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Wings of the Wind

by Credo Fitch Harris · English · Gutenberg #30618 · 527,944 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Wings of the Wind

Author: Credo Fitch Harris


        
Release date: December 6, 2009 [eBook #30618]
                Most recently updated: January 5, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30618

Credits: Produced by David Garcia, Odessa Paige Turner and the
        Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
        (This file was produced from images generously made
        available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WINGS OF THE WIND ***




Produced by David Garcia, Odessa Paige Turner and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library)





Transcriber's Note:

Inconsistencies in the hyphenation and variations in spelling have been
retained as in the original.





  WINGS OF THE
    WIND

  BY

  CREDO HARRIS

  _Author of_
  "TOBY," "SUNLIGHT PATCH,"
  "WHERE THE SOULS OF MEN ARE CALLING,"
  ETC.


  BOSTON
  SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
  PUBLISHERS




  Copyright, 1920
  BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
  (INCORPORATED)




  TO
  S. THRUSTON BALLARD
  WITH WHOM THE AUTHOR HAS SHARED
  MANY A PLEASANT CAMP-FIRE
  THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED




  CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                PAGE

      I. "TO ADVENTURE AND ROMANCE!"       9

     II. THE MYSTERIOUS MONSIEUR          16

    III. THE GIRL IN THE CAFÉ             29

     IV. NIRVANA                          43

      V. "TO THE VERY END!"               54

     VI. A VOICE FROM THE WATER           70

    VII. A BOMB AND A DISCOVERY           80

   VIII. THE CHASE BEGINS                 94

     IX. A SHOT FROM THE DARK            104

      X. A SILENT ENEMY                  117

     XI. A STRANGE FIND                  129

    XII. THE HURRICANE                   140

   XIII. ON TO DEATH RIVER!              153

    XIV. SMILAX BRINGS NEWS              161

     XV. EFAW KOTEE'S DEN                174

    XVI. THE CAVE MAN SETS FORTH         190

   XVII. THE RESCUE                      202

  XVIII. DOLORIA                         212

    XIX. ENLIGHTENING A PRINCESS         228

     XX. SLEEPING BENEATH GOD'S TENT     238

    XXI. PLANTING A MEMORY               249

   XXII. I LOVE YOU                      266

  XXIII. THE ATTACK                      275

   XXIV. GERMAN CRUELTY                  289

    XXV. A FLYING THRONE                 304

   XXVI. A TREASURE BOX                  319

  XXVII. THE FINAL HOCUS-POCUS           330





WINGS OF THE WIND




CHAPTER I

"TO ADVENTURE AND ROMANCE!"


At last out of khaki, and dressed in conventional evening clothes, I
felt as if I were indeed writing the first words of another story on the
unmarred page of the incoming year. As I entered the library my mother,
forgetting that it was I who owed her deference, came forward with
outstretched arms and a sound in her voice like that of doves at nesting
time. Dad's welcome was heartier, even though his eyes were dimmed with
happy tears. And old Bilkins, our solemn, irreproachable butler, grinned
benignly as he stood waiting to announce dinner. What a wealth of
affection I had to be grateful for!

I did not lack gratitude, but with the old year touching the heels of
the new, and Time commanding me to get in step, my return to civil life
held few inducements. Instead of a superabundance of cheer, I had
brought from France jumpy nerves and a body lean with over
training--natural results of physical exhaustion coupled with the mental
reaction that must inevitably follow a year and a half of highly
imaginative living.

But there was another aspect less tangible, perhaps more permanent--and
all members of combat divisions will understand exactly what I mean.
When America picked up the gauntlet, an active conscience jerked me from
a tuneful life and drove me out to war--for whether men are driven by
conscience, or a government draft board, makes no difference in the
effect upon those who come through. Time after time, for eighteen
months, I made my regular trips into hell--into a hell more revolting
than mid-Victorian evangelists ever pictured to spellbound, quaking
sinners. Never in this world had there been a parallel to the naked
dangers and nauseous discomforts of that western front; never so
prolonged an agony of head-splitting noises, lacerations of human flesh,
smells that turned the body sick, blasphemies that made the soul grow
hard, frenzied efforts to kill, and above all a spirit, fanatical, that
urged each man to bear more, kill more, because he was a Crusader for
the right.

