All that day, the two star-voyagers wandered over the white beach, drinking in the odoriferous breath of the coming spring and talking over their experiences of the past seventy-two hours.
And, in the evening, they sat on the sand and watched the sea darken and caught the first glint of the moon's edge as it pushed up over the horizon. They neither saw the throng of reporters who poured off the afternoon train nor suspected that they were the marked-down quarry of a pack of ravenous wolves.
In ignorance of what was in store for them, Bennie and Rhoda strolled further and further up the beach, away from the hotel. The moon came up round and full, smiling like an old and familiar friend. The breeze had died away, and the silver-edged waves lapped the soft sand gently at their feet as they threw themselves at full-length under some stray pines and gazed up through the branches at the blue arch with its thousands of twinkling lights.
"I like them so much better that way!" she murmured. "If they don't wink at you, it seems so unfriendly!"
The moon swam higher and higher, turning the beach into a white snow-drift, along which, save for that of the pines under which they lay, no shadow could be seen for miles. Toward this single possible hiding-place moved Diggs, a newspaper reporter from New York. The crunch of his steps made them sit up hurriedly.
They were motionless--two hunted creatures--scarcely breathing, in a black island surrounded by a deluge of moonlight.
But Diggs had spied them. Fifty feet away, he paused and lit a warning cigarette. Then he walked down to the water's edge, gazed pensively at the moon and remarked,
"It's no use," growled Bennie; "he's got us! Hello!" he answered.
The reporter coughed and came slowly toward the patch of shadow.
"Excuse me," he remarked briskly; "but you understand there's a whale of a story in all this, and it's up to me to get it? You can't blow up a meteor and knock the solar system topsyturvy and get away without even being interviewed, you know. Sorry--but it isn't done. What do you suppose they would do to me? And then there's Mrs. Hooker, you see! If it hadn't been for Mrs. Tassifer--"
"Oh, she gave us the romance stuff," he answered. "Look here, now: It's ten o'clock, and I've got to 'phone this to New York in time for the early edition. Do you mind my asking just a few questions?"