"Good night," I said, arising in the punt and putting out my hand.

"Good night," she murmured wearily; but her fingers were cold and did not answer the pressure of my own. I had touched Efaw Kotee's hand only a few hours before, and it had been cold with the same inert, mysterious coldness. I shivered.



CHAPTER XXV

A FLYING THRONE

Early next morning Monsieur was taken to the little island, and I felt that his interview would be long and solemn—perhaps stormy. I hoped so. He came back for luncheon and immediately left again, having given us no intimation of his progress. I did not know what Doloria might be suffering from these visits, but they made me so abominably restive that during the afternoon I took a pine and crossed to the mainland, half-heartedly intending to look for deer. It was nearly sundown when I returned.

"We're packing, sir," said the sailor who tied my punt.

"Packing? Why?"

"Orders, sir."

Without loss of time I hunted up Tommy, finding him and Bilkins busy at carpentry.

"What's in the wind?" I brusquely demanded, forgetting that Tommy was rather particular about the way people addressed him.

"Rain," he imperturbably replied; or did he mean reign, and was employing a vulgar pun to apprize me of Doloria's decision! So I delivered a ten-second philippic on the poverty of some intellects, whereupon he left off working and regarded me with amusement.

"Fact is, Lord Chesterfield, I don't know what's in the wind," he said, "but we're leaving for Little Cove to-morrow at dawn. Bilkins and I are making a portable throne—in other words, a chair suspended from poles so Doloria won't have to walk. Professor came over about five o'clock in a rattling hurry and splendid humor. He's packing Efaw Kotee's effects now. Smilax left two hours ago with orders for the Whim to be there and take us off. Add it up for yourself."

"Orders," I angrily exclaimed, for this impertinence on the part of Monsieur was going too far. "He settles with me, that's all!—and the Whim stays in Big Cove till I send for her!"

He grinned, then whistled softly.

"So there's no use knicking my knuckles any more on this portable throne?"

"Not the slightest," I told him.

"Love's first tiff," he sighed, laying down the hammer and beginning to fill his pipe.

"Love's what?"

"Tootsie-wootsie tiff, I believe I said"—this between puffs as the match flared high and low over the bowl. "You understand, of course, that Doloria gave the order."

"Confound you, why didn't you say so! What's happened? Did a message come?"

"Sure." He stopped smoking and looked at me. "A big limousine drove up with a note and flowers."

"Be serious," I thundered. "This isn't any time to joke!"

"When you talk about a paucity of intellect," he laughed softly, "it's a wonder you don't bite yourself."

"Oh, Tommy, please let up; I'm sorry, honest—I'm wretched, too!"

His manner changed then. Putting his arm through mine, he led me outside, going toward our landing.

"This is just the time to joke, old man," he said, when we reached it. "She made up her mind to leave, pronto! Why? Conscience said obey Monsieur, but heart said nixy! What's to do then? Start home quick, of course, before little heart gives old conscience the solar plexus! That's how I size it up!"

"But I don't see anything to joke about," I said gloomily.

"Well, let me shuffle again—now take a look! When Smilax left with her order, I sent a note to the mate, telling him to bring both yachts down. Then we'll have to split the crew, and in the mix-up I'll see that you and she get on the Whim, while Monsieur sails on——But I see you get me! If you can't stifle her conscience before we reach Miami, you're a mud-hen."

"Great guns," I whispered, grabbing him by the arms, "we might sail——"

"All over the Gulf," he chuckled, giving me a push toward the water. "There's your Hellespont, son, as sure as Leander was a gentleman! Cross it now and tell her it's all right about that order!"

"My two days aren't up yet; I'm bound."

"That's nothing. Wait!"

He was off to the old chief's bungalow and reappeared with Monsieur, whose broad smile was anything but reassuring.

"You wish to relieve her uncertainty about that order?" he asked, coming up. "Certainly, my boy Jack, go and say what you please."

"What I please?" I asked pointedly.

"Why not what you please? She goes with me to Azuria—we have arranged it. You could not dissuade her now. Even could you, she knows she can not resist my authority. Yes, go and say what you like."

He was laughing by this time, at his success rather than my discomfiture, but Tommy saw that I was making little distinction between the two and wisely led him away.

As I stepped upon the little island Echochee came down to meet me.

"How's your Lady?" I asked.

"You go see," she answered in a low voice, pointing to the open door.

As I entered the commodious living room Doloria looked up, but did not smile. She was reclining on a chaise-longue, beneath a shaded lamp whose rays still blended with the light of a dying afterglow. Her hunting costume had been discarded for a flimsy kind of an exquisite thing of blue—hardly a dress, although it had a lot of lace and seemed to fit her perfectly. It was open at the throat like some dresses, and the sleeves fell away from her arms; but I had seen one instinctive movement she made to pull it closer which might have indicated embarrassment.

"I've come with Monsieur's permission," I said, bowing over her hand.

"With Monsieur's permission," she repeated after me. "We seem to do nothing but with Monsieur's permission."

I saw that she was nervous and very much upset, so replied as gently as I could:

"But this visit involved my promise, otherwise I wouldn't have asked him. I want to tell you that it's all right about the yacht—your sending for her, I mean. She'll be on hand to-morrow."

"Thanks, Chancellor." Her tone had changed to one of complete weariness. "Now leave me, please."

"Leave you," I exclaimed. "I'll do nothing of the kind! The two-day ban is off, and Monsieur has told me I can say anything I please!"

"And having his permission to say anything you please, did you rehearse it before him, too?"

This left me helpless, fervently wishing I'd had more of Tommy's experience with girls' moods. He knew a lot about them, and would have understood just what to do. But I felt suddenly enraged—not at her, but at everything, and cried:

"I don't give a damn for him or his permission! He shan't take you away!"

