A maiden3 knelt upon the white sands out at the wild heart of the sand-dunes4, here purple with the shading blossoms of pea-vines, lace-trimmed with everlastings5, or raggedly6 plumed7 with rank beach-grass and prickly barb-weed.
Near the great pyramid of clam-shells, where the Indians had held an historic feast and got their fire with primitive8 rubbing of sticks, she knelt upon her right knee, her left foot pressed down hard upon the flat fire-board whose scooped9 pit, or hollow, had a notch10 resting upon a wooden tray placed beneath it.
Her left hand--its arm escaping from the white middy-blouse, bared to the shoulder to allow free scope--grasped the handle or socket11 of her upright drill.
The right pink arm, each muscle strenuously12 “on the job” under the rounded flesh, worked steadily13 to and fro the fire-maker’s bow, hand-painted with flame, drawn14 taut15 by its leather thong16, resting upon the socket at the top of the drill, thus grinding the lower point of that drill into the soft, punky wood of the fire-board, which presently, as the powdered wood-dust fell into the tray beneath, turned black--smoked.
Her hand-painted bag of tinder lay on the sands beside her--that inflammable tinder to foster the spark when it came!
Steadily she drove the bow at first! Anxiously, now, with a horrid17 little fear beginning to get a hand-hold on her heart, that, after all, the ordeal18 by fire might not work out as she had expected--the vindication come off--and prove her triumphant19 mistress of this situation, at least, a perfect fire-witch, even if she had behaved like a simpleton in the shipyard!
Faster, faster--with more and more force--desperately20, at last, slipped backward and forward the bow! Harder--harder--ground the drill; the fire-witch, her drooping21 face aflame, her pretty eyelashes twinkling in a paroxysm, working for dear life now--for vindication--honor--as it seemed to her whose moods were generally highly colored, touched with the extravagance of flame.
Smoke and more smoke in little dun-gray billows! And never a spark of red!
“Rest a while, dear,” said the Guardian22. “Then try again--and perhaps you’ll get it.”
She did rest, Sesooā, the fire-witch, in the shadow of the historic shell-heap over which the last flame of sunset most tantalizingly23 rioted. She curled down upon her left side on the sands, easing her aching right arm.
Then a second fierce trial! A breathing spell! And another wild paroxysm of effort, the decorated bow almost demented now!
Flat failure!
Smoke--and no fire!
She looked up--and caught a smile upon the face of Atlas24!
Atlas who had rowed down the river when his day’s work in the shipyard was over, to meet his hostesses, the Camp Fire Group, midway of the dunes for this picnic-supper--and to excitedly discuss the fact that the new ship’s hull25 which they had so lately seen launched, had been fired upon by a submarine on her towed trip round to Gloucester--would have been sunk had not a Destroyer appeared!
Atlas whose halo the dune-breezes bared--the prismatic bump upon his temple, fast diminishing! Atlas who had laid himself out to make friends with the little fire-witch, deciding that she would make a perfect “pal,” the sort of girl he had always desired for a chum, with plenty of pep in her--if only she wasn’t such a little fire-balloon!
Atlas who had been met with flame turned to ice--or next door to it--with as much frigidity26 as politeness would allow, tempered by a perfunctory little speech of thanks, rehearsed a dozen times beforehand and eked27 out by the Guardian, for his heroic presence of mind in that swift leap which prevented the extinguishing in herself of the vital spark by a heavy ship’s rib28!
And now it was Atlas’ turn! His smile at her failure was fleeting29, involuntary--gone in a moment. But for that one moment it was a smile; a perfectly30 uncivilized--highly barbaric--grin.
Down went Sesooā’s hand-painted bow beside her tinder-bag!
Neck aflame, so that it could scarcely be distinguished31 from the red tie of her Minute-Girl Costume, cheeks burning, if the wood-dust wouldn’t, eyes, eyelashes, red-gold hair, all, emitting sparks, a fire-ball herself, she uncurled--sprang to her feet!
Her hand went to her throat. Breathlessly, desperately, she was fighting to get the better of the stray powder-puff of anger--as Iver had done--before it exploded openly.
One glance she flung at Atlas--and he was consumed!
“Let me--let me go!... Oh! we haven’t--haven’t--got wood enough for a fi-ire. You’d better light it with matches. I’ll go--let me--and get some more--driftwood, wreck-wood--to make a rainbow fire! Back--back near--the--bungalow....”
In explosive incoherency her eyes met the Guardian’s. And Gheezies never failed to read a girl’s soul.
