fuss and ceremony, always asking such footless questions and never hearing you when you answer them. Never really knowing anything or saying anything. They’re a different kind of critter, that’s all there is to it; they’re amateurs at life. They’re a failure as a sex and an outworn convention anyway. Myself, I’m for sending them to the scrap-heap. Votes for men!”
And with this, according to the divagations of their temperaments and characters, the others strenuously concurred.
Their days, crowded to the brim with work, passed so swiftly that they scarcely noticed their flight. Their nights, filled with a sleep that was twin brother to Death, seemed not to exist at all.
Their evenings were lively with the most brilliant kind of man-talk. To it, Frank Merrill brought his encyclopedic book knowledge, his insatiable curiosity about life; Ralph Addington all the garnered richness of his acute observation; Billy Fairfax his acquaintance with the elect of the society or of the art world, his quiet, deferential attitude of listener. But the events of these conversational orgies were Honey Smith’s adventures and Pete Murphy’s romances. Honey’s narrative was crisp, clear, quick, straight from the shoulder, colloquial, slangy. He dealt often in the first person and the present tense. He told a plain tale from its simple beginning to its simple end. But Pete—. His language had all Honey’s simplicity lined terseness and, in addition, he had the literary touch, both the dramatist’s instinct and the fictionist’s insight. His stories always ran up to a psychological climax; but this was always disguised by the best narratory tricks. He was one of those men of whom people always say, “if he could only write as he talks.” In point of fact, he wrote much better than he talked—but he talked better than any one else. The unanalytic never allowed in him for the spell of the spoken word, nor for the fiery quality of his spirit.
As time went on, their talks grew more and ore confidential. Women’s faces began to gleam here and there in narrative. They began to indulge in long discussions of the despised sex; at times they ran into fierce controversy. Occasionally Honey Smith re-told a story which, from the introduction of a shadowy girl-figure, became mysteriously more interesting and compelling. Once or twice they nearly went over the border-line of legitimate confidence, so intimate had their talk become—muffled as it was by the velvety, star-sown dark and interrupted only by the unheeded thunders of the surf. They were always pulling themselves up to debate openly whether they should go farther, always, on consideration, turning narrative into a channel much less confidential and much less, interesting, or as openly plugging straight ahead, carefully disguising names and places.
After a week or two, the first fine careless rapture of their escape from death disappeared. The lure of loot evaporated. They did not stop their work on “the ship-duffle,” but it became aimless and undirected. Their trips into the island seemed a little purposeless. Frank Merrill had to scourge them to patrol the beach, to keep their signal sheets flying, their signal fires burning. The effect upon their mental condition of this loss of animus was immediate. They became perceptibly more serious. Their first camp—it consisted only of five haphazard piles of bedding—satisfied superficially the shiftless habits of their womanless group; subconsciously, however, they all fell under the depression of its discomfort and disorder. They bathed in the ocean regularly but they did not shave. Their clothes grew ragged and torn, and although there were scores of trunks packed with wearing apparel, they did not bother to change them. Subconsciously they all responded to these irregularities by a sudden change in spirit.
In the place of the gay talk-fests that filled their evenings, they began to hold long pessimistic discussions about their future on the island in case rescue were indefinitely delayed. Taciturn periods fell upon them. Frank Merrill showed only a slight seriousness. Billy Fairfax, however, wore a look permanently sobered. Pete Murphy became subject at regular intervals to wild rhapsodical seizures when he raved, almost in impromptu verse, about the beauty of sea and sky. These were followed by periods of an intense, bitter, black, Celtic melancholy. Ralph Addington degenerated into what Honey described as “the human sourball.” He spoke as seldom as possible and then only to snarl. He showed a tendency to disobey the few orders that Frank Merrill, who still held his position of leader, laid upon them. Once or twice he grazed a quarrel with Merrill. Honey Smith developed an abnormality equal to Ralph Addington’s, but in the opposite direction. His spirits never flagged; he brimmed with joy-in-life, vitality, and optimism. It was as if he had some secret mental solace.
“Damn you and your sunny-side-up dope!” Ralph Addington growled at him again and again. “Shut up, will you!”
One day Frank Merrill proposed a hike across the island. Billy Fairfax who, at the head, had set a brisk pace for the file, suddenly dropped back to the rear and accosted Honey Smith who had lagged behind. Honey was skipping stones over the lake from a pocketful of flat pebbles.
“Say, Honey,” Billy began. The other four men were far ahead, but Billy kept his voice low. Do you remember that dream you had about the big bird—the time we joshed you so?
“Sure do I,” Honey said cheerfully. “Only remember one thing, Billy. That wasn’t a dream any more than this is.”
“All right,” Billy exclaimed. “You don’t have to show me. A funny thing happened to me last night. I’m not telling the others. They won’t believe it and—well, my nerves are all on end. I know I’d get mad if they began to jolly. I was sleeping like the dickens—a sure-for-certain Rip Van Winkle—when all of a sudden—Did you ever have a pet cat, Honey?”
“Nope.”
“Well, I’ve had lots of them. I like cats. I had one once that used to wake me up at two minutes past seven every 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