For the first time she smiled, and held out her hands to me, saying:

"That's good-medicine-talk, Jack. I like it even if it won't cure me. Say it again—that you don't give a damn for him!"

I would have said something in an entirely different way had not Echochee been moving about the next room, but I kneeled, leaning over her, keeping her hand and whispering:

"He shan't dominate our lives! You're going back with me—don't you know you are?"

"Don't make me sorry you came, Jack," she said softly. "I must go with him. So let's talk of other things and keep our last evening here from being a horror."

"I've got to talk about it, as I've got to breathe and think and move and love you! It's all one! It's my existence, and if you went away it would be like tearing me to pieces!"

"Oh, but don't you see that I must," she cried despairingly. "I didn't close my eyes all night, thinking, thinking, thinking! It was agony. It's agony now. But my decision's been through the fire, Jack, and I know I'm right!"

"No decision counts for anything against all you mean to me!"

"Oh, Jack, I'm so sorry!" she moaned, looking at me without dissimulation and letting me see that her face was marked by a solemnity and tragedy that wrung my heart. "God," she whispered, putting her hand to my forehead, "how I suffer while I see your tortured eyes!"

"Then out of sorrow, pity, tell me what the fellow said," I implored, nearly beside myself. "Let me know the strength of your duty, so my own strength can have a chance. It isn't fair to make a beggar of me when I might be fighting for happiness! Let me see his weapons so I can strike back; then, if I lose, I'll lose standing up—and the future," I added, less impetuously, "isn't so gray to the man who loses standing up."

She had turned away with a quick gesture of anguish and seemed to be crying, but when she looked at me again there were no signs of tears.

"He says others have demands and rights, and the many must outweigh the few."

"That depends on the greatness of each side's claims," I began, when she interrupted by continuing:

"My conscience decided that—it had no choice; every claim has been weighed—accurately." Her voice trembled a little, and I thought she was trying to make it harsh. "He said that you and I were thrown out from separate spheres, opposite poles. By chance our orbits happened to cross, and you rendered me this tremendous service. But it was only a part of the foreordination—only to make my path easier to a greater duty ahead, a greater destiny to be fulfilled. Now this commands—he says. The call of my birthright has come, and I must answer. He says that neither of us will mind it in a little while, as memories pa—pass." She wavered at last, and again turned away her face.

"But you don't believe that stuff?" I cried.

"Oh, his words are so unanswerable—when he speaks them! Then he has the authority to command me!"

"They're not unanswerable," I said hotly. "You haven't weighed our happiness against this unknown voice of your people, your birthright—he did it for you! His cold logic read the scales—not your heart or your conscience! He's built a wall around you like a cistern, and you can't see out. If it was ordained for us to face death, then by the same law we've got to face life! Sweetheart, don't you see what I mean?"

"I've seen all that from the beginning, dear," she murmured, putting one hand on my hair and stroking it. "But nothing can prevail against what you call his cold logic. He's certain that he's right, and he has the power to make me go."

"Oh, if I only had the brains to out-argue him!" My voice choked, and I bowed my head in her lap.

For a while we were silent. Her hand continued to stroke my hair, and soon her fingers strayed to my temple and gently pressed it—as if she knew that my head burned and ached, and wanted to make it well.

"You don't have to argue, always my own," I heard her whisper. "There's something stronger than words pleading for you."

I looked up quietly, saying:

"Let's run away to-night! Let's have another rescue, and go back to our Oasis——" But she stopped me by putting her hand over my mouth, although she was breathing fast and the color had flown to her cheeks.

"Don't, don't," she gasped. "I've thought of that so many times!"

"To-night," I begged. "You know I'll always make you happy?"

"Happy?" Her eyes, half closed, held mine with a look that did not try to hide its longing. "There'd be no happiness on earth like that of being entirely yours at our Oasis!"

"Then, sweetheart——"

"No, Jack," she now sat straighter. "I was dreaming. Besides, he'd follow with every officer in Florida. Don't you understand, dear, that he has the right? I'm helpless to refuse! I can't—possibly! It's simply awful, but it's got to be."

Yet I believed that she had been on the point of yielding, and was about to urge still further when Monsieur's voice, speaking to Echochee, brought me to my feet.

"Well, my boy Jack," he exclaimed, entering with a cheeriness I found detestable, "we shall leave her now, eh? She has packing to do, and must get early to rest."

His protectorate seemed to brook no opposition, and an angry retort sprang to my lips which remained unspoken when I saw the pallor of Doloria's face.

"Yes," she said, without animation, "I must pack. See you to-morrow—on the march."

So, ignoring him, I passed out. But a better humor came to me as I thought of Tommy's scheme about the Orchid, and coming upon Echochee at the landing I asked—lightly for her benefit, yet quite seriously for myself:

"Is there any magic in your tribe that can bring a troubled princess sleep and pleasant dreams?"

I knew that she was searching my face with her black little eyes that glistened like a snake's, as she answered slowly:

"Injun maiden find plenty good dream when her head lay on breast of sleeping brave."

"I didn't mean just that," I stammered, feeling my cheeks grow hot. For, albeit, Doloria had slept part of a night with her head against my shoulder when we fared alone in the purity of our wilderness, now, since others of the world were touching elbows with us, Echochee's words knocked me rather into a self-conscious heap. But such is the bitter tithe we must toss into the maw of civilization which, despite its multitude of admitted blessings, breeds also the false! And I stepped into the punt wishing that this daughter of our oldest American family could be divinely appointed arbiter of our customs.

Smilax returned with word that both yachts would be at Little Cove, and one by one the lights in our camp went out. But I sat late at Efaw Kotee's desk writing a ten-page telegram and a fifty-page letter to my father. Both of these I would despatch from Key West—the wire telling him to bring the Mater to Miami where the letter would await them; and I urged them both, as they loved me, to pick up a certain darling of the gods named Nell. Only I made it stronger and more explicit than that, and knew they would comply if such a thing were humanly possible. But this pet scheme I intended to keep from Tommy. It would repay him for his masterly scheme of sailing both yachts homeward.