“All right!” she said. “If one of the other girls goes with you! It would be nice to have such a wonderful fire, giving off every hue32 in the rainbow, out here in the middle of the dunes--as we had the night we entertained aviators--and sit around it after our cooking is through. But it’s coming on dark! Don’t be long! Take--Betty!”
Betty had to take herself--little evergreen33 Holly34! The Flame had already flown--a tearing, scintillating35 flame, as it raced over sand-mound and graying sand-hill.
“I’ve just got to be alone! If not--I’d explode! Oh, he’s simply--simply hateful, that Atlas boy--if he did save my life!... Oh-h! I knew how important he felt--as if the shipyard sun shone on him alone when he was crouching36 with his back under that horrid ship’s rib. Ridiculous, when he wasn’t really supporting it at all!... And--and to think I should have failed--failed, before him, to get the fire, when I have broken the record before, for a girl, and got the spark in thirty seconds; that--that I should have--again--made a fool of myself!”
“Oh! Sally--Sara--have mercy! Don’t run--quite--so hard: I can’t keep up with you!” It was Betty’s panting cry, tugging37 at the steps of the racing38 Flame.
It had never been such a reckless flyaway--that Flame--that it had not a heart for a Camp Fire Sister.
Within a few hundred yards of the bungalow-beach, quarter of a mile from the group, back there, upon the dunes--amid the skirts of twilight39, light and filmy yet, which the dune-breeze was shaking out--Sara Davenport, out of breath herself, paused and caught Betty by the hand.
“If--if we can just get over that big sand-hill in front of us, and the low mounds40 beyond, we’ll reach the spot where we saw all that wreck-wood, such a lot of it, when bathing to-day, Bettykins!” she breathed. “It--’twill save my being a wreck--myself! Oh! why couldn’t I get the spark to-night--of all nights? And--and to be grinned at by that Atlas boy! If--if that wouldn’t make a dogfish drop his herring, as Captain Andy would say!... If I can only look out over the bay--over the sea--in--in the direction of where Iver is--over there--I’ll feel better!”
“I know-ow!” soothed41 Betty. “It was too bad you couldn’t get it!”
She drew on her last pinch of pep, of breath--the Holly--as they raced on, over the tall, white sand-peak, shadowy in the gloaming, tripping over wild pea-vines, empurpling, faintly now, the lower dunes.
The scampering42 sea-breeze racing from their own beach, where cranberries43 slept with their coral cheeks on dimming pillows, clasped them like a brother.
“We’ll just have time to gather a few chunks44 of the coppery wreck-wood. Then--then we’ll have to hurry back,” said Betty. “I really didn’t think it was so far to this spot, and I guess the Guardian didn’t either! You swept her----”
“Hush! Listen! The chug, chug, of a launch--motor-boat--passing quite close in to shore, too! Tide’s high!” Sara halted on tiptoe now, a poised45, breathless figure, and held up her hand.
“I’m afraid!” whispered Betty. “I wish we hadn’t come!”
“Nonsense! Nobody runs close in to shore--close to our beach--except Captain Andy--funny if ’twas him!--the artist’s brother, or--or, now an’ again, that seal-hunter, who passed when I was camouflaging46 the dory--toothless bead-eye”--with a recovering chuckle--“whose face, the hunter’s I mean, I can’t.... Goodness! I rather hope it isn’t--him!”
“If we crouched47 down behind those two low sand-mounds in front, we could peep over--between them--and see who it was without being seen,” pleaded Betty timorously48.
“Right you are--little Chicken-heart,” came the older girl’s response.
“I feel as if I were in the trenches49 now, looking over the top.” Betty gathered a handful of purple pea-blossoms from the sand-rampart before her.
“Standing50 on the firing-step, peering out over the sand-bags, as the soldiers do! But there’s nothing to fire at here! Pretty sure to be a friend, whoever it is!... My s-soul! I do believe it is the--mysterious--seal-hunter!”
“He’s--alone!” whispered Betty.
“Yes--for the first time, except when he passed us on the beach!”
Chug, chug! hiss51, hiss! the motor-boat, a trim little launch, was abreast52 of them now, passing within twenty-five yards, so close to shore that its occupant seemed to have made a bet with the crowing high tide that he could thus skirt the beach without grounding.
He was standing up, amidships, his left hand on the pilot-wheel, narrowly scrutinizing53 the shore.
Either he saw or did not see two pairs of eyes peering at him, ferret-like, through clumps54 of beach-grass. With a complacent55 gesture, satisfied on some score, the fingers of his right hand went up to the comer of his mouth, describing a crescent, a twirling motion, as they thoughtfully fondled the tip of a small, bristling56 mustache.
