He stopped again.

“That talk made the greatest difference.  After it was all over, I gave them some water.  They were different even then.  They looked at me — and they didn’t shrink or shudder.  When I handed Julia the cup, she made herself smile.  God, you never saw such a smile.  I nearly — " he paused, “I all but went back to the cabin and cut my throat.  But the fight’s over.  They’ll get well.  They’re sleeping like children now.”

“Thank God!” Merrill groaned.  “Oh, thank God!”

“I’ve felt like a murderer ever since — — " Billy said.  He stopped and his voice leaped with a sudden querulousness.  “You didn’t wake me up; you’ve done double guard duty during the night, Ralph.”

“Oh, that’s all right.  You were all in — I felt that — " Ralph stammered in a shamefaced fashion.  “And I knew I could stand it.”

“There’s a long sleep coming to you, Ralph,” Pete said.  “You’ve hardly closed your eyes this week.  No question but you’ve saved their lives.”

B.

Mid-morning on Angel Island.

The sun had mounted half-way to the zenith; sky and sea and land glittered with its luster.  Like war-horses, the waves came ramping over the smooth, shimmering sand; war-horses with bodies of jade and manes of silver.

Pete floated inshore on a huge comber, ran up the beach a little way and sat down.  Billy followed.

“I’ve come out just to get the picture,” Pete explained.

“Same here,” said Billy.

For an instant, both men contemplated the scene with the narrowed, critical gaze of the artist.

The flying-girls were swimming; and swimming with the same grace and strength with which formerly they flew.  And as if inevitably they must take on the quality of the element in which they mixed, they looked like mermaids now, just as formerly they had looked like birds.  They carried heads and shoulders high out of the water.  Webs of sea-spume glittered on the shining hair and on the white flesh.  One behind the other, they swam in rhythmic unison.  Regularly the long, round, strong-looking right arms reached out of the water, bowed forward, clutched at the wave, and pulled them on.  Simultaneously, the left arms reached back, pushed against the wave, and shot them forward.  Their feet beat the water to a lather.

They were headed down the beach, hugging the shore.  Swim as hard as they could, Honey and Frank managed but to keep up with them.  Ralph overtook them only in their brief resting-periods.  Further inshore, carried ceaselessly a little forward and then a little back, Julia floated; floated with an unimaginable lightness and yet, somehow, conserved her aspect of a creature cut in marble.

“I have never seen anything so beautiful in any art, ancient or modern,” Billy concluded.  “When those strange draperies that they affect get wet, they look like the Elgin marbles.”