Wings of the Wind Part 52

"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, pa.s.sionately, 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, surrept.i.tiously 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 circ.u.mvent you, or anything you could do? Bah!"

"Circ.u.mvent 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 pa.s.sed 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 c.o.c.kpit, 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 circ.u.mstances deems the request of the princ.i.p.als 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 const.i.tute 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 princ.i.p.als 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 ash.o.r.e, 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.