"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.