“I light the white candle of Peace: as, in the Christmas story, Atawessu, the Star, the Creature Far Above, guided wise men to the manger where the Prince of Peace was born, so may the star of loving kindness guide all men soon to that ‘fair city of peace’ where children’s cry--like the song of angels, of old--shall come true and it may be ‘Fini,’ forever, la Guerre: good will on earth! I light the white candle of Peace.”
“I light the blue candle of Loyalty--Truth: as the tides of the ocean are stable, returning rhythmically2 to the shore, governed by some force which men call Solar Attraction, so may I be drawn3 to the Sun of Ideals, ‘true to the truth that is in me,’ loyal to each pledge I make: I light the blue candle of Truth!”
“Peerless red, white, and blue,
Vitality4, love, and truth,
Bright be my hold on you,
In these halcyon5 days of youth!
“Staunch as the ocean’s tide,
Nor man, nor might may turn,
Steady as beacon-light,
In its patient, steadfast6 burn!
“True as the fixed7 star’s beam.
The Creature Far Above,
Unerring as wild bird’s dive
For hidden treasure trove8!
“True as the ...”
But the chanting voices--enriched by Flamina’s caressing9 note--faltered. What “Creature Far Above” was gliding10 forth11 from a bank of blood-red cloud, its radiant wings aflame, as if dipped in the fires of another world?
“It’s an a?roplane! A big--a?roplane! A biplane!”
“Nev-er!”
“Yes, it is! I--I thought at first it was a sea-gull; I’ve been watching it--saw it before it entered that red cloud-gate!” Sara Davenport’s leather-fringed sleeves fell back from her bare fore-arms, leaving them free to describe a broken arc of excitement--like chain-lightning ripping the dusk--under the spell of the tricolored candles.
“Mercy! Whoopee-doo!... Zoom12, zoom, zoom!... May--may I be feathers, as Captain Andy would say, if ’tisn’t an a?roplane! A big army air-plane! Oh, girls alive, d’you suppose--suppose it’s going to land--come to earth--drop down right here by our Council Fire?”
“Oh! it never will. Where is it? I can’t see it! The dusk’s so thick, anyway!” It was a half-cheated wail13 from two-thirds of the girls, turning to Sara’s flame, now a perfect pillar of fire, for guidance--direction.
“There! There! See! Just over that tallest sand-peak now--high sand-hill!... And, oh! for goodness sake! there’s the moon coming over the top--coming over the top to stare at it.”
Yes! round-orbed, magnificent, shadow-mapped, the silvery Green Corn Moon was sailing up over the dunes14 of antique silver--over the dark-tressed crown of a lesser15 hill, to gaze at the winged wonder--one moment burning up in the last dying flame of day, the next a mammoth16 gray moth17 circling and circling in the vast crimson18-hung halls of twilight19, as if drawn to the home-fires of earth.
To the far-beckoning blaze of the Council Fire upon the pale beach, within thirty yards of the tide’s rippling20 edge--the fairy, rainbowed blaze, fed by bone-dry driftwood, copper-marked wreck-wood, flinging aloft every hue21 in the spectrum--before which nineteen Camp Fire Girls and their Guardian22 had entered upon the candle-lighting ceremony arranged by Olive Deering, Torch-Bearer, the Maid who had “carried on” that morning upon the humble23 field of that depressing hill.
Now the candles, red, white, and blue, symbolic24 torches, embedded25 in their silver candlesticks of sand, flickered26, guttered27, unheeded--went out, two of them--negligible as glow-worms beside some transcendent display of Northern Lights, streaming merry dancers, radiating from the excitement in the girls’ own breasts, which seemed to surround that a?rial visitor from the North, flying lower--lower--directly over the high-floating, pink-shot smoke-reek of the Council Fire.
But....
Was it going to be a visitor?
Forgotten was the charming purpose of the evening, the main feature of the ceremonial meeting, the initiation28 of Nébis, little Flamina, now fondling the air with vocal29 thrills that sobbed30 joyously31, like the softer strings32 of a violin--as that transporting question sailed, moon-faced, over the top!
