Their evenings were lively with the most brilliant kind of man-talk.  To it, Frank Merrill brought his encyclopedic book knowledge, his insatiable curiosity about life; Ralph Addington all the garnered richness of his acute observation; Billy Fairfax his acquaintance with the elect of the society or of the art world, his quiet, deferential attitude of listener.  But the events of these conversational orgies were Honey Smith’s adventures and Pete Murphy’s romances.  Honey’s narrative was crisp, clear, quick, straight from the shoulder, colloquial, slangy.  He dealt often in the first person and the present tense.  He told a plain tale from its simple beginning to its simple end.  But Pete — .  His language had all Honey’s simplicity lined terseness and, in addition, he had the literary touch, both the dramatist’s instinct and the fictionist’s insight.  His stories always ran up to a psychological climax; but this was always disguised by the best narratory tricks.  He was one of those men of whom people always say, “if he could only write as he talks.”  In point of fact, he wrote much better than he talked — but he talked better than any one else.  The unanalytic never allowed in him for the spell of the spoken word, nor for the fiery quality of his spirit.

As time went on, their talks grew more and ore confidential.  Women’s faces began to gleam here and there in narrative.  They began to indulge in long discussions of the despised sex; at times they ran into fierce controversy.  Occasionally Honey Smith re-told a story which, from the introduction of a shadowy girl-figure, became mysteriously more interesting and compelling.  Once or twice they nearly went over the border-line of legitimate confidence, so intimate had their talk become - muffled as it was by the velvety, star-sown dark and interrupted only by the unheeded thunders of the surf.  They were always pulling themselves up to debate openly whether they should go farther, always, on consideration, turning narrative into a channel much less confidential and much less, interesting, or as openly plugging straight ahead, carefully disguising names and places.

After a week or two, the first fine careless rapture of their escape from death disappeared.  The lure of loot evaporated.  They did not stop their work on “the ship-duffle,” but it became aimless and undirected.  Their trips into the island seemed a little purposeless.  Frank Merrill had to scourge them to patrol the beach, to keep their signal sheets flying, their signal fires burning.  The effect upon their mental condition of this loss of animus was immediate.  They became perceptibly more serious.  Their first camp — it consisted only of five haphazard piles of bedding — satisfied superficially the shiftless habits of their womanless group; subconsciously, however, they all fell under the depression of its discomfort and disorder.  They bathed in the ocean regularly but they did not shave.  Their clothes grew ragged and torn, and although there were scores of trunks packed with wearing apparel, they did not bother to change them.  Subconsciously they all responded to these irregularities by a sudden change in spirit.