Into this red crucible I had plunged, and now emerged--remolded. In one
brief year and a half I had lived my life, dreamed the undreamable,
accomplished the unaccomplishable. Much had gone from me, yet much had
come--and it was this which had come that distorted my vision of future
days; making them drab, making my fellows who had not taken the plunge
seem purposeless and immature. Either they were out of tune, or I
was--and I thought, of course, that they were. What freshness could I
bring to an existence of peace when my gears would not mesh with its
humdrum machinery!

My mother, ever quick to detect the workings of my mind as well as the
variations of my body, had noticed these changes when I disembarked the
previous week, and had become obsessed with the idea that I stood
tottering on the brink of abysmal wretchedness. So, while I was marking
time the few days at camp until the hour of demobilization, she summoned
into hasty conference my father, our family doctor, and the select near
relatives whose advice was a matter of habit rather than value, to
devise means of leading me out of myself.

This, I afterward learned, had been a weighty conference, resulting in
the conclusion that I must have complete rest and diversion. But as my
more recent letters home had expressed a determination to rush headlong
into business--as a sort of fatuous panacea for jumpy nerves, no
doubt--and since the conferees possessed an intimate knowledge of the
mulish streak that coursed through my blood, their plans were laid
behind my back with the greatest secrecy. Therefore, when entering the
library this last night in December and hurrying to my mother's arms, I
had no suspicion that I was being drawn into a very agreeable trap,
gilded by my father's abundant generosity.

We sat late after dinner. Somewhere in the hall Bilkins hovered with
glasses and tray to be on hand when the whistles began their screaming.
In twenty years he had not omitted this New Year's Eve ceremony.

"Your wound never troubles you?" my mother asked, her solicitation over
a scratch I had received ten months before not disguising a light of
pride that charmed me.

"I've forgotten it, Mater. Never amounted to anything."

"Still, you did leave some blood on French soil," Dad spoke up, for this
conceit appealed to him.

"Enough to grow an ugly rose, perhaps," I admitted.

"I'll bet you grew pretty ones on the cheeks of those French girls," he
chuckled.

"Pretty ones don't grow any more, on cheeks or anywhere else," I
doggedly replied. "Materialism's the keynote now--that's why I'm going
back to work, at once."

"Oh," the Mater laughed, "don't think of your father's stupid office,
yet!"

"There's nothing left to think of," I grumbled.

"Isn't there?" he exclaimed. "What'd you say if Gates has the yacht in
commission, and you take a run down to Miami----"

"Or open the cottage, if you'd rather," she excitedly interrupted him.
"I hadn't intended leaving New York this winter, but will chaperon a
house party if you like!"

"Fiddlesticks! Cruise, by all means," he spoke with good-natured
emphasis. "Get another fellow, and go after adventures and romances and
that kind of thing! Go after 'em hammer and tongs! By George, that's
what I'd do if I were a boy, and had the chance!"

They waited, rather expectantly.

"Cruising's all right," I said, without enthusiasm. "But it's a waste of
time to go after romance and adventure. They died with the war."

"Ho!--they did, did they?" he laughed in mock derision. "What's become
of your imagination--your vaporings? You used to be full of it!" And the
Mater supported him by exclaiming:

"Why, Jack Bronx! And I used to call you my Pantheist! Don't tell me
your second sight for discovering the beautiful in things has failed
you!"

"It got put out by mustard gas, maybe," I murmured, remembering with
bitterness some of the fellows who had been with me.

What was romance here to the colorful, high-tensioned thing I had seen
in devastated areas where loves of all gradations were torn and
scattered and trampled into the earth like chaff! Fretfully I told them
this.

They exchanged glances, yet she continued in coaxing vein:

"You're such a big baby to've been such a big soldier! Don't you know
that romance is always just over the hill, hand in hand with
adventure--both lonely for someone to play with? Wars can't kill them!
It's after wars, when a nation is wounded, that they become priceless!"

"By George, that's right," Dad cried. "Come to think of it, that's
exactly right! And Gates has the same crew of six--men you've always
known! Even that rascal, Pete, cooks better 'n ever! The _Whim_, you
can't deny, is the smartest ninety-six foot schooner yacht that sails! I
say again that if I had the chance I'd turn her free on whatever magic
course the wings of the wind would take her! That I would--by George!"

And there was a note of deep appeal in the Mater's voice as she asked:

"Why not get that boy you wrote so much about--Tommy what's-his-name,
the Southerner? I like him!"

