She was running like a crazy person, Marjorie after her, to the waterlogged old rowboat. They were in it, ankle deep in water, wallowing, floundering toward the not distant point of Honeymoon Island. Running again through the impeding sand. Two uniformed fliers kept them off from the wreck. “Is... it... B-Brook Hanna?” she babbled.
“No, Ma’am. Hanna didn’t fly today. He’s back at the field.”...
It took a knock-out sedative to get Stacy quiet. She kept insisting that this was Carl’s work, he was gunning for Brook. Yvette soothed her, “La pauvre petite. Dormez, Mademoiselle.”
What had happened? Nobody knew. Somebody shooting at the plane? That was nonsense — there was nobody to shoot at it — nothing to shoot with. So it was put down to an accident, just one of those things that happen when you are training raw recruits. The two boys killed, pilot and gunner, were Michigan lads.
The south wind veered to a north wind, on a regular tear, but it was a relief. As Hollis said, there was something about a south wind, like the mistral in the South of France, and men had once been pardoned for murder when that blew. After that, the days were as calm as your own hand mirror, the sea deep turquoise-blue with green and purple streaks, the red hibiscus poised as still as artificial flowers on their bushes.
Marjorie, roaming the island alone, came upon a broken piece of string snarled in a mangrove tree, like kite string. She also came upon some words spelled large upon the exposed beach with big white clam shells. It was as though a child had been playing on the island — and there was no child! Only the playboy! Or the kite man flying his kites? She had to giggle at the mental vision of old McCloud with his white turban ends yarding to a kite’s breeze!
To Hollis she confided: “Stacy is writing messages to Brook Hanna, with shells, on the beach. Every time a plane flies so low it just misses our roof, that will be Hanna reading them. Today’s billet doux is ‘I STILL DO.’ ”
“Still do what?” wondered little Mr. Mears.
“Still loves him, you dope,” Marjorie tittered.
The breeze was from the east — it was from the west — each shift foretold by McCloud. The war might have suppressed the weather reports, but Little Mangrove had its weather reporter right with it. McCloud was a good deal better than a barometer: more accurate. But all was peaceful.
Then, one evening, McCloud reckoned that they were due for another south wind. That night Moselle went on a rampage. She came to Marjorie, with the whites of her eyes as big as the whites of a pair of fried eggs, and demanded hysterically to be conveyed off “dis debbil-damned island to the mainland, where Things don’t happen, right away now.”
Marjorie descended to a bribe. “You mean, leave me? Just when I was going to give you my red silk dress?”
“Don’ want no red silk dress... The new one?” Moselle wavered.
“The brand-new one. And the red strap slippers.”
“They am too much murder on dis island,” Moselle whinnied. “Nothin’ don’ pay you back for murder. Affen you murdered, you can’t wear no red silk dress.” But she calmed magically; went off muttering to herself about “not likin’ dat weavver man, he make bad things happen.”
Marjorie was troubled. She had learned how truly psychic are the negroes: they smell trouble ahead, as a bird dog smells game.
In the morning Marjorie took a small, solitary excursion. She walked to the north end of Little Mangrove and frowned across at Honeymoon Island, so maddeningly near. You could swim it — but sharks? She remembered the water-logged old boat. One oar was now missing, the water was all but sinking it. The south breeze blew her over. She would have to bail with something, before she could pole it back. The island was a low, barren, desolate streamer of land, with a white line of beach showing the blanched old bones of shells and with — at this end — a low growth of mangroves. Nothing ominous — not a thing.
Marjorie followed the beach. A guard came stalking to meet Marjorie, and she remembered the rule: absolutely no visitors and this means you! He was very young, uniformed in rags and a peaked official cap. He did not quite know what to do about a pretty feminine trespasser who smiled at him, but he remained stern, if helpless.
So Marjorie wandered on up the beach. He called after her: “ ’Bout time for machine-gun practice in that lagoon up there a piece.”
“I know,” she smiled back. “Thanks.”
The island curved, she was soon out of sight of him. Here the beach was more desolate; the sun blazed, not a bush for shelter. The island widened, so that there were thickets of trees (Hiding for a machine gun? Absurd, she rejected it, that was not shooting!) but Marjorie was loathe to penetrate, afraid of rattlers. She came to the little lagoon, an uneven, deep half-moon, with its target range: a cool, tranquil green, very pretty, with fish playfully leaping.
Curiously she was not at first warned of the approach of planes by the drum of engines. The first hint was a fleeting shadow on the sands — so small that it must be either a bird or a plane very high up. She stared into the blistering blue, until her eyes watered. Nothing. Not a sound — not a sign.
Then, almost at once, the planes came pulsing up — high, like shadowy, double crosses in the sky — ten of them. Circling off — then lowering — looming — the roar a terror. Marjorie could not credit what was then happening. Couldn’t they see her? The roar of guns and engines was terrific. It seemed to rock the little island like a floating custard island. The shells spatted up the water — they kicked up the sands about her. Boom-boom. Tut-tut-tut-tut. Boom-bump: Marjorie was in the midst of skyrockets going off every which way all at once. Relentless — zoom — swoop — boom. They were aiming at her. She sat — shocked down — and gaped defiance.
It was from this position that she saw again the exploding ball in the heavens — not like these other explosions, in either action or position — and saw the great plane seem to falter — something drop away from it, a wing? — roll over and nose-dive toward the water.
Marjorie found her quavering legs and ran — floundered through the sand. “I’ll — t-tell — H-Hollis. They are sh-shooting each other. They are sh-shooting everything. But — that wasn’t shooting. It was more as though it ran into a load of dynamite. But there was nothing there.”
The guard, justified, called: “I told you so!”
“You fool,” babbled the pretty woman, “that was another c-crash and you don’t even know—!”...
Hollis was extremely angry with her.
His really eloquent fury was interrupted by Yvette, who urged a doctor for her mistress. Stacy was not calmed by the news that her fiancé was safe. The dead were a boy from Nebraska and a boy from Texas. This was Carl Schee’s work! He had only missed again. He would get Brook yet. No appeal to reason quieted her. It took again the knock-out tablet.
Hollis, in their own room, resumed. By this time, Marjorie, her nerves crying out, was in tears — but the tears did not melt him. “Unless they bomb me off the island, I am finishing my book, Marjorie. And all that I ask of you, as my wife, is the negative assistance of not going out and standing under the bombs!”
It was the first time that her power over him had totally failed.
The honeymoon was over...
Of course, it was not over...
But even in his cherishing arms, Marjorie could not move him.