"And do you remember" - Chiquita rippled a low laugh - "how we would
leap into the air if they stirred or spoke in their sleep? Once, Honey
started to wake up - and we were off over the water before he could get
his eyes open."
"Oh, but Honey told me that he heard us laugh that time," Lulu
explained. "He told the men the next day and, oh, how they joked him."
"And then," Chiquita went on, "once Billy actually did wake up. You were
bending over him, Julia. I remember we all kept as still as the dead.
And you - oh, Julia, you were wonderful - you did not even breathe. He
seemed to fade back into sleep again."
"He says now that I hypnotized him," Julia explained.
"Do you remember," Clara took it up, "that we even considered kidnapping
one of them? If we'd known what to do with him, I think we might have
tried it."
"Yes," said Chiquita. "But I think it was just as well we didn't. We
wouldn't have carried it off well. There's something about them that's
terrifying. Do you remember that time we saved Honey from the shark, how
we trembled all the time we carried him through the air. He knew it, too
- I noticed how triumphantly he smiled."
"Honey told me once" - Lulu lowered her voice - "that it was the fact
that we trembled - that we seemed so much women, in spite of being
creatures of the air - that made him determine to capture us."
"Well, there's something about them that weakens you," Chiquita said in
a puzzled tone. "It's like a spell. At first I always felt quivery and
trembly if I stood near them."
"It's power," Julia explained.
"I used even to be afraid of their voices," Chiquita went on.
"Oh, so was I," Lulu agreed. "I felt as I did when I heard thunder for
the first time. It went through me. It made me shake. I was afraid, but
I wanted to hear it again."
"Do you remember the first time we saw them walk!" Clara said. Her face
twisted with the expression of a past loathing. "How it disgusted us! It
seemed to me the most hideous motion I had ever seen - so unnatural, so
ungraceful, so repellent. It took me a long time to get used to that.
And as for their running - "