This plan, which I now saw had been so carefully prepared--fruit of the
secret conference--was but one in the million or so of others throughout
America nurtured and matured by the brave army of fathers, mothers,
wives, sisters, daughters, who stayed at home and gave their all,
waiting with alternate hopes and fears, looking with prayerful eyes to
the day that would bring a certain one back into their arms. What
difference if some plans were elaborate and some as modest as a flower?
Who would dare distinguish between the cruise on a private yacht and the
cake endearingly made in a hot little kitchen for the husky lad just
returned from overseas? Each was its own best expression of pride and
love. Each said in its tenderest way: "Well done, my own!"

A lump came into my throat.

"It's rather decent of a fellow to have two such corking forbears," I
murmured.

The Mater turned her gentle eyes to the fire, and Dad, clearing his
throat in a blustering way--though he was not at all a blustering
man--replied:

"Perhaps it's rather decent of us to have a son who--er, I mean,
who--well, er----"

"A cruise hits me right," I exclaimed, hurriedly coming to his rescue,
for neither of us wanted a scene. "And I'll wire Tommy Davis, Mater--the
chap you mentioned. He's a corking fellow! I didn't write you how the
battalion started calling him 'Rebel' till he closed up half a dozen
eyes, did I? You see, in the beginning, when we were rookies, the
sergeant had us up in formation to get our names, and when he came to
Tommy that innocent drawled: 'Mr. Thomas Jefferson Davis, suh, of
Loui'ville, Jefferson county, Kentucky, suh.' You could have heard a pin
drop. The sergeant, as hard-boiled as they come, stood perfectly still
and let a cold eye bore into him for half a minute, then gasped: 'Gawd!
What a wicked little rebel!'"

They laughed.

"Why didn't you bring him home with you?"

"Same reason he couldn't take me home with him. There were people
waiting, and turkey, and--but he won't want to go," I added. "He's crazy
about a girl down there!"

"Fiddlesticks," my father chuckled. "Any normal fellow'll want to
cruise! I'll wire him myself--this very night!"

Bilkins entered with the tray, wishing us a happy new year. Outside the
whistles were beginning to blow. After we had pledged each other, and
drunk to 1919, the Mater, a light of challenge in her eyes, looked at me
and gave another toast:

"To a cruise and an adventure, Jack!"

"To romance," Dad cried, gallantly raising her fingers to his lips.

There was no use being a wet blanket, so with a laugh I said:

"To adventure and romance!--Mater, if they're still on earth I'll bring
them home to you!"

I knew it was a very silly toast, but let it go to please them--for why
disillusion those who believe in the actuality of nonexistence?




CHAPTER II

THE MYSTERIOUS MONSIEUR


Ten days later Tommy and I--and Bilkins, whom I had begged of my father
at the eleventh hour--stepped off the train at Miami, stretched our arms
and breathed deep breaths of balmy air. Gates, his ruddy face an augury
of good cheer, was there to meet us, and as he started off well laden
with a portion of our bags, Tommy whispered:

"Reminds me of the old chap in that picture 'The Fisherman's Daughter'!"

The description did fit Gates like an old glove, yet his most dominant
characteristic was an unfailing loyalty to our family and an honest
bluntness, both of which had become as generally recognized as his skill
in handling the _Whim_--"the smartest schooner yacht," he would have
told you on a two-minute acquaintanceship, "that ever tasted salt."

"We might open the cottage for a few days, Gates," I said, as we were
getting into the motor.

"Bless you, sir," he replied, caressing a weather-beaten chin with thumb
and finger, "the _Whim_'s been tugging at her cable mighty fretful this
parst fortnight! The crew hoped you'd be coming aboard at once, sir.
Fact is, we're wanting to be told how you and Mr. Thomas, here, licked
those Germans."

"Angels of the Marne protect me," Tommy groaned. "Gates, I wouldn't
resurrect those scraps for the Kaiser's scalp!"

"Yes, he will," I promised, smiling at the old fellow's look of
disappointment. "He'll probably talk you to death, though; that's the
only trouble."

"I'll tell you what," Tommy said, "we'll chuck the cottage idea and go
aboard; then tonight, Gates, you pipe the crew--if that's the nautical
term--whereupon I'll hold a two-hour inquest over our deceased war, on
condition that we bury the subject forever more. We came down here to
lose the last eighteen months of our lives, Gates, not keep 'em green.
Maybe you don't know it, but we're after the big adventure!"

