Angel Island. Inez Haynes Gillmore

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СКАЧАТЬ morning as regularly as two minutes past seven came—not an instant before, not an instant after. He turned the trick by jumping up on the bed and looking steadily into my face. Never touched me, you understand. Well, I waked this morning just after sunrise with a feeling that Kilo was there staring at me. Somebody was—” Billy paused. He swallowed rapidly and wet his lips. “But it wasn’t Kilo.” Billy paused again.

      “I’m listening, bo,” said Honey, shying another stone.

      “It was a girl looking at me,” Billy said, simply as though it were something to be expected. He paused. Then, “Get that? A girl! She was bending over me—pretty close—I could almost touch her. I can see her now as plainly as I see you. She was blonde. One of those pale-gold blondes with hair like honey and features cut with a chisel. You know the type. Some people think it’s cold. It’s a kind of beauty that’s always appealed to me, though.” He stopped.

      “Well,” Honey prodded him with a kind of non-committal calm, “what happened?”

      “Nothing. If you can believe me—nothing. I stared—oh, I guess I stared for a quarter of a minute straight up into the most beautiful pair of eyes that I ever saw in my life. I stared straight up into them and I stared straight down into them. They were as deep as a well and as gray as a cloud and as cold as ice. And they had lashes—” For a moment the quiet directness of Billy’s narrative was disturbed by a whiff of inner tumult. “Whew! what eyelashes! Honey, did you ever come across a lonely mountain lake with high reeds growing around the edge? You know how pure and unspoiled and virginal it seems. That was her eyes. They sort of hypnotized me. My eyes closed and—when I awoke it was broad daylight. What do you think?”

      “Well,” said Honey judicially, “I know just how you feel. I could have killed the boys for joshing me the way they did. I was sure. I was certain I heard a woman laugh that night. And, by God, I did hear it. Whenever I contradict myself, something rises up and tells me I lie. But—.” His radiant brown smile crumpled his brown face. “Of course, I didn’t hear it. I couldn’t have heard it. And so I guess you didn’t see the peroxide you speak of. And yet if you Punch me in the jaw, I’ll know exactly how you feel.” His face uncrumpled, smoothed itself out to his rare look of seriousness. “The point of it is that we’re all a little touched in the bean. I figure that you and I are alike in some things. That’s why we’ve always hung together. And all this queer stuff takes us two the same way. Remember that psychology dope old Rand used to pump into us at college? Well, our psychologies have got all twisted up by a recent event in nautical circles and we’re seeing things that aren’t there and not seeing things that are there.”

      “Honey,” said Billy, “that’s all right. But I want you to understand me and I don’t want you, to make any mistake. I saw a girl.”

      “And don’t forget this,” answered Honey. “I heard one.”

      Billy made no allusion to any of this with the other three men. But for the rest of the day, he had a return of his gentle good humor. Honey’s spirits fairly sizzled.

      That night Frank Merrill suddenly started out of sleep with a yelled, “What was that?”

      “What was what?” everybody demanded, waking immediately to the panic in his voice.

      “That cry,” he explained breathlessly, “didn’t you hear it?” Frank’s eyes were brilliant with excitement; he was pale.

      Nobody had heard it. And Ralph Addington and Pete Murphy, cursing lustily, turned over and promptly fell asleep again. But Billy Fairfax grew rapidly more and more awake. “What sort of a cry?” he asked. Honey Smith said nothing, but he stirred the fire into a blaze in preparation for a talk.

      “The strangest cry I ever heard, long-drawn-out, wild—eerie’s the word for it, I guess,” Frank Merrill said. As he spoke, he peered off into the darkness. “If it were possible, I should say it was a woman’s voice.”

      The three men walked away from the camp, looked off into every direction of the starlit night. Nowhere was there sign or sound of life.

      “It must have been gulls,” said Honey Smith.

      “It didn’t sound like gulls,” answered Frank Merrill. For an instant he fell into meditation so deep that he virtually forgot the presence of the other two. “I don’t know what it was,” he said finally in an exasperated tone. “I’m going to sleep.”

      They walked back to camp. Frank Merrill rolled himself up in a blanket, lay down. Soon there came from his direction only the sound of regular, deep breathing.

      “Well, Honey,” Billy Fairfax asked, a note of triumph in his voice, “how about it?”

      “Well, Billy,” Honey Smith said in a baffled tone, “when you get the answer, give it to me.”

      Nobody mentioned the night’s experience the next day. But a dozen times Frank Merrill stopped his work to gaze out to sea, an expression of perplexity on his face.

      The next night, however, they were all waked again, waked twice. It was Ralph Addington who spoke first; a kind of hoarse grunt and a “What the devil was that?”

      “What?” the others called.

      “Damned if I know,” Ralph answered. “If you wouldn’t think I was off my conch, I’d say it was a gang of women laughing.”

      Pete Murphy, who always woke in high spirits, began to joke Ralph Addington. The other three were silent. In fifteen minutes they were all asleep; sixty, they were all awake again.

      It was Pete Murphy who sounded the alarm this time. “Say, something spoke to me,” he said. “Or else I’m a nut. Or else I have had the most vivid dream I’ve ever had.” Evidently he did not believe that it was a dream. He sat up and listened; the others listened, too. There was no sound in the soft, still night, however. They talked for a little while, a strangely subdued quintette. It was as though they were all trying to comment on these experiences without saying anything about them.

      They slept through the next night undisturbed until just before sunrise. Then Honey Smith woke them. It was still dark, but a fine dawn-glow had begun faintly to silver the east. “Say, you fellows,” he exclaimed. “Wake up!” His voice vibrated with excitement, although he seemed to try to keep it low. “There are strange critters round here. No mistake this time. Woke with a start, feeling that something had brushed over me—saw a great bird—a gigantic thing—flying off heard one woman’s laugh—then another—.”

      It was significant that nobody joked Honey this time. “Say, this island’ll be a nut-house if this keeps up,” Pete Murphy said irritably. “Let’s go to sleep again.”

      “No, you don’t!” said Honey. “Not one of you is going to sleep. You’re all going to sit up with me until the blasted sun comes up.”

      People always hastened to accommodate Honey. In spite of the hour, they began to rake the fire, to prepare breakfast. The others became preoccupied gradually, but Honey still sat with his face towards the water, watching.

      It grew brighter.

      “It’s time we started to build a camp, boys,” Frank Merrill said, withdrawing momentarily from deep reflection. “We’ll go crazy doing nothing all the time. We’ll—.”

      “Great God,” Honey interrupted. “Look!”

      Far СКАЧАТЬ