The next morning after an early breakfast our cavalcade set forth, each man carrying a pack except the two sailors on whose shoulders rested the poles of Doloria's chair. But in this chair sat a very sad little princess—this morning particularly, as she was leaving a nominal home for a new and mystifying adventure. Whatever else Efaw Kotee had been to her, at least he stood in her memory of father; and however irrevocably she may have turned against him, the very fact that she found it necessary to do so was a grievous disappointment.

All that had passed. Strangers had come, and in a few days she was being borne to the other half of the world. To her mother!—what did she know of a mother? To a throne!—but with an unknown prince to rule beside her? And these were entirely apart from the longings she might leave on this side of the world. Surely, if she needed sympathy at any time it was now as the march began.

Although Monsieur had taken a position close to her, and evidently meant to keep it, before we had gone very far I fell in alongside with them, asking:

"How do you find the march? Tiring?"

"Oh, no, not in Tommy's flying throne, as he calls it,"—and in an undertone she added: "I wish it were the only throne I had to occupy."

But the professor, overhearing this—for little escaped him now—cleared his throat and stepped nearer.

"She is mistaken, my boy Jack," he said suavely. "The march is quite fatiguing, and I must insist that she conserve her strength. There will be no more conversation."

Taken aback by this, I was on the point of giving him a jolly good blowing up, but her ready acquiescence caused me to desist. Really, I began to wonder if he had her hypnotized; and, furious—indeed, quite a good deal hurt—by the cool way she obeyed him and began to ignore me, I marched grimly ahead.

As, three hours later, we neared the cove I saw Tommy sauntering back. His manner seemed an augury of trouble, and I hurried on to him, asking:

"What's happened?"

"The Orchid isn't there," he turned and fell into step with me. "While getting her out of Big Cove she fouled on a bar. She's still on it, poor dear. So Monsieur sails with us, after all."

For several minutes I stood still in my tracks and swore, stopping only when Doloria's chair came in sight.

"I'm glad you got that out of your system," Tommy grinned. "Now get busy on a new line of attack. We've only three more days, and you'll have to work fast. Surprise her, upset her, then cinch her before she knows what's what. That's the way!" And he hurried back to pay his respects.

The mate and his fellows, even to Pete the cook, escorted us happily down to the small boats. They were honestly glad, and made no pretense of disguising their admiration for Doloria, to the increasing wrath of Echochee.

If ever the men of my own boat crew were on their mettle it was when they sat with oars straight up while I helped her into the gig and took my place at her side—for this was an honor I could not yield to Monsieur, etiquette demanding that, when going aboard, the owner must be her personal escort. With a nod to them they snapped into stroke and we shot away, leaving the old fellow much disgruntled.

At the top of the gangway she hesitated in pretty wonderment before stepping on deck, for the Whim was a smart craft and our sailors had not been idle these few days past.

"Everything's so unreal," she murmured. "My house of cards has come tumbling down about my ears, until I think it must be a dreadful dream."

"To be transported to a sure-enough throne is certainly dreamlike," I said, arranging the cushions in a chair. "But I hardly think you'll find anything dreadful about it."

"You don't?" she asked pointedly.

"No," I answered. "The dreadful part's for me."

I knew this was not true, or only partially true, but considered it justifiable after Tommy's warning—and Tommy knew a lot about women. I remembered him saying once that a girl's determination could be changed in two ways: by opposition, and by cooperation. I had tried opposition, so now I would pretend to fall resignedly in with Monsieur's plan, taking it for granted that her future promised nothing but idyllic happiness, that memories would pass, and all that kind of thing. I would become an enigma to her—for this, also, had been one of Tommy's diverse methods of success. Some day, confessing how my triumph had been achieved, we both would laugh over it, and then she would have to admit that Tommy was not the only one who knew a thing or two about women.

So reasoning, I started in at once. For a while she stared at me, her eyes growing wider and wider. Then she arose and went to the rail, remarking coolly:

"Please signal to have Echochee and Monsieur Dragot brought out at once." And that was the only thing she would say.

To hell with what Tommy knew about women! She would not so much as look at me again, and when that wretched old rag of a shriveled-up squaw, incarnate fiend of a watchful guardian, arrived my princess retired to her stateroom, nor did she appear again the entire day. What Tommy knew about women, indeed!

The rest of us lunched in moody silence, except Monsieur who grew loquacious to the point of making himself an ass. He was not on the crest of popularity, anyway. Previously, in order to give Doloria more freedom, Tommy and I decided to sleep on deck and use Gates's quarters for a dressing room. But when this proposition was also opened to the professor he flatly refused to join with us. The truth of the matter was that he had determined upon a plan—singularly popular among pedagogues—of watchful waiting; he had made up his mind that Doloria and I should not see each other again except in his presence. He may have told her this—I rather suspected it.

As we sat in the cockpit smoking, he became down-right obnoxious by excessive jocularity. It can be disgustingly overdone. Believing that his triumph was assured, he sputtered and giggled with small regard for my presence, and the farther he went the madder I got. Despite his former protestations of fair play, I now began to nurse a suspicion of this befousled little gimcrack; but I'd not thought that Tommy would grow a distemper of any magnitude until the professor, rubbing his hands, announced:

"Mon Capitaine says we do not sail for an hour. Let us take a small boat and fish around the mangroves! Maybe a snapper, eh?—or a sheep's-head!"

I was silent. Tommy puffed indifferently at his pipe.

"Come," he cried again. "Let us make a fishing party!"

