Angel Island

She never spoke. And she scarcely moved. She waved her great scarlet

wings only fast enough to hold herself beyond Frank's reach. But from

that distance she watched his movements, watched closely and

unceasingly, watched with the interest of a child at a moving-picture

show. Her surveillance of him was so intense it seemed impossible that

she could see anything else. But if one of the other four men started to

join them, she became a flash of scarlet lightning that tore the

distance.

Frank, of course, found this interesting. Every day he made voluminous

notes of his observations. Every night be embodied these notes in his

monograph.

"What does she look like close to?" the others asked him again and

again.

"Really, I've hardly had a chance to notice yet," was Frank's invariable

answer. "She's a comely young person, I should say, and, as you can

easily see, of the brunette coloring. I'm so much more interested in her

flying than in her appearance that I've never really taken a good look

at her. Unfortunately she flies less well than the others. I wish I

could get a chance to study all of them - the 'quiet one' in particular;

she flies so much faster. On the other hand, this one seems able to hold

herself motionless in the air longer than they."

"She's lazy," Honey Smith said decisively. "I got that right off. She

looks like a Spanish woman and she is a good deal like one in her ways."

Honey was right; the "dark one" was lazy. Alone she always flew low, and

at no time, even in company, did she dare great altitudes. She seemed to

love to float, wings outspread and eyes half closed, on one of those

tranquil air-plateaux that lie between drifting air-currents. She was an

adept, apparently, at finding the little nodule of quiet space that

forms the center of every windstorm. Standing upright in it, flaming

wings erect, she would whirl through space like an autumn leaf.

Gradually, she became less suspicious of the other men. She often passed

in their direction on the way to her afternoon vigil with Frank.

"She certainly is one peach of a female," said Ralph Addington. I don't

know but what she's prettier than my blonde. Too bad she's stuck on that

stiff of a Merrill. I suppose he'd sit there every afternoon for a year

and just look at her."

"I should think she came from Andalusia," Honey answered, watching the

long, low sweep of her scarlet flight. "She's got to have a Spanish

name. Say we call her Chiquita."