His eyes twinkled as he said this, and his face was lighted by a rare
smile that no one possessed more engagingly than Tommy. While he treated
the probability of an adventure with tolerant amusement, such was his
inherent love of it and so developed was his capacity for
"playing-true," that he sometimes made me think almost anything might
turn up. I was quite unaware that my mother had written him, or that he,
in return, had promised to keep her fully advised of my improvement--a
state which was already beginning.

"I carn't see how you help talking of it, sir--all that gas, and liquid
fire, and bursting shells," Gates stared at him in perplexity.

"It's an effort, but I refuse to turn phonograph like some of the old
timers--not that I love 'em any less for it, Lord knows!" Then he began
to laugh, and turned to me, adding: "One of the first things I did after
getting home was to drop in on a very dear gentleman who's been a friend
of our family since the Ark. He came at me with open arms, crying:
'Well, Thomas, sit right down and tell me about your experiences!' I
side-tracked that--for I hate the word. We didn't go over for
_experiences_! But he wouldn't be denied. 'Try to think,' he commanded.
'Why, Thomas, old as I am, I remember when Stonewall Jackson struck that
brilliant blow----' and you can shoot me for a spy, Jack, if he didn't
keep me there five hours while he fought the entire Civil War! No
sir-ee! After tonight, never again!"

But Tommy's talk, to which the crew listened in rapt attention, consumed
nearer six than two, or even five hours. These men were hungry for
authentic first-hand information--being too old to have sought it for
themselves.

It must not be inferred that the _Whim's_ crew consisted of the ancient
and decrepit. More than once my father had said that if ever he should
get in a tight place there was no band of six he would rather have at
his back than this one headed by Gates; nor did he except Pete, the
prince of cooks. Yet who, by the wildest stretch of fancy, could have
contemplated tight places or dangers as the trim yacht rode peacefully
at anchor an eighth of a mile off our dock at smiling Miami? To every
man aboard such things as death and the shedding of blood had ceased
with the armistice, and Gates would have taken his oath, were it asked
of him, that our course pointed only toward laughing waters, blue skies,
and emerald shore-lines.

Early next morning we were under way when Tommy pounded on my stateroom
door, challenging me to a dip overboard. There was a glorious joy in his
voice, as far reaching as reveille, that found response in the cockles
of my heart. Gates, never happier than when standing beneath stretched
canvas, hove-to as he saw us dash stark naked up the companionway stairs
and clear the rail head-first, but he laid by only while we had our
splash and continued the course southward the moment our hands grasped
the gangway.

"We're cruising, not swimming," he said bluntly, as we reached the deck.
"But I'll say this," he called after us, "you're both in about as fine
condition as men get to be. I'll give _that_ to the Army!" Which was
true, except for the fact that I might have been pronounced overtrained.
Tommy and I were as hard as nails, our skin glowed like satin--but,
better than this, his spirit was quick with the love of living, charged
with a contagion that had already begun to touch my own.

Half an hour later he mumbled through a crumbling biscuit:

"If Pete ever cooked better grub than this it was in a previous
incarnation!"

"Man achieves his greatest triumph but once in life," I admitted. "It's
self-evident."

One loses track of time while sailing in south Florida waters. There is
a lassitude that laughs at clocks; the lotus floats over the waves even
as over the land, and a poetic languor steals into the soul breeding an
indifference to hours and days--wretched things, at best, that were only
meant for slaves! Neither of us realized our passing into Barnes Sound,
and saw only that the _Whim_, sails gracefully drawing, cut the water as
cleanly as a knife.

Another day passed during which we shot at sharks, or trawled, or lay on
deck smoking and occasionally gazing over the side at displays of fish
and flora twenty feet beneath us. But upon the third morning I asked:

"Where are we bound, Gates?"

"Mr. Thomas says Key West, sir, and then Havana."

"Mr. Thomas, indeed," I laughed, for it was exactly like Tommy to take
over the command of a ship, or anything else that struck his fancy.

Before leaving Miami he had received a twenty page letter from the
Bluegrass region of Kentucky which threw him into a state of such
volatile ineptitude that I was well satisfied to let him give what
orders he would, sending us to the world's end for all I cared. In a
very large measure Tommy's happiness was my own, as I knew that mine
would always be dear to him.