"The trouble with fishing parties is," Tommy drawled, "that there's always some damn fool along who wants to fish."—Which was, I think, not only the best thing Tommy ever said but, in the circumstances, the best that could have been said.

The professor sat down again rather suddenly and blinked at us.

"So! Then we do not fish," he murmured, and after another thoughtful pause went below.

"I don't suppose we ought to insult him," I suggested, not intending any one to think I meant it.

"I don't care what we do to him," Tommy savagely retorted. "All the good you've got out of this cruise will go to the bow-wows. I won't have it, I tell you! Let's chuck him overboard!"

"Chuck over your grouch," I laughed, although his proposition interested me.

"Oh, I haven't any grouch," he turned away; but swung back, asking: "Are you going to give up?"

"Most certainly not!"

"Then why don't you get busy?"

"Get busy! D'you expect me to go downstairs and drag her out of her room?"

"Yes—do anything! She isn't staying there from choice!" (But I knew better than that.) "If I slug the gezabo you might ask her up. Shall I?"

"Show an idea, man! You know she wouldn't see me!"

"What if she wouldn't! Bring her out, anyhow! Good Lord, Jack, if you're an example of lovers up North, then I say God pity Yankee girls!"

"Well, what would you do, Mr. Know-so-much?" I asked, my temper blowing up. "If she told you she'd stayed awake nights fighting it out and reached the conclusion, absolutely and without peradventure of changing her mind, that her destiny's in Azuria, what would you do then—you who know such a hell of a lot about women?" I just had to say that; it kept irritating me.

"I don't claim any knowledge of the genus," he said, looking mildly at the horizon—and wanting to laugh, I thought. "But a modicum of brain would show you she hasn't thought it out, at all. How could she in forty-eight hours, being confronted for the first time in her life with the two most glowing things in a girl's fancy—love or a throne? She's dazzled, not decided."

"She's worse," I growled. "She's hurt—that's one reason she won't come up! And allow me to say that what you know about women wouldn't fill a gnat's eye!" I seemed to be hypped on this, and couldn't get away from it.

"Well, if you've spilled the beans you'll have to pick 'em up pretty quick, for we'll be home in three days. Just be sure you don't intimate that Azuria can be less than a perfect hell to her, for that would ruin your chances forever!" And with this parting injunction, that drove terror to my heart, he walked aft to join Gates.

Going to the companionway door, I peered into the cabin. The wretched Dragot, bedecked in smoking jacket and spectacles, looking uncommonly like a monkey, I thought, was lounging behind a book. He knew that the nearer uncertainty approaches a certainty the more fatal will be the result of its upsetting; that, whereas a scheme jumbled in its infancy may recover, the slightest maladjustment on the threshold of success often spells irrevocable ruin. He was taking no chances.



CHAPTER XXVI

A TREASURE BOX

Late that afternoon we got under way, setting our course for Key West. But it was a glum company aboard. The Princess remained in her stateroom; Tommy's grouch for Monsieur had grown out of all proportion, so the professor's gay mood lost much of its bloom; Echochee, whenever she left her mistress, scowled at us as though we were pirates; Gates, knowing that my plans had become miserably pied, grumbled over trifles; Bilkins sniffled, and the mate walked about with curses fairly bristling from him like pin-feathers. Heaven knows how wretched I was! If a group of people were ever out of tune, we had struck the original discord. Of us all, the cook maintained both equanimity and cuisine in perfect taste, else I hesitate to think what might have been the fate of the good yacht, Whim.

Sometime during the night we reached Key West, and early next morning Gates called me to go ashore. I had requested this. There were the telegram and letter to be sent; and candy, flowers, fruits, magazines, souvenirs, and anything suitable I might find, to lay at Doloria's shrine. Had it not been for the stubbornness of a fellow who insisted that he was under contract, I would have had a moving picture show aboard for her.

By eight o'clock we were again away, sailing lazily eastward before a light breeze. Three days of this inert weather, or possibly less, should bring us to Miami. There Monsieur had expressed his intention of wiring the Roumanian, or some other, consul; then he would entrain with my little Princess, and—well, that would be the end.

All that day we poked along. Surreptitiously I had sent several notes down by Bilkins, but the only reply they got was an angry negative shake of Echochee's head. The old Indian would divulge nothing beyond the fact that her Lady was well. I then thought of knocking at Doloria's door to get a word with her, but the professor, always in the cabin on guard, sat where he could frustrate any such plan. He had stayed there the previous night until a late hour, and was back at his post quite an hour before breakfast.

She did not appear at luncheon, nor during the long and wearisome afternoon.

The next day was a counterpart of its forerunner, except that it got more on my nerves. I had pegged through it in the hope that she might at least dine with us—for this was to be our last dinner on the Whim, Gates saying we would land about the following noon. But, happening upon Echochee and asking her this, she almost snapped my head off in saying that her mistress had no such intention.

Growing more desperate as the afternoon waned, I tried again to approach Doloria's stateroom from the far end of the passageway, but Monsieur, glancing over his book, arose and came toward me. The expression in his face plainly said that if I attempted to force him aside he would command her to keep her door locked—and I knew that she would obey. Therefore, ready to abandon hope, I wandered up and sought a secluded place along the rail where, unobserved by steersman and forward watch, I could swear a little, and look more glum, and feel quite natural. It was here that Tommy passed me on his way to the cabin.

"Time for dinner," he said, stopping and laying down something that had been under his arm.

"Don't want any dinner," I growled.

His face, for the first time in three days, broke into a beatific smile, and for a moment I was disposed to punch it, thinking, of course, that he meant to guy me. But he saw this intention and sprang back, holding his palms outward in an attitude of alert protest; yet the smile continued, now to be followed by a low, pleased laugh.

"Don't get mad," he gurgled. "I'm not laughing at you—only at things."

"In the circumstances I consider that personal," I glared at him.

