ther again. It
vibrated with color. It pulsed with iridescence.

"How the thunder--" Addington began and stopped. "Well, can you beat
it?" he concluded.

The human column was so arranged that the wings of one of the air-girls
concealed the body of another just above her.

The "dark one" led, flying low, her scarlet pinions beating slowly back
and forth about her head.

Just above, near enough for her body to be concealed by the scarlet
wings of the "dark one," but high enough for her pointed brown face to
peer between their curves, came the "plain one."

Higher flew the "thin one." Her body was entirely covered by the orange
wings of the "plain one," but her copper-colored hair made a gleamy spot
in their vase-shaped opening.

Still higher appeared the "peachy one." She seemed to be holding her
lustrous blonde head carefully centered in the oval between the "thin
one's" green-and-yellow plumage. She looked like a portrait in a frame.

Highest of them all, floating upright, a Winged Victory of the air, her
silver wings towering straight above her head, the cameo face of the
"quiet one" looked level into the distance.

Their wings moved in rotation, and with machine-like regularity. First
one pair flashed up, swept back and down, then another, and another. As
they neared, the color seemed the least wonderful detail of the picture.
For it changed in effect from a column of glittering wings to a column
of girl-faces, a column that floated light as thistle-down, a column
that divided, parted, opened, closed again.

The background of all this was a veil of dark gauze at the horizon-line,
its foil a golden, virgin moon, dangling a single brilliant star.

"They're talking!" Honey Smith exclaimed. "And they're leaving!"

The girls did not pause once. They flew in a straight line over the
island to the west, always maintaining their columnar formation. At
first the men thought that they were making for the trees. They ran
after them. The speed of their running had no effect this time on their
visitors, who continued to sail eastward. The men called on them to
stay. They called repeatedly, singly and in chorus. They called in every
tone of humble masculine entreaty and of arrogant masculine command. But
their cries might have fallen on marble ears. The girls neither turned
nor paused. They disappeared.

"Females are certainly alike under their skins, whether they're angels
or Hottentots," Ralph Addington commented. "