Angel Island - Inez Haynes Gillmore (novels to improve english .TXT) 📗

when they’re

flying low.”

 

The other four men burst into shocked remonstrance.

 

“Well, don’t go up in the air,” Ralph said in an amused voice. “It

wouldn’t hurt them any. And it seems to me if we’ve definitely made up

our minds to capture them, the best way is the swiftest and surest.”

 

“But to shoot a woman!” Pete exclaimed.

 

“Well, don’t worry,” Ralph answered him, “we haven’t any guns. I did

think of bows and arrows, though.” He said this in the tone of one who

throws out a suggestion and he stopped to study the faces of his fellow

conspirators. Equally they expressed horror and disgust. “All right,” he

said with equanimity. “I see you’re like all human nature. You’re

determined to pull off this caveman stunt, but you want to do it with

every appearance of chivalry and generosity. You’re saving face. All

right! I’m agreeable - although personally I think the quickest way the

most merciful. Has anybody a better plan? “

 

Nobody had. It was obvious, though, from the talk that followed, that

they had all been secretly considering the matter.

 

“The only thing for us to do,” Honey said at once, “is to lie in wait.

Conceal ourselves in the bushes and leap out on them.”

 

“That sounds easy,” Ralph said. “But has it occurred to you that these

girls have the ears of wild animals? Has it occurred to you that they

have all the instincts and cunning of the animal and all the intuition

and prescience of the woman? Has it occurred to you that they always

approach from above?”

 

“The only thing I can think of,” said Billy, “is to lasso them. Only

we’ve got to get them to alight and walk round first. But either they

can’t walk or they don’t like to walk. We must off offer them some bait.

Now, what in thunder would tempt a creature that’s one-third woman,

one-third bird, and one-third angel to come down to earth?”

 

For a moment they were all silent considering this question. “By Jove,”

Ralph burst out finally, “what are we all sitting here like dopes for?

Those trunks are full of women’s clothes. Did you ever see a woman yet

who wouldn’t fall for ribbons and laces?”

 

“Good shot!” exclaimed Honey. “Let’s go through the women-truck

to-morrow and pick out some things that would please a girl. We’ll put

them on the beach a good distance off from us, so they’ll not think it’s

a trap. If we do that every day for a week or two they’ll get accustomed

to walking round while we’re working. It’s our play to take no notice of

them whatever.”

 

“That’s the answer,” Ralph said in a tone of satisfaction.

 

Immediately after breakfast, the next morning, they made for the file of

trunks so contemptuously rejected the first week of their stay. Honey,

who was always head and shoulders in front of the others, broke open the

first one.

 

“By jiminy, boys!” he shouted, seizing something that lay on top and

waving it over his head, “we’ve got them on the go-off. By George,” he

went on, lowering his voice, “I bet that belonged to some darned pretty

woman.”

 

The men crowded about him; and, as they examined his find, their faces

softened. Nothing could more subtly have emanated femininity. It was a

hand-mirror of silver. Two carved Cupids held the glass between them.

Their long wings made the handle.

 

“Put it down there on the hard sand,” Ralph said, “where they can’t fail

to see it.”

 

“Hold!” exclaimed Honey in a tone of burlesque warning. “There must be

five mirrors. He knows nothing of women who thinks that one mirror may

be divided among five girls. I hope Lulu cops this one.”

 

His companions did not laugh. Apparently they were impressed with the

sapience of his remark. They searched the trunks until they had gathered

the five that Honey demanded. They placed them in a row just above the

high-water line. The mirrors caught the sunlight, reflected it.

 

“They won’t do a thing to those girls,” said Honey. There was the glee

in his voice of a little boy who is playing a practical joke.

 

The girls came in a group in the middle of the afternoon.

 

“They’ve spotted them already,” said Honey.

 

“Trust a woman and a looking-glass.”

 

The discovery ruined discipline; it broke ranks; the five girls flew

high, flew low, flew separated, flew grouped, crowded about Julia,

obviously asking her advice. Obviously she gave it; for following her

quick, clear tones of advice came a confused chattering - remonstrance.

Then Peachy, Clara, Chiquita, and Lulu dropped a little. Julia alone

came no nearer. She alone showed no excitement.

 

The men meantime watched. They could not, as they had so loftily

resolved, pretend to ignore the situation. But they kept silent and

still. Once or twice the girls glanced curiously in their direction. But

in the main they ignored them. Descending in big, slow, cautious,

sliding curves, they circled nearer and nearer the sand.

 

Suddenly Lulu screamed. Still screaming, she bounded - it was almost

that she bounced - straight up. The others streamed to the zenith in the

wake of her panic, caught up, closed about her. There floated down the

shrillness of agitated question and answer.

 

“What the Hades - ” Ralph said in a mystified tone.

 

“I’ve got it,” said Honey. “She caught a look at herself in one of the

mirrors and she’s scared. Don’t be afraid, Lulu,” he called in a

reassuring tone; “it won’t hurt you.”

 

Lulu evidently got what he intended to convey. Again she sank slowly,

hovered an instant close to the sand, brought her face near to a mirror,

bounced up, dipped down, brought her face nearer, fluttered, put out one

hand, withdrew it, put out the other, withdrew it, put out both, seized

a mirror firmly, darted to the zenith.

