onic poem, he was
coping with the wonders of the semi-tropical coloring. His companions
rallied and harried him, especially about the poem; but he could always
silence them with a threat to read it aloud. All the Celt in him had
come to the surface. They heard him chanting his numbers in the depths
of the forest; sometimes he intoned them, swinging on the branch of a
high tree. He even wandered over the reefs, reciting them to the waves.

One day, late in the afternoon, Billy lay on his favorite spot on the
southern reef, dreaming. High up in the air, Julia flashed and gyrated,
revolved and spun. It seemed to Billy that he had never seen her go
so high. She looked like a silver feather. But as he looked, she went
higher and higher, so high that she disappeared vertically.

A strange sense of loneliness fell on Billy. This was the first time
since she had begun to come regularly to the island that she had cut
their tryst short. He waited. She did not appear. A minute went by.
Another and another and another. His sense of loneliness deepened to
uneasiness. Still there was no sign of Julia. Uneasiness became alarm.
Ah, there she was at last--a speck, a dot, a spot, a splotch. How she
was flying! How--.

Like a bullet the conviction struck him.

She was falling!

Memories of certain biplanic explorations surged into his mind. "She's
frozen," he thought to himself. "She can't move her wings!" Terror
paralyzed him; horror bound him. He stood still-numb, dumb, helpless.

Down she came like an arrow. Her wings kept straight above her head,
moveless, still. He could see her breast and shoulders heave and twist,
and contort in a fury of effort. Underneath her were the trees. He had
a sudden, lightning-swift vision of a falling aviator that he had once
seen. The horror of what was coming turned his blood to ice. But he
could not move; nor could he close his eyes.

"Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!" he groaned. And, finally, "Oh, thank God!"

Julia's wings were moving. But apparently she still had little control
of them. They flapped frantically a half-minute; but they had arrested
her fall; they held her up. They continued to support her, although she
beat about in jagged circles. Alternately floating and fluttering, she
caught on an air-current, hurled herself on it, floated; then, as
though she were sliding through some gigantic pillar of quiet air, sank
earthwards. She seized the topmost bough of one of the high trees,
threw