Angel Island

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 God!" 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."