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