"Well, you needn't, honest! To-night I'm presenting the gezabo with a treasure box, and had really intended asking you to keep away from dinner. That's why I'm laughing—your unintentional acquiescence is a good omen!"

"Treasure box of what?" I demanded, knowing this was some of his tomfoolishness, and irritated that he should have any heart for it.

"Keep your head down," he winked good-humoredly. "You'll know soon enough."

"Tommy," I now excitedly caught him by the arms, "you've got a scheme! What is it, old man? Tell me quick!" I shook him happily, for there was something about his mysterious air that began to inspire me with hope.

"Very simple, son; very simple," he chuckled. "Surprisingly simple, and that's why it'll get across. You sit in the cockpit and observe without being observed, but I'll need your help in one thing: when you see me get up and walk around my chair, you beat it, pronto, for this very spot where we are now—and wait here. Understand? It's a nice secluded spot, so you just wait till I come."

"Yes, but——"

"Never mind! Just do what your Uncle Tom says. Now it's dinner time and I reckon Monsieur's starved—he always is! So I'll take my treasure box—oh, by the way, you're not supposed to be in the cockpit, so don't stir around!"

As he picked the thing up I saw that it was a little iron safe about ten inches square—everybody knows the kind. Although small, it was heavy and quite complete, possessing a combination lock of no small merit. In the captain's quarters that Tommy and I now used as a dressing room I had noticed a safe similar to this, and asked if it were the same, whereupon he laughed, saying:

"Yes. Gates keeps his pipes in it, but I got him to flip the combination on 'em for to-night. Well, here goes!" And a few minutes later as he descended the stairs, I, with repressed excitement, stepped back to the cockpit, taking a chair where I could see without being seen.

The dinner had scarcely begun when Monsieur, looking about, asked:

"Where's my boy Jack?"

"Where's Jack?" Tommy repeated, in a voice unnecessarily loud, I thought. "Didn't you know about Jack? Why, he's in bad shape—maybe die, for all I know!"

I must say that the professor looked genuinely concerned, and would have left at once to doctor me had not Tommy sternly interposed. Across the carpeted floor of the dim passageway that led past the staterooms I now saw a thin streak of light, as if some one had quietly opened a door an inch or so. Since this happened to come from Doloria's room, I suspected the Indian woman of listening.

"Don't you go near him or he'll jump overboard, I tell you," Tommy was saying. "He wouldn't let you, and you couldn't help him, anyhow; no one can, poor old Jack! When the Princess stopped speaking to him, and he saw the game was up,—well, his heart kind of broke!"

"Pardieu, I am sorry—I am sorry," the professor shook his head.

"Don't let's talk about it," Tommy replied, as dolefully as the loud tone would permit. "I can't look at his suffering—really I can't! It almost kills me! And there's no remedy, now!" And, when finally the conversation had been diverted to other channels, the streak of light disappeared.

Sometime later Tommy, with, a fine show of indifference, said over his demitasse:

"By the way, if we land to-morrow this is your last chance to open that treasure box."

"Treasure box?"

"Yes, the little safe I found tucked down in Efaw Kotee's trunk. Jack and I intended to tackle it to-night, but since he's knocked out I've lost interest."

"I had not heard of this," the professor cried, his eyes sparkling with all manner of hope and enthusiasm.

"Oh, you heard of it, but just forgot. Anyhow, here it is." He lifted it from the floor and placed it on the table. "You're welcome to its secrets; I'm satisfied to get home with a whole skin." Whereupon he reached for a recent Key West newspaper, tilted back his chair and settled down to read.

Monsieur's fingers closed feverishly around the little safe as though it might have held the secret of perpetual youth. After examining it minutely, he sprawled over and prepared to open it by listening for the little metal tumblers to fall into their notches while he slowly turned the combination knob. Tommy, I guessed at once, had neatly anticipated this after seeing him try it on the big safe in Efaw Kotee's house and hearing his boast that he could have accomplished it in time. Now, just as he got his ear flattened to the iron door and was almost choking for breath in an agony of listening, the newspaper began to rustle.

"It gets my goat," Tommy irritably exclaimed, "to have a front-page story carried to the inside, where half the time I can't find it!"

Monsieur, raising his head, politely waited for the noise to cease, as no one could hear the delicate sounds he sought with a newspaper carrying on that way about his head. Yet, when quiet had been once more restored and he was ready to try again, Tommy began another hunt for news.

"Think you can work it?" he casually asked, over his shoulder.

"I—I might, with less noise," the professor suggested.

"Hope my paper doesn't bother you. This is the only place I have to read since I gave up my room, you know."

Several times more, as Monsieur was holding his breath momentarily expecting the mystery of the combination to dissolve, the paper seemed to be stricken with an ague, till at last, hugging the safe to his chest, he indignantly stalked down the passageway and slammed the door of his room after him.

Tommy now arose and walked around his chair, and as I was leaving for my appointed place I saw him start on tiptoe in the direction of Doloria's stateroom.

Ten minutes later he appeared in the cockpit, helped her to the deck, and together they approached. Yet as they drew near the place I was standing she stopped, looking at me in pretty surprise, but came forward again with hands outstretched, saying:

"Oh, Jack, I thought you were terribly, dangerously ill!" And before I could reply Tommy was gurgling, with a fatuous grin:

"Why, hullo, Jack! I see you're up!"

"Are you better?" she asked, letting her hands rest in mine.

"D'you know," here Tommy interposed, not giving me a chance to answer, "that old whiz-bang devil told Doloria that if she spoke to you, or answered your notes, he'd have you jailed for interfering with a foreign country's accredited agent? Sure, he did! He stuffed her poor little head full of trumped-up international law that hadn't a grain of truth in it—to scare her, see? She was afraid to budge!"

"He did that?" I cried.