It was with a low moan--a strange searching moan--that Sara Davenport fell back, and lifted a long-drawn face to the sky--all madcap flame, petty flame, wilted57 in her now.
“Bet-ty!” She clutched the other girl’s arm, and pinched it so tight that the Holly, little thorny58 evergreen, quivered like her namesake of the dunes in a wintry blizzard59.
“I do believe it is the--mysterious--seal-hunter.”
“Bet-ty! I have seen him before--seen him do that--with his fingers! But where--where? I must remember! I feel--now--that I ought to remember! Oh! God, help me to--remember!” Sara Davenport bowed her paling girlish face against a purple cushion of wild pea, raised it again in half a moment, and crept cautiously around the screening mounds.
“He’ll bear watching!... I’m going to watch him,” she gasped60. “I’m going to see what he’s up to! Oh!” winking61 fiery62 tears back, “oh! if I could--only--get the spark now--the spark from my memory, instead of just smoke--I wouldn’t care if I never--never--got it, the fire, from wood again, in all my born life!”
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
alas
|
|
| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
vindication
|
|
| n.洗冤，证实 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
maiden
|
|
| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
dunes
|
|
| 沙丘( dune的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
everlastings
|
|
| 永久，无穷（everlasting的复数形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
6
raggedly
|
|
| 破烂地，粗糙地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
plumed
|
|
| 饰有羽毛的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
primitive
|
|
| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
scooped
|
|
| v.抢先报道( scoop的过去式和过去分词 )；（敏捷地）抱起；抢先获得；用铲[勺]等挖（洞等） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
notch
|
|
| n.(V字形)槽口，缺口，等级 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
socket
|
|
| n.窝，穴，孔，插座，插口 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
strenuously
|
|
| adv.奋发地，费力地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
steadily
|
|
| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
drawn
|
|
| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
taut
|
|
| adj.拉紧的，绷紧的，紧张的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
thong
|
|
| n.皮带；皮鞭；v.装皮带 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
horrid
|
|
| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
ordeal
|
|
| n.苦难经历，（尤指对品格、耐力的）严峻考验 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
triumphant
|
|
| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
desperately
|
|
| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
drooping
|
|
| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
guardian
|
|
| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
tantalizingly
|
|
| adv.…得令人着急，…到令人着急的程度 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
atlas
|
|
| n.地图册，图表集 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
hull
|
|
| n.船身；(果、实等的)外壳；vt.去(谷物等)壳 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
frigidity
|
|
| n.寒冷；冷淡；索然无味；（尤指妇女的）性感缺失 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
eked
|
|
| v.（靠节省用量）使…的供应持久( eke的过去式和过去分词 )；节约使用；竭力维持生计；勉强度日 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
rib
|
|
| n.肋骨，肋状物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
fleeting
|
|
| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
perfectly
|
|
| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
distinguished
|
|
| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
hue
|
|
| n.色度；色调；样子 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
evergreen
|
|
| n.常青树；adj.四季常青的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
holly
|
|
| n.[植]冬青属灌木 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
scintillating
|
|
| adj．才气横溢的,闪闪发光的; 闪烁的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
crouching
|
|
| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
tugging
|
|
| n.牵引感v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
racing
|
|
| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
twilight
|
|
| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
mounds
|
|
| 土堆，土丘( mound的名词复数 )； 一大堆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
soothed
|
|
| v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
scampering
|
|
| v.蹦蹦跳跳地跑，惊惶奔跑( scamper的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
cranberries
|
|
| n.越橘( cranberry的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
chunks
|
|
| 厚厚的一块( chunk的名词复数 )； （某物）相当大的数量或部分 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
poised
|
|
| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
camouflaging
|
|
| v.隐蔽( camouflage的现在分词 )；掩盖；伪装，掩饰 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
crouched
|
|
| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
timorously
|
|
| adv.胆怯地，羞怯地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
trenches
|
|
| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
standing
|
|
| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
hiss
|
|
| v.发出嘶嘶声；发嘘声表示不满 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
abreast
|
|
| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
scrutinizing
|
|
| v.仔细检查，详审( scrutinize的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
clumps
|
|
| n.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的名词复数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的第三人称单数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
complacent
|
|
| adj.自满的；自鸣得意的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
bristling
|
|
| a.竖立的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
wilted
|
|
| （使）凋谢，枯萎( wilt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
thorny
|
|
| adj.多刺的，棘手的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
blizzard
|
|
| n.暴风雪 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
gasped
|
|
| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
61
winking
|
|
| n.瞬眼，目语v.使眼色( wink的现在分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
62
fiery
|
|
| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |