It grew brighter.

“It’s time we started to build a camp, boys,” Frank Merrill said, withdrawing momentarily from deep reflection.  “We’ll go crazy doing nothing all the time.  We’ll — .”

“Great God,” Honey interrupted.  “Look!”

Far out to sea and high in the air, birds were flying.  There were five of them and they were enormous.  They flew with amazing strength, swiftness, and grace; but for the most part they about a fixed area like bees at a honey-pot.  It was a limited area, but within it they dipped, dropped, curved, wove in and out.

“Well, I’ll be — .”

“They’re those black spots we saw the first day, Pete,” Billy Fairfax said breathlessly.  “We thought it was the sun.”

“That’s what I heard in the night,” Frank Merrill gasped to Ralph Addington.

“But what are they?” asked Honey Smith in a voice that had a falsetto note of wonder.  “They laugh like a woman — take it from me.”

“Eagles — buzzards — vultures — condors — rocs — phoenixes,” Pete Murphy recited his list in an or of imaginative conjecture.

“They’re some lost species — something left over from a prehistoric era,” Frank Merrill explained, shaking with excitement.  “No vulture or eagle or condor could be as big as that at this distance.  At least I think so.”  He paused here, as one studying the problem in the scientific spirit.  “Often in the Rockies I’ve confused a nearby chicken-hawk, at first, with a far eagle.  But the human eye has its own system of triangulation.  Those are not little birds nearby, but big birds far off.  See how heavily they soar.  Do you realize what’s happened?  We’ve made a discovery that will shake the whole scientific world.  There, there, they’re going!”

“My God, look at them beat it!” said Honey; and there was awe in his voice.

“Why, they’re monster size,” Frank Merrill went on, and his voice had grown almost hysterical.  “They could carry one of us off.  We’re not safe.  We must take measures at once to protect ourselves.  Why, at night - We must make traps.  If we can capture one, or, better, a pair, we’re famous.  We’re a part of history now.”

They watched the strange birds disappear over the water.  For more than an hour, the men sat still, waiting for them to return.  They did not come back, however.  The men hung about camp all day long, talking of nothing else.  Night came at last, but sleep was not in them.  The dark seemed to give a fresh impulse to conversation.  Conjecture battled with theory and fact jousted with fancy.  But one conclusion was as futile as another.

Frank Merrill tried to make them devise some system of defense or concealment, but the others laughed at him.  Talk as he would, he could not seem to convince them of their danger.  Indeed, their state of mind was entirely different from his.  Mentally he seemed to boil with interest and curiosity, but it was the sane, calm, open-minded excitement of the scientist.  The others were alert and preoccupied in turn, but there was an element of reserve in their attitude.  Their eyes kept going off into space, fixing there until their look became one brooding question.  They avoided conversation.  They avoided each other’s gaze.