ey Smith answered, indulging in one of his
sudden, off-hand characterizations, bull's-eye shots every one of
them. "He's a good man, ruined by culturine. He's the bucko-mate type
translated into the language of the academic world. Three centuries
ago he'd have been a Drake or a Frobisher. And to-day, even, if he'd
followed the lead of his real ability, he'd have made a great financier,
a captain of industry or a party boss. But, you see, he was brought up
to think that book-education was the whole cheese. The only ambition he
knows is to make good in the university world. How I hated that college
atmosphere and its insistence on culture! That was what riled me most
about it. As a general thing, I detest a professor. Can't help liking
old Frank, though."

The four men virtually took no time off from work; or at least
the change of work that stood for leisure was all in the line of
home-making. Eternally, they joked each other about these womanish
occupations; but they all kept steadily to it. Ralph Addington and Honey
Smith put the furniture into shape, repairing and polishing it. Billy
Fairfax sorted out the glass, china, tools, household utensils of every
kind.

Pete Murphy went through the trunks with his art side uppermost. He
collected all kinds of Oriental bric-a-brac, pictures and draperies. He
actually mended and pressed things; he had all the artist's capability
in these various feminine lines. When the others joked him about his
exotic and impracticable tastes, he said that, before he left, he
intended to establish a museum of fine arts, on Angel Island.

Hard as the men worked, they had always the appearance of those who
await the expected. But the expected did not occur; and gradually the
sharp edge of anticipation wore dull. Emotionally they calmed. Their
nerves settled to a normal condition. The sudden whirr of a bird's
flight attracted only a casual glance. In Ralph Addington alone,
expectation maintained itself at the boiling point. He trained himself
to work with one eye searching the horizon. One afternoon, when they had
scattered for a siesta, his hoarse cry brought them running to the beach
from all directions.

So suddenly had the girls appeared that they might have materialized
from the air. This time they had not come from the sea. When Ralph
discovered them, they were hovering back of them above the trees that
banded the beach. The sun was setting, blood-red; the whole western
sky had broken