure as the driven snow" until she proved the contrary. This impregnable simplicity explained much of the disaster of his married life.

"I am convinced," Frank Merrill said meditatively, "we must go about winning their confidence with the utmost care. One false step might be fatal. I know what your impatience is though--for I can hardly school myself to wait--that extraordinary phenomenon of the wings interests me so much. The great question in my mind is their position biologically and sociologically."

"The only thing that bothers me," Honey contributed solemnly, "is whether or not they're our social equals."

Even Frank Merrill laughed. "I mean, are they birds," he went on still in a puzzled tone, "free creatures of the air, or, women, bound creatures of the earth? And what should be our att.i.tude toward them?

Have we the right to capture them as ornithological specimens, or is it our duty to respect their liberty as independent human beings?

"They're neither birds nor women," Pete Murphy burst out impetuously.

"They're angels. Our duty is to fall down and worship them."

"They're women," said Billy Fairfax earnestly. "Our duty is to cherish and protect them."

"They're girls," Honey insisted jovially, "our duty is to josh and jolly them, to buy them taxicabs, theater-tickets, late suppers, candy, and flowers."

"They're females," said Ralph Addington contemptuously. "Our duty is to tame, subjugate, infatuate, and control them."

Frank Merrill listened to each with the look on his face, half perplexity, half irritation, which always came when the conversation took a humorous turn. "I am myself inclined to look upon them as an entirely new race of beings, requiring new laws," he said thoughtfully.

Although the quick appearance and the quick departure of the girls had upset the men temporarily, they went back to work at once. And as though inspired by their appearance, they worked like tigers. As before, they talked constantly of them, piling mountains of conjecture on molehills of fact. But now their talk was less of the wonder and the romance of the situation and more of the irritation of it. Ralph Addington's unease seemed to have infected them all. Frank Merrill had actually to coax them to keep at their duty of patrolling the beach. They were constantly studying the horizon for a glimpse of their strange visitors. Every morning they said, "I hope they'll come to-day"; every night, "Perhaps they'll come to-morrow." And always, "They won't put it over on us this time when we're not looking."

But in point of fact, the next visit of the flying girls came when they least expected it--late in the evening.

It had been damp and dull all day. A high fog was gradually melting out of the air. Back of it a misty moon, more mature now, gleamed like a flask of honey in a golden veil. A few stars glimmered, placid, pale, and big. Suddenly between fog and earth--and they seemed to emerge from the mist like dreams from sleep--appeared the five dazzling girl-figures.

The fog had blurred the vividness of their plumage. The color no longer throbbed from wing-sockets to wing-tips; light no longer pulsated there.

But great scintillating beads of fog-dew outlined the long curves of the wings, accentuated the long curves of the body. Hair, brows, lashes glittered as if threaded with diamonds. Their cheeks and lips actually glowed, luscious as ripe fruit.

"My G.o.d!" groaned Pete Murphy; "how beautiful and inaccessible! But women should be inaccessible," he ended with a sigh.

"Not so inaccessible as they were, though," Ralph Addington said. Again the appearance of the women had transformed him physically and mentally.

He moved with the nervous activity of a man strung on wires. His brown eyes showed yellow gleams like a cat's. "They're flying lower and slower to-night."

It did seem as though the fog, light as it was, definitely impeded their wings. It gave to their movements a little languor that had a plaintive appealing quality. Perhaps they realized this themselves. In the midst of their aerial evolutions suddenly--and apparently without cause--they developed panic, turned seawards. Their audience, taken by surprise, burst into shouts of remonstrance, ran after them. The clamor and the motion seemed only to add to the girls' alarm. Their retreating speed was almost frenzied.

"What the--what's frightened them?" Honey Smith asked. Honey's brows had come together in an unaccustomed scowl. He bit his lips.

"Give it up," Billy Fairfax answered, and his tone boiled with exasperation. "I hope they haven't been frightened away for good."

"I think every time it's the last," exclaimed Pete Murphy, "but they keep coming back."

"Son," said Ralph Addington, and there was a perceptible element of patronage in his tone, "I'll tell you the exact order of events. It threw a scare into the girls to-night that they couldn't fly so well.

But in an hour's time, they'll be sore because they didn't put up a good exhibition. Now, if I know anything at all about women--and maybe I flatter myself, but I think I know a lot--they'll be back the first thing to-morrow to prove to us that their bad flying was not our effect on them but the weather's."

Whether Ralph's theory was correct could not, of course, be ascertained.

But in the matter of prophecy, he was absolutely vindicated. About half-way through the morning five black spots appeared in the west.

They grew gradually to bewildering shapes and colors, for the girls came dressed in gowns woven of brilliant flowers. And the torrents of their beautiful hair floated loose. This time they held themselves grouped close; they kept themselves aloof, high. But again came the sinuous interplay of flower-clad bodies, the flashing evolution of rainbow wings, the dazzling interweaving of snowy arms and legs. It held the men breathless.

"They're like goldfish in a bowl," Billy Fairfax said. "I never saw such suppleness. You wouldn't think they had a bone in their systems."

"I bet they're as strong as tigers, though," commented Addington. "I wouldn't want to handle more than one of them at once."

"I think I could handle two," remarked Frank Merrill. He said this, not boastfully, but as one who states an interesting fact. And he spoke as impersonally as though the girls were machines.

Ralph Addington studied Frank Merrill's gigantic copper-colored bulk enviously. "I guess you could," he agreed.