"Oh, yes, but it doesn't matter now," she said hurriedly. "Are you really better?"

"Dear me, dear me"—it was Tommy again—"I've come up without my cigarettes! You'll excuse me?" He bowed to her, and left without awaiting the royal consent.

The silence was a trifle awkward when he went, and our eyes seemed to be glued to the spot where he disappeared; but now I turned to her.

"I suppose Echochee was listening to his conversation with Monsieur, and told you. Tommy's full of ideas, but this is his masterpiece because it unlocked your prison."

"It was I who listened—purposely," she said, without a trace of embarrassment, but laughed a little strangely as she asked: "You weren't ill, at all?"

"Yes, I honestly was—with unhappiness; but not as near dead as he pretended."

"And you're in no danger by talking to me?"

"The greatest danger—but not from man-made prisons."

"Oh, it feels so good to be up in this fresh air," she said irrelevantly, raising her face to the sky and taking a deep breath.

"He was a scoundrel to keep you shut in down there," I declared; and then she told me of the old fellow's fabrications, really such atrocious lies that for a while I was undecided whether to thrash him or laugh. As it turned out, I laughed; because she did.

She had moved to the rail and rested her arms on it, leaning over and looking pensively down at the water. I, also, went to stand by her, but, in turning, my eyes happened to glance through one of the cabin portlights at Tommy. He was seated comfortably in a deep chair, Doloria's box of candy stood on the table within easy reach, the newspaper was in his hands, a cigarette hung from his lips, and Echochee was just bringing him the basket of fruit I had taken so much care at Key West to have made attractive.

"Picture of Tommy hurrying down for his cigarettes," I whispered. "Peep at him!"

As she leaned forward and the light fell on her serious face, the attractive curves of mischief, always so maddening, touched the corners of her mouth.

"Isn't he a dear," she murmured. "And there's nothing in the safe but the captain's old pipes?"

"That's all. Tommy's waiting to soothe the professor when he makes that discovery, and keep him from coming on deck."

She laughed guardedly, but there was no great spirit of fun in either of us, and again we turned back to our contemplation of the water, for a long time looking down at it in moody silence. I instinctively felt that she had not altered her decision.

In the distance off our starboard bow a hairlike line of slowly brightening silver, forerunner of the climbing moon, touched the far horizon. It resembled a shining lake upon a great dark waste, and I told her it was my love trying to light my life that had turned to night without her.

I know we were subdued by the witchery that comes with watching for the moon, because when its dome appeared her fingers gently tightened on my sleeve; nor did we speak until it stood serenely balanced upon the world's edge, sending to our feet a silvery pathway that twinkled on the waves. And then, by the merest accident of our position as the yacht changed its course among the keys, two far-off pine trees, appearing to move out side by side across the sea, stopped in the center of the moon. She caught her breath at the unusual beauty of this. That sigh from her, and the mystic night, all but drove me mad. My senses swayed with the throb of some vast indwelling orchestra.

"Let's take the silvery path," I whispered, putting my arms about her. "Look, it leads to the gate of our Secret world, where we first found happiness!"

"Oh, dear Jack," she pleaded—but I would not be stopped, and words stumbled over each other in my agony to persuade her.

"It's Fate—your destiny! I can't change it, neither can you! It spoke to us beneath our two big pines on the Oasis; it's speaking to-night—saying you shall never leave me!"

"Oh, but Jack, that's so impossible! He'll make me go!"

I saw the glitter of tears upon her cheeks, and answered fiercely:

"He can't, when I love you as I do!"—and whispered over and over: "Sweetheart, sweetheart, I love you!"

She had not moved. The moon, by this time high enough to have mustered its forces, frosted the yacht into the semblance of a dream-ship, and we might, indeed, have been sailing upon some phantom lake in fairyland. My eyes were pleading for hers until she raised them—and then they could not turn away. Held and blended by a mesmeric force, they began to give and answer question for question, secret for secret. I saw the quick pulsations in her throat, which seemed to be beating in my veins, instead.

"Oh, Jack," she whispered, laughing tremulously, with a subdued madness that was made for such a night as this, "let me go back to Echochee!"

But I could only answer as I had before:

"I love you—I love you!"

"Darling, darling Jack," she begged, taking my cheeks in her palms, "you mustn't—you really mustn't! Let me go, dear!—Oh, I believe my throne is—is tottering!"

"And my reason with it!" I cried, drawing her quickly, passionately, up to me.

For a long time a silvery yacht glided across a silvery sea, while in far-off Azuria a throne did totter and fall; but ten thousand loyal subjects smiled in their sleep that night at a strangely happy dream, wherein their little Princess was pressing upon the lips of an unknown beggar the seal of her eternal sovereignty.

When again we thought of the moon it had climbed surprisingly high, making our shadow on the spotless deck seem like a black rug beneath our feet.

"Is it awfully late?" she whispered.

"The moon's still up, sweetheart," I said.

"Is it, dear?" she murmured, adorably sighing her contentment at this evidence that the night must yet be very young, indeed.

And, finally, when moving stealthily like two happy thieves we went down into the cabin, she blew a kiss to the sleeping Thomas Jefferson Davis, then gave both hands impulsively to me, and disappeared into her room. After the door had closed, and I felt she would not open it again, I shook Tommy's shoulder. He blinked at me, mumbling:

"Must have been asleep."

"Must have been," I grinned down at him.

And, when he saw my grin, he sat straight up and grinned back at me—for it is in this way that men sometimes understand each other.



CHAPTER XXVII

THE FINAL HOCUS-POCUS

Doloria breakfasted in her room, but from the galley I sent a note on her tray, among other important things saying that I was about to break the news to Monsieur. In her reply, surreptitiously delivered by Echochee, who was smiling, she wrote—among still more important things—"for Heaven's sake, break it into tiny little pieces!" With this in mind, although having no idea how I should succeed, I came up by way of the fo'castle and walked aft to where Tommy and he were smoking.

