THE CHASE BEGINS
I slept like a log and was awake, anxious to turn out, at the peep of
dawn. But Gates was ahead of me when I reached the deck. Our anchor had
just been hoisted, and every sail was set, though nearly limp with a
negligible breeze.
"What news?" I asked.
"Nothing, sir; leastwise nothing of the _Orchid_. She's gone."
"We expected that. Any idea which way?"
"I talked to a sponge fisher who came by a while back, sir, and he said
a schooner yacht sailed about midnight, or maybe later; north, he said.
But she carn't have got far, as there hasn't been hardly any air
stirring all night till this little one now. If it wasn't so heavy off
there we might see her, I farncy. The mate's aloft, sir."
I looked up and saw him steadily sweeping the distance with his
binoculars; but, as Gates had said, the horizon in all directions was
heavy, and in such weather our search, indeed, seemed next to useless.
With the world a playground, how could we find this vagrant yacht.
Then I let my eyes rest on the tinted east, marvelling at what a
curiously beautiful, dangerously sweet old world this is. The sky and
water were beginning to be touched by the first faint tones of rose, the
dawn was bringing its enchantment to this marriage-time of the black
and white. Over in the Key West barracks a bugler would soon be blowing
reveille; down in the sleeping town stumpy little street cars would
squeak from their sheds and clang their discordant gongs through the
narrow thoroughfares. But farther yet to the northeast, in the Florida I
best knew and loved, a whooping crane would startle the solitude with
its uncanny cry, the alligators would croak their guttural grunts at
waking time, while, here and there in the shadowy forest, the whine of a
skulking panther would strike terror to the hearts of gentler things.
Ah, the trackless wilderness of dreamy Florida, where nature moves on
padded foot and silent wing!
Gates had hoisted even the topmast- and maintopmast-staysails, but these
did not help much; and when Tommy and Monsieur appeared half an hour
later they were in wretched humors at the way matters stood. The only
slight hope we nursed had been one cry of "Sail-ho!" from the mate, but
he could not tell what kind of a craft had rested on his lens, because
she was almost at once swallowed by the distant bank of mist. At last,
with a squint into the southwest, Gates prophesied that something worth
while would be coming before long, and with this crumb of comfort,
seasoned by his promise to call if anything appeared, we half-heartedly
went down to breakfast.
Healthy man is ever cheered by breakfast, especially if Pete has
prepared it, and gradually our departed spirits came lumbering back. I
remembered Tommy's promise of the night before to mutilate my
countenance on certain conditions, and began to laugh. Then he laughed,
doubtless because I had, and pretty soon Monsieur showed signs of
warming up.
"This is what my boy Tommy would call hot-stuffie, eh?" he cried. "To
be chasing a scoundrel who has kidnaped a Princess is fun, you think
so?"
"And such a princess," Tommy rapturously exclaimed. "Eyes more deep than
the mysteries of twilight shadows in a woodland pool!--oval cheeks more
damask than the rose which steals its fragrance from her hair!--lips
whose Cupid's bow----"
"Here," I good-naturedly protested. "Don't make her so wonderful! You
won't have an adjective left for the beautiful Bluegrass flower!"
"But isn't she wonderful?--I challenge you, isn't she perfect?"
"That is a perilous assertion," Monsieur chuckled, "since there is a
Persian proverb that 'to be perfect is to be damned.'"
"Well, she'd rather be damned than ugly, if I know anything about
girls--and I do!" Tommy declared. "Isn't that right, gezabo?"
"Isn't what right? That you know so much about girls? Bah! It is a young
rooster's foolish talk! Woman, my boy, is as the law of
gravity--difficult to understand, and I may add difficult to disobey.
But to comprehend her she must first be stripped----"
"Why, you wicked old thing," Tommy, in mock astonishment, gasped at him.
"You do not let me finish," he blushingly protested. "What I mean is
stripped of her inexplicable----"
"Oh, come off," his tormentor burst out laughing. "That's as transparent
as a girl buying cigarettes for her brother! I didn't know you were so
curious."
"Please--you shame me! I am curious of nothing, and you will someday
learn that curiosity is the root of tragedy."
"There's an epigram worthy of you: 'Curiosity is the root of
tragedy'--and the blossom of delight!"
"I said nothing of delight," the professor blushed. "I said tragedy!
And--ah, I see! You are cut-upping! I will not talk. Your conscience
should hurt you!"
"Not conscience, old fellow! The wages of conscience is _ennui_, and the
gods know how I hate that. Give me your epigrams on delight and love,
and the Princess of Azuria!"
"Love! Bah!" Monsieur now stormed in disgust. "A mythical invention of
diseased minds to explain away our follies!"