“But--but where did you see it first, Sara? Oh! how could you see it, far off--when everything’s getting so dark? I never knew you had--cat’s--eyes!”
Little Owl33 was blinking like a snake-charmed owlet which could not move its head upon the neck usually so flexible--that slender girlish neck rising from the round setting of the ceremonial dress being bent34 fixedly35 backward--the face, white as a moon-flower, shining upward in ultimate expectancy36, such as never had been before, never could, felt she, be again, though she live till crack of doom37!
“See it! Oh, I don’t know! While--while we were singing--chanting--about the Creature Far Above (oh! wasn’t that funny?) I happened to look off, and saw a speck--dark--against the red! I thought, at first, it was a bird! Then--then it entered that red ripple-cloud ... then.... Oh-h! I believe it is going to land--land on our map--right here on the sands.
“Yes; I can hear the engine buzz--now! Gracious! it looks like a big, dark fish--swimming round in a fog, with a whirligig in its mouth--the revolving38 propeller39, I suppose.”
Olive was stuttering with excitement, too--her hands clasped--staccato excitement that ticked each word off like a dot against the bare, steely possibility that the big biplane, now within a couple of hundred yards of the home-fires, might pass over and on, without descending40.
“It may be a naval41 a?roplane patrolling for submarines, in which case it will probably fly on over the water--on top of the water, maybe!”
Even Gheezies, the Guardian, as she put forth the unwelcome suggestion, was oppressed by a tickling42 in her throat, a cooing almost babyish, of held-up excitement that did not yet dare to be exultation43 over the landing of an army battle-plane by their Council Fire--so that maturity44 dropped from her like a nun’s cloak and her forty years became as the fourteen of the youngest tiptoeing maidens45 present.
“My! But, mercy! suppose it should be--should be an enemy air-plane? Hostile! Goodness!”
Sybil, pirouetting on her toes upon the sands, subsided46 to the soles of her moccasins, in momentary47 apprehension--flat fright--her lips falling apart, a cleft48 flower, as her gaze fluttered downward, like a shot bird, to the dim dunes, searching them for two other lonely camps about an eighth of a mile distant, one just vacated, the other occupied by the Guardian’s artist-brother, who, at the moment, was far out on the bay, deep-sea fishing.
Other youthful glances strayed this way and that way, too. All tales of coast invasion which the girls had heard, of air-raid and wreck--invasion which, owing to the fleet of their British cousins and to the immortal49 valor50 of their own noble army, fighting for them, they were to be spared in the Great War--loomed up in a dark fog-ring encircling them.
“Bah! Enemy! Hostile!... Gammon and spinach51!” cried Sara, flapping, fluttering like a brown leaf in a fish-tail breeze. “No such thing! It’s too far off for us to see the insignia--rings on the under side of the wings, but.... Oh, say! it is going to land; it’s doing a nose-dive now--heading straight down. Glory, d’you hear it whistle?”
“Whee-ee-oo-oo!” Blithely52, indeed, whistled the splendid air-ship, nosing towards earth, as if it knew the feminine welcome awaiting it, settling into a natural glide53, while the fine wires of the “struts” connecting the two planes cut the air with that homing sound.
“Hostile!... Piffle! Why! Why! the rudder is striped--can just make it out--red, white, and blue, the same--the same as our service-buttons.”
Ah! dear insignia. Perhaps, at that culminating moment, as the recognition bubbled forth, under all the merry dance of excitement in girlish breasts, there was a stable under-current of complaisance54 sweeping55 them upward bodily, as it were, to meet the a?rial visitor; satisfaction that, nine hours before, on the hill of discordant56 name, they had not weakened--been untrue to the claim of those ringed colors linking them now in service to the Adventurers of the skies.
“Yes, here they come! Glory hallelujah! Three cheers for the Red, White, and Blue! Oh-h!”
A moment of tense silence, of flyaway breath fluttering, winged, through parted lips--of girlish faces transfigured, luminous57 in the dusk as the head-bands about girlish brows--flashing recognition signals into the gloom! And down it came, that army bi-plane--bump, bump, bump--in the briefest of jolting58 canters along the dim, dim beach!
