Angel Island by Inez Haynes Gillmore
page 13 of 236 (05%)
page 13 of 236 (05%)
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with a lemon for a ball and a chair-leg for a bat. A mood of wild
exhilaration caught them. The inevitable psychological reaction had set in. Their morbid horror of Nature vanished in its vitalizing flood like a cobweb in a flame. Never had sea or sky or earth seemed more lovely, more lusciously, voluptuously lovely. The sparkle of the salt wind tingled through their bodies like an electric current. The warmth in the air lapped them like a hot bath. Joy-in-life flared up in them to such a height that it kept them running and leaping meaninglessly. They shouted wild phrases to each other. They burst into song. At times they yelled scraps of verse. "We'll come across something to eat soon," said Frank Merrill, breathing hard. "Then we'll be all right." "I feel - better - for that run - already," panted Billy Fairfax. "Haven't seen a black spot for five minutes." Nobody paid any attention to him, and in a few minutes he was paying no attention to himself. Their expedition was offering too many shocks of horror and pathos. Fortunately the change in their mood held. It was, indeed, as unnatural as their torpor, and must inevitably bring its own reaction. But after each of these tragic encounters, they recovered buoyancy, recovered it with a resiliency that had something almost light-headed about it. "We won't touch any of them now," Frank Merrill ordered peremptorily. "We can attend to them later. They'll keep coming back. What we've got to do is to think of the future. Get everything out of the water that looks useful - immediately useful," he corrected himself. "Don't bother about anything above high-water mark - that's there to stay. And work |
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