Wings of the Wind Part 15

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 Bluegra.s.s flower!"

"But isn't she wonderful?--I challenge you, isn't she perfect?"

"That is a perilous a.s.sertion," Monsieur chuckled, "since there is a Persian proverb that 'to be perfect is to be d.a.m.ned.'"

"Well, she'd rather be d.a.m.ned 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.d'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 c.o.c.kpit. 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!"