“Well!... Well, we didn’t make a pancake landing, anyhow! No!”
Forth leaped, on the word, from his tiny cock-pit, his deep pilot’s seat, a young, boyish aviator59, helmeted, gauntleted, leather-jacketed!
Forth he leaped, and pushed his goggles60 back--then stood for a moment, a-blink, a knight61 of the skies, fresh from his parade ground, the clouds, landing among fairy princesses, filleted and headed, upon a fairy shore, with a rainbowed Council Fire in the background and three tall candles, of the charmed colors which ringed his wings--one still alight, flickering62 a welcome--in their antique silver candlesticks of sand!
Could romance go further? The Guardian Fairy felt that it could not. She stepped forward and held out her hand.
“It was a very pretty landing, indeed,” she said.
The knight unbuttoned his leather helmet and pulled it off; his long back gauntlet, reaching to the elbow, too!
“Well! she did drag her tail a little,” he answered, glancing deprecatingly at his “ship” with its red, white, and blue rudder; the great crimson fish--fabled fish--with wings in its head and a propeller in its gaping63 mouth, which the high tide seemed to have thrown up upon the sands.
“My name is Fenn,” he volunteered, bowing over the Guardian’s hand.
“Lieutenant64 Fenn, I suppose?”
The a?ronaut bowed again, unbuttoning his leather coat, so that there was a gleam of silver bars--those army bars which Iver wore, thought Sara quickly--upon the broad shoulders beneath; of silver wings, too, wrought65 on black velvet66 upon the tired breast, heaving boyishly.
“And--and this is my observer, Lieutenant Hayward,” he introduced further, turning to the second air-man, who, also, had vacated the airy nest of his little cock-pit and stood upon the darkening tide-shore.
“Well! Mother Earth is always ready to welcome aviators--or her children are!” The Guardian shook hands with both.
“That is, when they land of their own free will,” put in the boyish pilot, his strong, white teeth flashing from a pale face as he looked breezily beyond her at nineteen maidens whose hovering67 brown draperies, fluttering fringes, embroideries68 and long braids “Mammy Moon” now touched with primitive69 charm, as if they were her favored offspring.
“I admit the correction,” the Guardian Fairy smiled. “At all events, we are glad--su-premely glad”--her voice shook a little with the thrill of the thing--“to welcome you to our Council Fire. We--we have never before entertained Angels unawares--Aviators unexpectedly!” She laughed. “We are the Morning-Glory Group of Camp Fire Girls, encamped in that bungalow70 by the seashore. I am the Guardian, Darina Dewey, spinster,” still laughingly. “It would take a long time to introduce you all round, and it’s getting too dark to see. At least, let me present you to the elder girls--to our Assistant Guardian, Miss Deering.... Olive--Lieutenant Fenn.”
Sara Davenport, introduced next, was not too thrilled to note the young air-pilot’s start of admiration71 over the first presentation--note it jealously, for Iver’s sake.
“Bah! I don’t wonder he wilts72!” she murmured to herself, half-savagely. “Olive is a dream in ceremonial dress, with those long braids, her dark eyes, and her skin like a moonlit cosmos73 flower. If--if I were an aviator, I’d want to fly away with her--ten thousand feet high! Then--then, what would Iver do? Oh, yes! Have you made a long flight?” she added aloud.
“Not very, but I had hard work flying my course.” The knight of the clouds, really not much “wilted,” was giving full twilight attention to her now, as to the other older girls to whom he was introduced. “I was heading into the wind, you see, and the very little there is, up there, was against us. We were flying low, ‘winging the midway air,’” smilingly, “when we sighted the smoke from your big fire there, and my Observer ordered me to fly over.”
“Oh, did you think--imagine--it was a spy bonfire, signaling out to sea? I don’t believe we have a single spy round here, with--with the possible exception of the long-legged sand-snipe always spying upon the fish--greedy things!” Sara excitedly caught her breath.
“Well! I wouldn’t be too sure--of anything.” The young air-scout plucked his goggles from his forehead.
