It was significant that nobody joked Honey this time. "Say, this
island'll be a nut-house if this keeps up," Pete Murphy said irritably.
"Let's go to sleep again."
"No, you don't!" said Honey. "Not one of you is going to sleep. You're
all going to sit up with me until the blasted sun comes up."
People always hastened to accommodate Honey. In spite of the hour, they
began to rake the fire, to prepare breakfast. The others became
preoccupied gradually, but Honey still sat with his face towards the
water, watching.
It grew brighter.
"It's time we started to build a camp, boys," Frank Merrill said,
withdrawing momentarily from deep reflection. "We'll go crazy doing
nothing all the time. We'll - ."
"Great God," Honey interrupted. "Look!"
Far out to sea and high in the air, birds were flying. There were five
of them and they were enormous. They flew with amazing strength,
swiftness, and grace; but for the most part they about a fixed area like
bees at a honey-pot. It was a limited area, but within it they dipped,
dropped, curved, wove in and out.
"Well, I'll be - ."
"They're those black spots we saw the first day, Pete," Billy Fairfax
said breathlessly. "We thought it was the sun."
"That's what I heard in the night," Frank Merrill gasped to Ralph
Addington.
"But what are they?" asked Honey Smith in a voice that had a falsetto
note of wonder. "They laugh like a woman - take it from me."
"Eagles - buzzards - vultures - condors - rocs - phoenixes," Pete Murphy
recited his list in an or of imaginative conjecture.
"They're some lost species - something left over from a prehistoric era,"
Frank Merrill explained, shaking with excitement. "No vulture or eagle
or condor could be as big as that at this distance. At least I think
so." He paused here, as one studying the problem in the scientific
spirit. "Often in the Rockies I've confused a nearby chicken-hawk, at
first, with a far eagle. But the human eye has its own system of
triangulation. Those are not little birds nearby, but big birds far off.
See how heavily they soar. Do you realize what's happened? We've made a
discovery that will shake the whole scientific world. There, there,
they're going!"
"My God, look at them beat it!" said Honey; and there was awe in his
voice.
"Why, they're monster size," Frank Merrill went on, and his voice had
grown almost hysterical. "They could carry one of us off. We're not
safe. We must take measures at once to protect ourselves. Why, at night
- We must make traps. If we can capture one, or, better, a pair, we're
famous. We're a part of history now."