the ocean. She fell fluttering, with wings spread to the air currents and catching them like a dropping leaf. Down, down she went but not in the awful plunge of an airplane zooming with motor full on nor in the plummet drop of a plane with smashed wings. With her wings intact, and catching at the air, she went into the sea.
I found her under the wreck of her wings, floating with her face out of the water; and I felt, as my hands lifted her, a stir of life.
Her eyes did not open but as I worked at her to free her, she spoke to me. "Don't," she said. "Don't . . . take me out." Then she said, "You saw it? You see what I see?"
"The specks on the sea," I said.
"'The specks on the sea!'" And she spoke no other word during all the time I worked to free her, except once, "father". And she gave me no help at all; she did not want to be freed. But I had her out; I took her up in my arms and bore her to my pontoon. I stood holding her, dripping and cold and small. Her head drooped limp but she breathed; and her body was not broken.