“And do you mean to say you were flying over the coast--over the shore--looking out for--for suspicious things--huts in the woods, lonely signal-stations, wireless74 ... oh-h?” Arline and Betty drew breath simultaneously75, tumultuously, speaking together.
“Well, we saw nothing suspicious here,” was the evasive answer, “only suggestive....”
“Suggestive--of what?”
“Oh, that:
“‘Ground-school dinners bring the tears,
We haven’t had a feed--in--years!’”
came the answer with a long--beclouded--sigh.
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1
elasticity
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| n.弹性，伸缩力 | |
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rhythmically
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| adv.有节奏地 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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5
halcyon
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| n.平静的，愉快的 | |
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6
steadfast
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| adj.固定的，不变的，不动摇的；忠实的；坚贞不移的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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8
trove
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| n.被发现的东西，收藏的东西 | |
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9
caressing
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| 爱抚的，表现爱情的，亲切的 | |
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10
gliding
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| v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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zoom
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| n.急速上升；v.突然扩大，急速上升 | |
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13
wail
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| vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸 | |
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14
dunes
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| 沙丘( dune的名词复数 ) | |
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15
lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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16
mammoth
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| n.长毛象；adj.长毛象似的，巨大的 | |
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17
moth
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| n.蛾，蛀虫 | |
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18
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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19
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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20
rippling
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| 起涟漪的，潺潺流水般声音的 | |
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21
hue
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| n.色度；色调；样子 | |
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guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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23
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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24
symbolic
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| adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的 | |
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embedded
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| a.扎牢的 | |
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flickered
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| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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guttered
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| vt.形成沟或槽于…（gutter的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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initiation
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| n.开始 | |
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vocal
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| adj.直言不讳的；嗓音的；n.[pl.]声乐节目 | |
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30
sobbed
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| 哭泣，啜泣( sob的过去式和过去分词 )； 哭诉，呜咽地说 | |
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joyously
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| ad.快乐地, 高兴地 | |
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32
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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owl
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| n.猫头鹰，枭 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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35
fixedly
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| adv.固定地；不屈地，坚定不移地 | |
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expectancy
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| n.期望，预期，（根据概率统计求得）预期数额 | |
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doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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revolving
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| adj.旋转的，轮转式的；循环的v.（使）旋转( revolve的现在分词 )；细想 | |
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propeller
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| n.螺旋桨，推进器 | |
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descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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42
tickling
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| 反馈，回授，自旋挠痒法 | |
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exultation
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| n.狂喜，得意 | |
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maturity
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| n.成熟；完成；(支票、债券等)到期 | |
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45
maidens
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| 处女( maiden的名词复数 )； 少女； 未婚女子； （板球运动）未得分的一轮投球 | |
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46
subsided
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的过去式和过去分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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47
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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48
cleft
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| n.裂缝；adj.裂开的 | |
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49
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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50
valor
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| n.勇气，英勇 | |
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51
spinach
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| n.菠菜 | |
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52
blithely
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| adv.欢乐地，快活地，无挂虑地 | |
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53
glide
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| n./v.溜，滑行；(时间)消逝 | |
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54
complaisance
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| n.彬彬有礼，殷勤，柔顺 | |
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55
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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56
discordant
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| adj.不调和的 | |
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57
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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58
jolting
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| adj.令人震惊的 | |
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59
aviator
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| n.飞行家，飞行员 | |
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60
goggles
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| n.护目镜 | |
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61
knight
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| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
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62
flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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63
gaping
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| adj.口的；张口的；敞口的；多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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64
lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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65
wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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66
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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67
hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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68
embroideries
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| 刺绣( embroidery的名词复数 )； 刺绣品； 刺绣法 | |
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69
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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70
bungalow
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| n.平房，周围有阳台的木造小平房 | |
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71
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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72
wilts
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| （使）凋谢，枯萎( wilt的第三人称单数 ) | |
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73
cosmos
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| n.宇宙；秩序，和谐 | |
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74
wireless
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| adj.无线的；n.无线电 | |
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75
simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
参考例句： |
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