CHAPTER I. ONLY A MISSIONARY CHAPTER II. ON THE RED PINE TRAIL CHAPTER III. A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE CHAPTER IV. REJECTED CHAPTER V. THE WAR DRUM CALLS CHAPTER VI. THE MEN OF THE NORTH CHAPTER VII. BARRICADES AND BAYONETS CHAPTER VIII. A QUESTION OF NERVE CHAPTER IX. SUBMARINES, BULLPUPS, AND OTHER THINGS CHAPTER X. FRANCE CHAPTER XI. THE NEW MESSAGE CHAPTER XII. A MAN OF GOD CHAPTER XIII. INTENSIVE TRAINING CHAPTER XIV. A TOUCH OF WAR CHAPTER XV. THINNING RANKS CHAPTER XVI. THE PASSING OF McCUAIG CHAPTER XVII. LONDON LEAVE AND PHYLLIS CHAPTER XVIII. A WEDDING JOURNEY CHAPTER XIX. THE PILOT'S LAST PORT CHAPTER XX. “CARRY ON”
High upon a rock, poised like a bird for flight, stark naked, his satin skin shining like gold and silver in the rising sun, stood a youth, tall, slim of body, not fully developed but with muscles promising, in their faultless, gently swelling outline, strength and suppleness to an unusual degree. Gazing down into the pool formed by an eddy of the river twenty feet below him, he stood as if calculating the distance, his profile turned toward the man who had just emerged from the bushes and was standing on the sandy strand of the river, paddle in hand, looking up at him with an expression of wonder and delight in his eyes.
“Ye gods, what a picture!” said the man to himself.
Noiselessly, as if fearing to send the youth off in flight, he laid his paddle on the sand, hurriedly felt in his pockets, and swore to himself vigorously when he could find no sketch book there.
“What a pose! What an Apollo!” he muttered.
The sunlight glistening on the beautiful white skin lay like pools of gold in the curving hollows of the perfectly modelled body, and ran like silver over the rounded swellings of the limbs. Instinct with life he seemed, something in his pose suggesting that he had either alighted from the golden, ambient air, or was about to commit himself to it. The man on the sand continued to gaze as if he were beholding a creature of another world.
Slowly the youth began to move his arms up to the horizontal, then to the perpendicular, reaching to the utmost of his height upon his toe tips, breathing deep the while. Smoothly, slowly, the muscles in legs and thighs, in back, in abdomen, in chest, responding to the exercise moved under the lustrous skin as if themselves were living things. Over and over again the action was repeated, the muscles and body moving in rhythmic harmony like some perfect mechanism running in a bath of oil.