The sulphur-colored winged Paul Pry stuck an impertinent head out
from behind a palm leaf.
"Qu'est-ce qu'elle dit? Qu'est-ce qu'elle dit?"
For the second and last time in his adult life the beetle man
threw a stone at a bird.
Four hours later six powerful black oarsmen rowed a boat
containing two passengers and practically no luggage out across
the huge lazy swells of the Caribbean toward a smudge of black
smoke.
"Look!" cried that one of the passengers who wore huge goggles.
"There goes the flag!"
A square of yellow bunting slid slowly up the pierhead staff of
the dock corporation, and spread in the light shore breeze.
"That's the modern flaming sword," he continued. "The color stirs
something inside me. Ugly, isn't it?"
"It is ugly," she confessed thoughtfully. "Yet it's the flag we
fight under, too, isn't it? And we'd fight for it if we had to,
just as we fought for the other--our own."
"I love your 'we,'" he laughed happily.
She nestled closer to him.
"Are you still hating the Caribbean?"
"I? I'm loving it the second-best thing in the world."
"But I loved it first," she reminded him jealously.
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