"Wait till she hears that," Tommy warned, "and your head's as good as in
the sawdust. I hope to heaven she makes me her lord high executioner,
and darned if I don't lop it off with a single whack!"
"And I hope you have a chance to tell her, so smart!"
"I'll have a chance, all right, never you fear. I'm the only one who
will, for after you're disposed of, and Jack has gone moony, this
expedition will need a clear thinker. There's where your uncle Tom comes
in."
"He understands himself so well," the professor indulgently smiled.
"It requires no concentration, really," I murmured.
"Ah, Mr. Brutus," Tommy grinned at me over a fork-load of buckwheat
cakes, "can it be your cooling blade I feel?"
"It is; and you'll get it in the neck, good and properly, if you don't
leave me out of your silly nonsense," I warned.
"Here's a touchy one for you, gezabo! Yachting with royalty the other
night made him too good for us."
"You close up," I growled.
After a few minutes devoted to breakfast, he asked:
"Are princesses like other people, I wonder? Jack ought to be put wise,
so he'll know how to behave when we get her aboard."
"Why, yes, my boy Tommy," Monsieur answered, taking him seriously, of
course. "They are the same as other young ladies, except more highly
cultured, more of education, more of that--what you call--indefinable
chasteness."
"Indefinable chasteness," he puckered his lips and repeated the phrase
in a ruminating way. "D'you know, a philosopher once told me that if
ever I heard an old lady call a girl anything like that, to put the
young one down for a kissable, artful little flirt; for in this present
day of ours, he said, woman understands everything on God's green
earth--except the mind of her succeeding generation."
"But I am no old lady," the professor bristled.
"Sail-ho!" came the far off voice of the mate from his perch aloft.
We held our breaths, intently listening.
"Where away?" Gates called, and I could picture him: legs apart, head
thrown back, hands cupped around his lips.
"Dead ahead, sir," came the answer: "I got a better look at her this
time, and she's a schooner yacht like us!"
We bounded from the table and dashed up the companionway stairs out into
the cockpit. The old skipper was laughing gleefully, and our spirits
were as high as the masthead.
"We're on the right track, Mr. Jack," he cried. "Just wait till arfter a
breeze springs up--she won't stay so far ahead!"
But the breeze did not pick up and we continued to poke along at about
six knots, hardly consoled by the knowledge that she was doing no
better. Time seemed to be creeping on its hands and knees. The _Orchid_,
if such were the yacht ahead of us, continued beyond the fringe of mist,
now mixed with a fine drizzle, showing herself at rare intervals which
served to keep us from going astray.
The slickers of the crew were dripping and shiny, and we, too, soon
looked like a flock of wet, disgruntled hens. To add to my discomfiture
the professor brought up a newspaper and began consulting the shipping
news, blandly telling us that if we captured the princess within
forty-eight hours he could have her in Azuria in twenty days. I was glad
when the paper got so wet that he had to throw it overboard.
At luncheon we could not help being downcast, largely owing to the
drizzle which, aboard a yacht, is indeed a spirit breaker. The few
sporadic attempts we made at cheer did not get very far. But after a
little, happening to glance at Tommy, I saw a look in his face that put
me on my guard for something. There was no hoax about this, no
"cut-upping."
"Our conversation was interrupted this morning," he said, in answer to
my unspoken question. "There were things I wanted to talk about--for
instance, what'll we do when we catch up?"
I had thought of this a hundred times without finding a very definite
solution, as my fancies refused to reach beyond the moment I should
stand face to face with Sylvia. But, after a fashion, I made answer:
"We'll hand the scoundrel over to the law, I suppose, and take the
Princess----"
"That's just it," he interrupted me. "Take her where? That's the point
I want to make." His voice was almost purring now--a sign with him of
deadly earnestness. He was continuing: "Suppose she has a perfectly good
home where she is! Suppose she doesn't see the virtues in our
interference that we see! How do we know the man's a scoundrel, anyway?"
"Bah!" Monsieur cried. "She wrote a message of danger! The man tried to
blow us up! He made bad money that I have here!"--whereupon he thumped
his breastpocket half a dozen times. "How do we know? _Pardieu_, I tell
you!"
"She wrote the message," Tommy admitted, "but everything else you say is
guess. Even suppose you're right about it, where are our warrants? Where
are the sworn officers to serve them?"
"I have told you that I have the authority, the absolute authority!"
"Oh, that doesn't amount to a damn," Tommy replied with supreme
indifference, and for a moment I feared Monsieur was going to have a
stroke of apoplexy. "Don't you see that we must possess proofs? And then
we've got to board his yacht, don't we? Is he going to take a siesta
while we stroll over the old tub? Your authority, gezabo, is a scrap of
paper unless, first, he's the man who kidnapped your princess, and
second, we can lay our hands on him. Now try to think!"
