st, fell
into the splendid sleep that followed their long out-of-doors days.

In the middle of the night, Billy Fairfax came out of a dream to the
knowledge that somebody was shaking him gently, firmly, furtively.
"Don't move!" Honey Smith's voice whispered; "keep quiet till I wake the
others."

It was a still and moon-lighted world. Billy Fairfax lay quiet, his
wide-open eyes fixed on the luminous sky. The sense of drowse was being
brushed out of his brain as though by a mighty whirlwind, and in
its place came a vague sensation of confusion, of excitement, of a
miraculous abnormality. He heard Honey Smith crawl slowly from man to
man, heard him whisper his adjuration once, twice, three times. "Now,"
Honey called finally.

The men looked seawards. Then, simultaneously they leaped to their feet.

The semi-tropical moon was at its full. Huge, white, embossed, cut out,
it did not shine--it glared from the sky. It made a melted moonstone of
the atmosphere. It faded the few clouds to a sapphire-gray, just touched
here and there with the chalky dot of a star. It slashed a silver trail
across a sea jet-black except where the waves rimmed it with snow. Up in
the white enchantment, but not far above them, the strange air-creatures
were flying. They were not birds; they were winged women!

Darting, diving, glancing, curving, wheeling, they interwove in what
seemed the premeditated figures of an aerial dance. If they were
conscious of the group of men on the beach, they did not show it; they
seemed entirely absorbed in their flying. Their wings, like enormous
scimitars, caught the moonlight, flashed it back. For an interval, they
played close in a group inextricably intertwined, a revolving ball of
vivid color. Then, as if seized by a common impulse, they stretched,
hand in hand, in a line across the sky-drifted. The moonlight flooded
them full, caught glitter and gleam from wing-sockets, shot shimmer
and sheen from wing-tips, sent cataracts of iridescent color pulsing
between. Snow-silver one, brilliant green and gold another, dazzling
blue the next, luminous orange a fourth, flaming flamingo scarlet the
last, their colors seemed half liquid, half light. One moment the whole
figure would flare into a splendid blaze, as if an inner mechanism had
suddenly turned on all the electricity; the next, the blaze died down to
the fairy glisten given by the moonlight.

As if by one impulse, they began finally to fly upward. Higher and