Angel Island

For several days, the girls did not appear on Angel Island. All that

time, the capture argument lay in abeyance. Even Ralph, who had

introduced the project, seemed touched by the gallantry of Honey's

rescue. Honey, himself, was strangely subdued; his eternal monologue had

dried up; he seemed preoccupied. Nevertheless, it was he, who, one

night, reopened the discussion with a defiant flat: "Well, boys, I might

as well tell you, I've swung over to Ralph's side. I'm for the capture

of those girls, and capture as soon as we can make it."

"Well, I'll be - " said Billy. "After they saved your life! Honey, I

guess I don't know you any more."

"What's changed you?" Pete asked in amazement.

"Can't tell you why - don't know myself why when you get the answer tell

me. Only in the ten minutes that those girls packed me through the air,

I did some quick thinking, I can't explain to you why we've got the

right to capture them. But we have. That's all there is to it."

War broke out with a new animosity; for they had, of course, now

definitely divided into sides. Their conversation always turned into

argument now, no matter how peaceably and innocently it began.

The girls had begun to visit the island again, singly now, singly

always. Discussion died down temporarily and the wordless tete-a-teteing

began again. Lulu hovered ever at Honey's shoulder. Clara postured

always within Pete's vision. Chiquita took up her eternal vigil on

Frank's reef. Peachy discovered new wonders of what Honey called "trick

flying." Julia became a fixed white star in their blue noon sky.

A day or two or three of this long-distance wooing, and argument

exploded more vehemently than ever. Honey and Ralph still maintained

that, as the ruling sex of a man-managed world, they had the right of

discovery to these women. Frank still maintained that, as a supra-human

race, the flying-girls were subject to supra-human laws. Billy and Pete

still maintained that, as the development not only of the race but of

the individual depended on the treatment of the female by the male, the

capture of these independent beings at this stage of civilization would

be a return to barbarism.

After one night of wrangling, they came to the agreement that no one of

them would take steps towards capture until all five had consented to

it. They drew up a paper to this effect and signed it.

Their cabins were nearly completed now. Boundless leisure threatened to

open before them. More and more in the time which they were alone they

fell into the habits which their individual tastes developed. Frank

still worked on his library. He had transferred the desk and the

bookcases to the interior of his hut. He spent all his spare time there

arranging, classifying, and cataloguing his books. Billy fell into an

orgy of furniture-making and repairing. Addington began, unaided, to

build a huge cabin, bigger than the others, and separated a little

distance from them. Nobody asked him what it was for. Honey took long

solitary walks into the interior of the island. He returned with great

bunches of uprooted flowers which he planted against the cabin-walls.

Pete dragged out from an unexplored trunk a box of water-colors, a block

of paper. Now, when he was not working on a symphonic poem, he was

coping with the wonders of the semi-tropical coloring. His companions

rallied and harried him, especially about the poem; but he could always

silence them with a threat to read it aloud. All the Celt in him had

come to the surface. They heard him chanting his numbers in the depths

of the forest; sometimes he intoned them, swinging on the branch of a

high tree. He even wandered over the reefs, reciting them to the waves.