fresh installment of jetsam. But, as before, they labored only to save
the flotsam. They worked all the morning.

In the afternoon, they dug a huge trench. Frank Merrill presiding, they
buried the dead with appropriate ceremony.

"Thank God, that's done," Ralph Addington said with a shudder. "I hate
death and everything to do with it."

"Yes, we'll all be more normal now they're gone," Frank Merrill added.
"And the sooner everything that reminds us of them is gone the better."

"Say," Honey Smith burst out the next morning. "Funny thing happened to
me in the middle the night. I woke out of a sound sleep - don't know why
- woke with a start as if somebody'd shaken me - felt something brush me
so close - well, it touched me. I was so dead that I had to work like
the merry Hades to open my eyes - seemed as if it was a full minute
before I could lift my eyelids. When I could make things out - damned if
there wasn't a bird - a big bird - the biggest bird I ever saw in my
life - three times as big as any eagle - flying over the water."

Nothing could better have indicated Honey's mental turmoil than the fact
that he talked in broken phrases rather than in his usual clear,
swift-footed curt sentences.

Nobody noticed this. Nobody offered comment. Nobody seemed surprised. In
fact, all the psychological areas which explode in surprise and wonder
were temporarily deadened.

"As sure as I live," Honey continued indignantly, "that bird's wings