Angel Island

"Oh, that's all right. You were all in - I felt that - " Ralph stammered

in a shamefaced fashion. "And I knew I could stand it."

"There's a long sleep coming to you, Ralph," Pete said. "You've hardly

closed your eyes this week. No question but you've saved their lives."

B.

Mid-morning on Angel Island.

The sun had mounted half-way to the zenith; sky and sea and land

glittered with its luster. Like war-horses, the waves came ramping over

the smooth, shimmering sand; war-horses with bodies of jade and manes of

silver.

Pete floated inshore on a huge comber, ran up the beach a little way and

sat down. Billy followed.

"I've come out just to get the picture," Pete explained.

"Same here," said Billy.

For an instant, both men contemplated the scene with the narrowed,

critical gaze of the artist.

The flying-girls were swimming; and swimming with the same grace and

strength with which formerly they flew. And as if inevitably they must

take on the quality of the element in which they mixed, they looked like

mermaids now, just as formerly they had looked like birds. They carried

heads and shoulders high out of the water. Webs of sea-spume glittered

on the shining hair and on the white flesh. One behind the other, they

swam in rhythmic unison. Regularly the long, round, strong-looking right

arms reached out of the water, bowed forward, clutched at the wave, and

pulled them on. Simultaneously, the left arms reached back, pushed

against the wave, and shot them forward. Their feet beat the water to a

lather.

They were headed down the beach, hugging the shore. Swim as hard as they

could, Honey and Frank managed but to keep up with them. Ralph overtook

them only in their brief resting-periods. Further inshore, carried

ceaselessly a little forward and then a little back, Julia floated;

floated with an unimaginable lightness and yet, somehow, conserved her

aspect of a creature cut in marble.

"I have never seen anything so beautiful in any art, ancient or modern,"

Billy concluded. "When those strange draperies that they affect get wet,

they look like the Elgin marbles."

"If we should take them to civilization," was Pete's answer, "the Elgin

marbles would become a joke."

Billy spoke after a long silence. "It's been an experience that - if I

were - oh, but what's the use? You can't describe it. The words haven't

been invented yet. I don't mean the fact that we've discovered members

of a lost species - the missing link between bird and man. I mean what's

happened since the capture. It's left marks on me. I'll bear them until

I die. If we abandoned this island - and them - and went back to the

world, I could never be the same person. If I woke up and found it was a

dream, I could never be the same person."