 

“Well, what do you know about that!” said Billy. And, “Oh, the angels!”

exclaimed Pete. Ralph’s face opened in the fatuous grin which always

meant satisfaction with him. Honey turned somersaults of delight. Even

Frank twinkled.

 

For, high up in the heaven, five heads positively bumped over the meager

oval of silver.

 

Lulu finally pulled out of the crowd and flew away. But all the time she

held the mirror straight before her, clasped tightly in two hands,

ecstatically “eating herself up” as Honey described it.

 

The men continued to watch.

 

Gradually, one after another, the other four girls fell under the lure

of their vanity and their acquisitiveness.

 

Clara dove first, clutched a long-handled oval of yellow celluloid. Next

Chiquita swam lazily downward, made a brief scarlet flutter on the

beach, seized an elaborate double mirror set in gilded wood. Peachy

followed; she chose a heart-shaped glass, ebony-framed. Last of all,

Julia came floating slowly down. She took the only one that was left: it

was, of course, the smallest; it was framed in carved ivory.

 

For the next ten minutes, the sky presented a picture of five winged

women, stationed at various points of the compass, ecstatically studying

their own beautiful faces in mirrors held in their white, strong-looking

hands.

 

Then, flying together again, they discovered that the mirrors reflected.

At first, this created panic, then amusement. Ensued a delicious

girl-frolic. Darting through the air, laughing, jabbering, they played

tag, throwing the light into each other’s eyes. A little later Peachy

gathered them into a bunch and whispered instructions. Immediately they

began flashing the mirrors into the men’s faces. To escape this

bombardment, their victims had finally to throw themselves face downward

on the sand.

 

In the midst of this excitement came disaster.

 

Lulu dropped her mirror.

 

It hit square and shattered on the sand to many brilliant splinters.

Lulu fell like a stone, seized the empty frame, gazed into it for a

heart-broken second, burst into tears.

 

It was the first time that the men as a group had ever seen in the

flying-girls an exhibition of this feminine faculty. For a moment, they

watched her, deeply interested, as though confronted by an unfamiliar

phenomenon. Then Billy wriggled.

 

“Say, stop her, somebody,” he begged, “I hate to hear a woman cry.”

 

“So do I,” said Peter, his face twisted into creases of discomfort.

“She’s your girl, Honey. Stop her, for God’s sake.”

 

“How’s he going to stop her, I’d like to know?” demanded Ralph. “We

don’t converse very fluently yet, you know.”

 

“Well, I know how to stop her,” said Honey, leaping up. “I say, Lulu,”

he called. “Stop that crying, that’s a good girl. It makes us all sick.

I’ll find you another mirror in a moment.”

 

Lulu did not stop crying. Perhaps she was not too primitive to realize

that tears are the argument a woman negotiates best. She wailed and wept

assiduously.

 

Honey, in the meantime, flew to the trunks. He dumped one after another;

clothes flew from either energetic hand like gravel from a shovel.

Suddenly he gave a yell of triumph and brandished - . It was cheap and

brass-bound, but it reflected the sunlight as well as though it had been

framed in massy gold.

 

“Here you are, Lulu!” he called. He ran down the beach and held it up to

her. Lulu caught the reflection. She dropped sheer. In her eagerness,

she took it from Honey’s very hand. And as she seized it, a tear dropped

on his upturned cheek. And as the tear dropped, her face broke into

smiles.

 

“Well,” exclaimed Ralph an instant later, “if I’d had any idea that they

were angels and not females, this would settle the question for me. Good

Lord! Well, you have got a temper, my lady.”

 

It was of Julia he spoke.

 

For, descending slowly and deliberately, Julia hovered an instant above

a big rock. Then, with a tremendous slashing impulse of a powerful arm,

she hurled her mirror on it. She flew in a very frenzy of haste into the

west.

 

The girls returned the next morning early.

 

“After the graft,” Ralph commented cynically.

 

Honey had been rifling the trunks again. He walked down to the beach

with an armful of fans, piled them there, returned to camp. The girls

descended, eyed them, ascended, gathered together, talked, descended,

ascended again.

 

“What’s the row?” Billy asked.

 

“They don’t know what they’re for,” said Pete. He ran down on to the

beach, seized a fan of feathers, opened it, and stood fanning himself.

Then he put it down and ran back.

 

He had hardly returned to the group of men when Chiquita swooped down

and seized the fan that he had dropped. The feathers were the exact

scarlet of her wings. She floated about, fanning herself slowly, her

teeth flashing white in her dusky face.

 

“By jiminy, if she only had a mantilla, she’d be a Spanish angel,” Billy

commented whimsically.

 

The other girls dropped down after a while and seized a fan, or in

Clara’s case two, and Peachy’s three. They sailed off into the west,

fanning themselves slowly.

 

“Say, we’ve got to have our ammunition all ready the next time they

come,” said Ralph. “I bet they’re here this afternoon. They’ve never had

any of these lover-like little attentions, apparently. And they’re

falling for them so quick that it’s fairly embarrassing. Pete, you’ll

have to be muckraking this island before we get through.”

 

In their search for what Honey called “bait,” they came across a trunk

filled with scarfs of various descriptions; gauze, satin, chiffon;

embroidered, sequined, fringed; every color, fabric, and decoration;

every shape and size. “Drummers’ samples!” Honey commented.