"Think! There is nothing to think--only to do! You speak as a child! We
must take that girl to her throne, to her rightful heritage! By every
law of conscience, justice and humanity, there is nothing left for us to
do! Absolutely we must obey!"
A silence fell upon Tommy and me. I saw him moisten his lips and dart
the professor a quick glance. I knew how inherently strong that little
fellow was in his loyalty, but had not been prepared for such an appeal
as this. Conscience, humanity, justice! He was calling on my manhood to
send her back to Azuria, out of my arms, out of my life. And she would
go; I felt it, I knew it. I realized now that Tommy, in preambling up to
this point, intended to settle it once and for all. And I realized how
much farther his clear vision had penetrated the situation than my own
poor addled mind.
Leaning forward, he said in the same soft voice--though Monsieur did not
recognize the deadly purpose behind it:
"Professor, if you seriously want to see Azuria again I think we'd
better arrange this thing, somehow. You came here to look for a
princess; Jack came--pardon me, Jack, but it's unavoidable--for a
sweetheart. Every man to his trade, you know!"
"Yes, and if I find Her Serene Highness I shall most certainly restore
her to----"
"You'll most certainly do nothing of the kind," Tommy interrupted him.
"You see, old fellow, we couldn't trust her to you--it wouldn't be fair.
The fact is, you've been acting mighty queerly of late, saying all kinds
of strange things!"
A puzzled look came into the professor's eyes as he glanced at me and
then back at Tommy, who now leaned confidentially nearer.
"Do you realize," he soothingly continued, "that you thought someone was
trying to blow up our yacht?"
"Trying to blow it up? Did I not have the bomb in my hands?"
"He still believes it, Jack," Tommy sighed. "There's nothing to be done,
I reckon, but take him back to Key West. They've a pretty fair hospital
there."
Monsieur's face turned so livid and looked so weird in its frame of
straw-colored hair that I began to think all the hospitals on earth
could not save him. Sputtering, he appealed to me:
"The truth, my boy Jack--he is cut-upping?"
But Tommy was saying:
"We're awfully sorry, you dear old manatou; we'll miss you, take my word
for it."
"You boys dare do this," he sprang to his feet, too angry for further
protest.
"Sit down, sir," Tommy spoke now in a different tone. "Of course, I
don't believe it, nor does Jack; but others will if we take you to the
Key West hospital tied up in ropes and say you've got that blowing-up
bug in your bonnet. Get the point?"
"I get no points," he furiously pounded the table.
"Well, here it is, and its name is Compromise! Either compromise, or the
wow-wow house. We won't force the issue; you must decide nicely, without
being pressed one way or the other. But these are the facts: you're
sailing on an American yacht; Jack's the owner, Gates is captain, I'm
the boss. We're hoping to overhaul the _Orchid_, board her, capture the
princess, and all that. Then for one entire week Jack's to have an
uninterrupted tete-a-tete while you make yourself invisible. Come along
if you want to and turn the old rascal over to your consul when we get
home, plead with the princess after Jack's week is up, recover a hundred
good bucks for your bad ones--but he has to have his chance first, and
we sign articles of agreement _right now_!"
"Children," he cried, with a great show of disgust. "Should you return
to Key West, how would you ever find the _Orchid_ again! Ah-ha, you have
tripped yourselves!"
"Not on your life, we haven't. We'll keep on now and locate her hiding
place, then deliver you to a guardian, and come back."
The professor thought a moment, breathing fast and blinking.
"What are those bucks you spoke about?" he asked.
"Bucks? Hell, man, they're beans, bones--the things you won at
roulette!"
"I won no such things at roulette," he gravely shook his head, adding
slowly: "So I must agree, eh? _Tres-bien!_ Yet I warn you that she will
go back with me in spite of all my boy Jack can say in a week, or a
year. It is inevitable--she can not possibly disobey! Come! You win for
the moment, so we will drink, standing together for Azuria!"
"Standing for your grandmother," Tommy laughed. "No, you jolly old
filbert, we stand for Jack and Sylvia, and don't you forget it! We'll
use your vaunted authority, too, when the time comes to make that
scoundrel surrender. Now let's get our arsenal in shape!"
Monsieur approved of this, entering into it with a boyish spirit, and
for a long time we went over rifles and automatics, showing him their
virtues, explaining the accuracy of their range, occasionally throwing
one up to the shoulder and taking a quick aim over the sights, as
fellows will who find them good companions.
"I'll lay you odds, Professor, that the barrels of some of this hardware
get hot before night," Tommy said.
"Ah, I will not bet on such bloody business. You think we fight today?"
"Two to one on it," he answered; then giving my shoulder a slap that
felt like the kick of a mule, he cried:
"So romance and adventure died with the war, did they? Oh, _baby_, what
a shame!"