One afternoon, after a long vigil in which, unaccountably, Julia had not
appeared, he started to return to camp. It was a late twilight and a
black, velvety one. The trees against a darkening curtain of sky had
turned to bunches of tangled shadow, the reefs and rocks against the
papery white of the sand to smutches and blobs of soot. Suddenly - and
his heart pounded at the sound - the air began to vibrate and thrill.
He stopped short. He waited. His breath came fast; the vibration and
thrill were coming closer.
He crystallized where he stood. It scarcely seemed that he breathed. And
then - .
Something white and nebulous came floating out of the dusk towards him.
It became a silver cloud, a white sculptured spirit of the air. It
became an angel, a fairy, a woman - Julia. She flew not far off, level
with his eyes and, as she approached, she slowed her stately flight.
Billy made no movement. He only stood and waited and watched. But
perhaps never before in his life had his eyes become so transparently
the windows of his soul. Quite as intently, Julia's eyes, big, gray, and
dark-lashed, considered him. It seemed to Billy that he had never seen
in any face so virginally young such a tragic seriousness, nor in any
eyes, superficially so calm, such a troubled wonder.
He did not stir until she had drifted out of earshot, had become again a
nebulous silver cloud drifting into the dusk, had merged with that dusk.
"What makes your eyes shine so?" said Honey, examining him keenly when
he reached camp.
It was the first time Billy had known Julia to fly low. But he
discovered gradually that only in the sunlight did she haunt the zenith.
At twilight she always kept close to the earth. Billy took to haunting
the reefs at dusk.
Again and again, the same thing happened.
Suddenly - and it was as if successive waves of electricity charged
through his body - the quiet air began to purr and vibrate and drum. Out
of the star-shot dusk emerged the speeding whiteness of Julia. Always,
as she approached, she slowed her flight. Always as she passed, her
sorrowing gray eyes would seek his burning blue ones. Billy could bring
himself to speak of this strange experience to nobody, not even to
Honey. For there was in it something untellable, unsharable, the wonder
of the vision and the dream, the unreality of the apparition.
The excitement of these happenings kept the men entertained, but it also
kept them keyed up to high tension. For a while they did not notice this
themselves. But when they attempted to go back to their interrupted
work, they found it hard to concentrate upon it. Frank Merrill had given
up trying to make them patrol the beach. Unaided, day and night he
attended to their signals.