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feather; it turned the edges of their wings to flame; it changed their smoothly piled hair to helmets of burnished metal.
The men tore from the beach to the trees at full speed. For a moment the violence of this action threw the girls into a panic. They fluttered, broke lines, flew high, circled. And all the time, they uttered shrill cries of distress.
"They're frightened," Billy Fairfax said. "Keep quiet, boys."
The men stopped running, stood stock-still.
Gradually the girls calmed, sank, took up the interweaving figures of their air-dance. If at their first appearance they seemed creatures of the sea, this time they were as distinctively of the forest. They looked like spirits of the trees over which they hovered. Indeed, but for their wings they might have been dryads. Wreaths of green encircled their heads and waists. Long leafy streamers trailed from their shoulders. Often in the course of their aerial play, they plunged down into the feathery tree-tops.
Once, the blonde with the blue wings sailed out of the group and balanced herself for a toppling second on a long, outstretching bough.
"Good Lord, what a picture!" Pete Murphy said.
As if she understood, she repeated her performance. She cast a glance over her shoulder at them - unmistakably noting the effect.
"Hates herself, doesn't she?" commented Honey Smith. "They're talking!" he added after an interval of silence. "Some one of them is giving directions - I can tell by the tone of her voice. Can't make out which one it is though. Thank God, they can talk!"
"It's the quiet one - the blonde - the one with the white wings," Billy Fairfax explained. "She's captain. Some bean on her, too; she straightened them out a moment ago when they got so frightened."
"I now officially file my claim," said Ralph Addington, "to that peachy one - the golden blonde - the one with the blue wings, the one who tried to stand on the bough. That girl's a corker. I can tell her kind of pirate craft as far as