The open safe and three or four pipes belonging to Gates lay on the floor between them, while the old skipper who had taken the wheel was silently convulsed with laughter as he watched the puzzled expression on Monsieur's face and the innocence on Tommy's. My opportunity seeming favorable, I said:

"Professor, last night the Princess decided to give up Azuria. She's promised to stay here and rule me; so I'm giving notice that neither you, nor any one else, can take her."

He listened to this with more tolerance than surprise, giving Tommy a look that implied his distress to see my prostration taking the form of hallucinations. But Tommy added:

"It's on the square. Jack's put one over, and all he asks is your blessing. Give it like a good sport, and, we'll drink their health."

"You are cut-upping," he gasped, staring with wide eyes—that perceptibly narrowed as he glanced down at the pipes.

"Call it what you please," Tommy imperturbably replied, though I knew that he was not at all sure of his ground, "but the Princess and Jack are going to be married, and I rather fancy I'm to be best man. It would be right decent of you, as the special emissary plenipotentiary extraordinary fat-and-hairy agent from Azuria, to give the bride away. I'm only suggesting it."

But the professor was on his feet, sputtering and waving his arms in a torrent of rage.

"It shall not be, it shall not be!" he cried. Then suddenly he began to laugh, looking at us with a superior air of cunning that made my flesh creep. "Why, you are as pigmies with your childish schemes! You suppose I have gone this far without arranging everything to circumvent you, or anything you could do? Bah!"

"Circumvent till you're black in the face, you beloved old rag doll," Tommy gave a mirthless chuckle, "but the Princess doesn't go back with you—and that's a cinch. She's going home with me, to visit my sister. Don't you try to follow her, either, for I'm giving it to you straight that you'd last about seventeen seconds in Kentucky. Yes, Professor, I'd say that in Jefferson county seventeen seconds would be a right venerable age for you!"

"That shows what small children you are," he laughed contemptuously. "The minute we touch land I order the first police to arrest her—and on my authority he will not dare refuse! She is still a subject of Azuria, and not of age according to its laws! Then I will lay the matter with our representatives in Washington, and your President, fearing to disturb the consummation of his League of Nations, will return her, of course! This for your threats!" He snapped his finger at us and began to fill his pipe.

Who'd ever have thought the League of Nations would treat me that way? Tommy saw murder rising in my heart and gave me a warning look. Yet I could see from his puckered forehead that he was pretty well up against a stone wall. Our only hope of success, so far as my mentality could work it out, was instantaneous manslaughter.

Finally, amid a complete silence and under the professor's supercilious smile, Tommy got up and went below. Had I tried to enter the cabin, the old fellow would have followed me.

A sailor passed aft and whispered to Gates, who surrendered the wheel, went forward and disappeared. Ten minutes later he came back and took a seat near us; affecting to be at his ease, but making a very poor go at it. Soon after him came Tommy, carrying open in his hands a large book, calf-bound and old. For on the cabin shelves my father kept a lot of truck in the way of old books that no one ever read. I saw, also, that Tommy and Gates had reached an understanding.

Of course, I was bursting to know what those conspirators had up their sleeves. Tommy stood in the middle of the cockpit, looking serious and thoughtful. Now, in an impressive voice, he said:

"Monsieur, Gates has been good enough to get out his copy of American Marine Law, pertaining to the obligations and powers of captains of American vessels sailing upon salt water. Perhaps, after this brief preamble, it would be tautological for me to continue with what your overly acute mind must have by this time grasped; nevertheless, you will pardon me if I read you a paragraph, that goes as follows: 'In cases of emergency, where it is evident that a vessel can not in the required time reach a port wherein there may with certainty be found a civil officer of the United States of America, or the captain of such vessel in any other circumstances deems the request of the principals a proper one and of sufficient warrant, he is thereby, and is hereby, endowed with the right to perform the ceremony of marriage according to the civil code of said United States, and such ceremony, properly attested by two witnesses, shall constitute the bonds of holy matrimony before the world.'"

At the beginning of this Monsieur had sprung up, but before Tommy concluded he again sank into his chair, breathing fast and blinking.

"Gates," Tommy asked, "do you consider the request of these principals a proper one and of sufficient warrant?"

"I do, sir," Gates answered.

"You consider that the emergency in every way justifies you to perform this ceremony of marriage?"

"I do, sir."

"Then, Jack," he turned to me, "suppose we say high noon. It's a fashionable hour, and gives you a little while to primp up."

I gasped at him, unable to believe my ears; but before I could speak Monsieur was again raving.

"It shall not!" he yelled. "I say it shall not; for now I, too, play a card!" And drawing from his pocket a paper, discolored by wear and age, he flourished it in our faces, crying: "By this authority I claim her as my ward; both of us Azurians; and in the name of my country I forbid the marriage!"

"Gates," Tommy asked, without batting an eye at Monsieur's grandiloquent outburst—which seemed to me the absolute frustration of our plan, "we don't know this man. He's a tramp we picked up at Key West. Do you recognize his credentials, or would you say they're forgeries?"

"They look like forgeries to me, Mr. Thomas," the old skipper answered at once, not being within ten feet of Monsieur and his paper. "If I'm mistaken, sir, I'll apologize when we get ashore, but I carn't see any reason why the ceremony shouldn't take place at high noon. If that's too early, Mr. Jack, we can sail back to Key West—or New Oreleans."

"But my authority," the professor cried, seeming on the verge of apoplexy.

Tommy closed the calf-bound book and tossed it over to me, then turned Monsieur good-naturedly around and pointed to the Stars and Stripes flying at our main peak.

"While you're on this yacht, my friend," he laughed, "that's the authority, and don't you forget it!"

