Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/261

249 ture, the quintessence of all the riot of colour, they saw what seemed to be a little heart of many hued fires, palpitating above the blossoms—a humming bird of rare species and rarer loveliness.

It was all a beautiful fantasy, the girl thought, more be witching even than the one she had seen that Christmas when Captain Harve had taken her to the theatre in Boston.

"Oh—it is so lovely!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands in ecstasy. "It almost seems as if Peter Pan must appear any minute out of that wood there."

They journeyed on and entered a forest with limbs and trunks tangled in an intricate maze of liana vines, like a great ship's ropes—then a space where the trees had thinned a little, and the pattern overhead was broken with little rents of blue, the lighter—bits of the sky above, the dark—bits of the sea below.

Then at last they reached the cool silences of Cathedral Woods, and under the great arches ate their lunch of dried beef, and crackers, and cheese, while birds, coloured like those little patches, flashed from branch to branch.

"Azur de la Vergin," exclaimed the gypsy-sailor.

"And what does that mean?" questioned Sally.

"The blue of the Virgin. They are Her carrier pigeons. If you hear and have the faith, some day they bring a message to you, when you are in trouble. They are blue like thoughts of love, not like that one up there, he is one big bad thought. He picks the bones of the dead."

Their eyes followed his pointing finger, long, brown as tobacco, and marked with the two warts he was forever