"Well," said Honey Smith one day and, for the first time, there was a
peevish note in his voice, "that 'natural selection' theory of yours,
Ralph, seems to have worked out to some extent - but not enough. We seem
to be comfortably divided, all ten of us, into happy couples, but hanged
if I'm strong for this long-distance acquaintance."
"You're right there," Ralph Addington admitted; "we don't seem to be
getting any forwarder."
"It's all very pretty and romantic to have these girls flying about,"
Honey continued in a grumbling tone, "but it's too much like flirting
with a canary-bird. Damn it all, I want to talk with them."
Ralph made a hopeless gesture. "It is a deadlock, I admit. I'm at my
wits' end."
Perhaps Honey expressed what the others felt. At any rate, a sudden
irascibility broke out among them. They were good-natured enough while
the girls were about, but over their work and during their leisure, they
developed what Honey described as every kind of blue-bean, sourball,
katzenjammer and grouch." They fought heroically against it - and their
method of fighting took various forms, according to the nature of the
four men. Frank Merrill lost himself in his books. Pete Murphy began the
score of an opera vaguely heroic in theme; he wrote every spare moment.
Billy Fairfax worked so hard that he grew thin. Honey Smith went off on
long, solitary walks. Ralph Addington, as usual, showed an exasperating
tendency towards contradiction, an unvarying contentiousness.
And then, without warning, all the girls ceased to come to the island.
Three days went by, five, a week, ten days. One morning they all passed
over the island, one by one, an hour or two between flights; but they
flew high and fast, and they did not stop.
Ralph Addington had become more and more irascible. That day the others
maintained peace only by ignoring him.
"By the gods!" he snarled at night as they all sat dull and dumb about
the fire. "Something's got to happen to change our way of living or
murder'll break out in this community. And we'd better begin pretty
quick to do something about it. What I'd like to know is," and he
slapped his hand smartly against a flat rock, "coming down to cases - as
we must sooner or later - what is our right in regard to these women."