I glanced at the volume of Marine Law he had tossed to me. It was Gibbon's DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE!

Monsieur's beard began to twitch curiously. I thought at first he was really intending to make the best of things, but suddenly two great tears squeezed from his eyes and rolled lumberingly over his cheeks; then, as an unbridled torrential storm breaks in the tropics, he threw himself face down upon the cushions and wept—piteously.

Tommy and I were thunderstruck. It gives one a weird feeling to see a man shaken with grief. I was helpless and, there's no denying it, just a little remorseful. As quick in sympathy as he was in resource, Tommy crossed and put a hand on the old fellow's shoulder, saying gently:

"Buck up, Professor. This kind of thing won't do, you know!"

Then my surprise was most complete. Sitting now, face buried in his hands, he brokenly told a story that at times brought tears to our own eyes.

When he finished I had visualized a scene begun more than thirty years ago in the Royal Palace of Azuria: an honorable young doctor, Court physician, voluntarily surrendering his appointment because he loved the King's younger daughter—Doloria's aunt; the old ruler's searching eyes that sympathized even while they censured—the aged hand that pressed with understanding even while it took the proffered resignation. Then the young doctor's quick departure; his plunge into the Universities, trusting absorption of the sciences to act as a panacea for his grief. Years later his return to Azuria; their pure love still burning, though unexpressed. At last the kidnaping; the quick preparations for pursuit; and finally the girl, herself, sweet with many confessions, bringing in her own hands the old King's "authority"—this paper before us—which commanded him to return the little Princess by any means he could, his reward being the fulfillment of his heart's desire.

"And now," he moaned, rocking to and fro, "after seventeen years of searching, I have won only to lose!"

Truly, I was touched. Tommy turned quickly away and blinked at the horizon. Yet neither of us knew that all of this time Doloria had been standing in the companionway door. She now crossed swiftly and sat by the weeping man, impulsively drawing his grizzled head to her shoulder as a mother might have comforted a hurt child. But toward me her face was turned, and I saw that her startled eyes spoke into mine the entreating message which distracted her—telling me that we must acknowledge this claim of Monsieur's poor heart before our own could ever be happy; asking me what to do, since his title to happiness came first. Yet all that her lips spoke was the trembling whisper:

"Oh, Jack!"

But he, with a new determination, sat quickly upright. The warmth of a woman's sympathetic arms upon a life that had been without comfort, the quick intuition that she was pleading for him at a great cost to herself, stirred the fineness of his nature, and he cried:

"Never! I have lived this long, and this long suffered, enough to know the irony of that royal barrier! Your aunt and I, dear child, are passing toward the shadows of life, while you and my boy Jack are just starting out. Your happiness shall not be cindered upon a false altar—I swear it!"

"Good old boy," Tommy murmured. "Do you mean that, honest?"

"Pardieu, have I not sworn it?"

"And you wouldn't try to muddy the water again if I confessed that our Marine Law was a hocus-pocus?"

"What is that hocus-pocus?"

"A no-such-a-thing."

"Sacre bleu! I see! Pipes and iron safes and hocus-pocus! But I do not care!" He turned to Doloria and, taking one of her hands, said: "You, mon ami, shall find your heart's best desire. It is I who say it!—I, who have the authority!" The way he clung to that authority was really pathetic.

"It occurs to me, Monsieur," Tommy crossed and looked down at them—and I saw that Doloria read in his eyes the sadness of one who must remain outside while others pass through to happiness—"that you, too, can find your heart's best desire. Jack and our sweet Princess will be leaving for Azuria as soon as passports are procurable. Now, the day they arrive, you might be moseying about the railroad station, borrow her for an hour, and personally conduct her to the palace. The late lamented King's royal authority contained no stipulation about the missing child being returned in a state of single blessedness, therefore the reward is yours. Add that up, and see if it doesn't spell Eureka!"

Doloria turned to Monsieur with a glorious smile and, being nearest, received the first hug as the light of Tommy's reasoning burst upon him. Then he bounded up and hugged me; but Gates and Tommy ran away, the cowards, yet did a lot of laughing from a distance. And now the forward watch called something, at the same time pointing off our port bow. Low upon the water lay Miami.

Excitedly we took turns focusing the binoculars on it, and after a little as we drew fairly near Tommy, with a puzzled look, asked:

"Who are those people on your Colonel's dock?"

"My father, maybe. I wired him to come."

"Boy, I mean the petticoats! Look at 'em—there're two!"

"Can you make out their faces?" I asked, having a good time all to myself; for here was my chance to return an obligation in the matter of courtships which, if not cancelled, would furnish the versatile Tommy with an anecdote I should never outlive.

"Not yet," he mumbled, squinting more closely.

"One's probably the Mater," I suggested.

"I hope so," he smiled, lowering the binoculars. "What was the toast you gave her, Jack?—'if romance and adventure are alive I'll bring them home to you!'—wasn't that it?"

"Yes, and we sailed out on that quest only seventeen days ago. It seems incredible, doesn't it!"

"It sure does," he chuckled, once more raising the glasses. "You've put on seventeen pounds, too,—besides a special chunk of 120, or thereabouts, which you gained the night of the rescue. That's some record, boy! See here," he asked quickly, "who the deuce are those people, anyway! One has a mighty familiar look!" And I could hardly keep from laughing as I answered:

"I think the Mater went by Louisville and picked up Nell——"

"Good Lord, I see her," he yelled, so instantly and irrepressibly delirious with joy that he let my binoculars fall overboard, the chump.

But now I saw that Doloria—which was the other name for romance and adventure—had slipped away from Monsieur; she had gone forward and, all alone, was leaning against the foremast, gazing dreamily at this new world and these new people who waited to take her to their hearts. So I forgot Tommy, God bless him!—he may have known a little about women, after all!

THE END