“I light the red candle of Health: strength that I draw from the ocean, buoyancy from the breeze, elasticity from the air, the sands, and ‘dash’ from the wild life about me--dashing health that makes it irksome for me to walk if I can run or dance, that sets my heart soaring along sky-ways of thankfulness, makes me strong for all work which my country asks of me: I light the red candle of Health.”

“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 rhythmically to the shore, governed by some force which men call Solar Attraction, so may I be drawn 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,
Vitality, love, and truth,
Bright be my hold on you,
In these halcyon days of youth!
“Staunch as the ocean’s tide,
Nor man, nor might may turn,
Steady as beacon-light,
In its patient, steadfast burn!
“True as the fixed star’s beam.
The Creature Far Above,
Unerring as wild bird’s dive
For hidden treasure trove!
“True as the ...”

But the chanting voices--enriched by Flamina’s caressing note--faltered. What “Creature Far Above” was gliding forth 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!... Zoom, 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 wail 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 dunes of antique silver--over the dark-tressed crown of a lesser hill, to gaze at the winged wonder--one moment burning up in the last dying flame of day, the next a mammoth gray moth circling and circling in the vast crimson-hung halls of twilight, 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 rippling edge--the fairy, rainbowed blaze, fed by bone-dry driftwood, copper-marked wreck-wood, flinging aloft every hue in the spectrum--before which nineteen Camp Fire Girls and their Guardian had entered upon the candle-lighting ceremony arranged by Olive Deering, Torch-Bearer, the Maid who had “carried on” that morning upon the humble field of that depressing hill.

Now the candles, red, white, and blue, symbolic torches, embedded in their silver candlesticks of sand, flickered, guttered, 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 initiation of Nébis, little Flamina, now fondling the air with vocal thrills that sobbed joyously, like the softer strings 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 Owl 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 bent fixedly backward--the face, white as a moon-flower, shining upward in ultimate expectancy, such as never had been before, never could, felt she, be again, though she live till crack of doom!

“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 revolving propeller, 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 descending.

“It may be a naval 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 tickling in her throat, a cooing almost babyish, of held-up excitement that did not yet dare to be exultation over the landing of an army battle-plane by their Council Fire--so that maturity dropped from her like a nun’s cloak and her forty years became as the fourteen of the youngest tiptoeing maidens present.

“My! But, mercy! suppose it should be--should be an enemy air-plane? Hostile! Goodness!”

Sybil, pirouetting on her toes upon the sands, subsided to the soles of her moccasins, in momentary apprehension--flat fright--her lips falling apart, a cleft 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 fis............