Pete stared for another long moment. Then as though summoning all his
resolution, he withdrew his eyes, nailed them to his paper. Clara
peppered him with shells and pebbles; but he continued to ignore her. He
did not look up again until a whir-r-r-r-r - loud at first but steadily
diminishing - apprised him of her flight.
Pete again wrote the rest of the day and by firelight far into the
night. In the middle of the morning he stopped suddenly, weighted his
paper down with a stone, rolled over on to the pine-needles, and fell
immediately into a deep sleep. He lay for hours, his face down, resting
on his arm.
Whir-r-r-r-r!
Pete awoke with a start. His manuscript was gone. He leaped to his feet,
stared wildly about. Not far off Clara was flying, almost on the ground.
As he watched, she ascended swiftly. She held his poem in her hands. She
studied it, her head bent. She did not once look up or back; her eyes
still jealously glued to the pencil-scratchings, she drifted out to sea,
disappeared.
Pete did not move. He watched Clara intently until she melted into the
sky. But as he watched, his creative mood broke and evaporated. And
suddenly another emotion, none the less fiercely ravaging, sluiced the
blood into his face, filled his eyes with glitter, shook him as though a
high wind were blowing, sent him finally speeding at a maniacal pace
over the reefs.
"Say, do you think we'd better organize a search-party?" Honey asked
finally.
"Not yet," said Ralph, "here he comes."
Pete was running down the trail like a deer.
"I've finished my poem," he yelled jubilantly.
"Every last word of it. And now, boys," he added briskly before they
could recover their breath, I'm with you on this capture question."
For an instant, the others stared and blinked. "What do you mean, Pete?"
Honey asked stupidly, after an instant.
"Well, I'm prepared to go as far as you like."
"But what changed you? " Honey persisted.
"Oh, hang it all," Pete said and never had his little black, fiery Irish
face so twisted with irritation, so flamed with spirit, "a poet's so
constituted that he's got to have a woman round to read his verse to. I
want to teach Clara English so she can hear that poem."
There was a half-minute of silence. Then his listeners broke into roars.
"You damned little mick you!" Honey said. He laughed at intervals for an
hour.