During our most trying hours in France, thoughts of this wonderful girl,
whose name was Nell, unfailingly kept his spirits high. In moments of
confidence that come to pals on the eve of battle I saw that some day
they might be eternal "buddies"--certainly if he had his way; and toward
this achievement he had been, since graduating from the University of
Virginia, directing every effort to build up a stock farm which his
family had more or less indifferently carried for generations. Next to
winning Nell, his greatest ambition was to raise a Derby
winner--according to him a more notable feat than being President.

The sixth of April, 1917, had caught him with a promising string of
yearlings, each an aristocrat in the equine world of blue-bloods, each a
hope for that most classic of American races. But he had thrown these
upon the hands of a trainer and submerged his personal interests six
hours after Congress declared war. At the same moment, indeed, all of
Kentucky was turning to a greater tradition than that of "horses and
whiskey"; and, by the time the draft became operative, the board of one
county searched it from end to end without finding a man to
register--because those in the fighting age, married or single, with
dependents or otherwise, had previously rushed to the Colors. This, and
the fact that his state, with three others, headed the nation with the
highest percentage in physical examinations, added luster to the shield
of his old Commonwealth--though he roundly insisted that 'twas not
Kentucky's manhood, but her womanhood, who deserved the credit. After
our cruise he was going back to the thoroughbreds, now within a few
months of the required Derby age; and of course I had promised to be on
hand at Churchill Downs when his colors flashed past the grandstand.

Late in the afternoon the _Whim_ docked at Key West and, while Gates was
ashore arranging for our clearance, Tommy and I ambled up town in search
of daily papers. We were seated in the office of a rather seedy hotel
when its proprietor approached, saying:

"'Scuse me, gents,--are you from that boat down there?"

I answered in the affirmative.

"Going to Havana?"

This, too, I admitted.

"Well, there's a feller by the desk who missed the steamer, and he
hoped--er----"

"We'd take him over," Tommy supplied the halting words. "Where is he?"

Turning, we easily distinguished the man by his timid glances in our
direction.

"Whiz-bang," Tommy whispered. "What the deuce would you call it, Jack?"

Except for his age, that might have been sixty, he was most comical to
look upon--in stature short and round, suggesting kinship with a gnome.
His head seemed too large for the body, yet this might have been because
it carried a plenteous shock of straw-colored hair, with mustache and
beard to match. He was attired in "knickers" and pleated jacket, that
looked as if he'd slept in them, and his fat legs were knock-kneed. On
the floor about his feet lay almost every conceivable type and age of
traveling bag, with the inevitable camera.

"What's his name?" Tommy asked, not that that would have made any
difference if his passport were in order.

"Registered as 'Monsieur Dragot, of Roumania,'" the proprietor answered.

"Roumania!" Tommy looked at me. "Let's go meet him, Jack."

Monsieur Dragot turned out to be the original singed cat, for assuredly
he possessed more attractive qualities inside than were exteriorly
visible, and from a first shyness that did not lack charm he expanded
briskly. After visiting a "dry" café, to seal this fortunate
acquaintanceship--as he insisted upon calling it--he warmed up to us and
we to him, with the result that his bags were soon carried down and
stowed in our spare stateroom. Leaving him there, we went on deck.

"Dragot," Tommy mused. "Speaks with a slight accent, but I can't make
out what!"

"Roumanian, possibly," I suggested, "as he comes from there."

"You rather excel yourself," he smiled. "Registering from Roumania,
however, isn't prima facie evidence that he's a Roumanian."

"He's a clever little talker, all the same."

"Right O! Too clever. I'm wondering if we aren't a pair of chumps to
take him."

"Why?"

"He may be a crook, for all we know. Did you notice what he said about
holding a commission from Azuria, and then hurrying to explain that
Azuria isn't on the ordinary maps--just a wee bit of a kingdom up in the
Carpathians, yet in the confines of Roumania? I call that fishy!"

"Not entirely so, Tommy. When you said it might now be turning into a
republic, did you notice how proudly he declared that the descendants of
Basil the Wolf couldn't be humbled?--that, situated in Moldavia, and
escaping the ravages of the Bulgarian army, they were stronger today
than ever?"

"Sounds like raving, sonny. Who the dickens is Basil the Wolf? No, Jack,
that doesn't tell us anything."

"It tells us he couldn't have been inspired like that unless the place
and people were real to him!"

"Well, pirate or priest," Tommy laughed, "he'll do if he waltzes us up
to the big adventure. You're about fit enough to tackle one now!" During
the past forty-eight hours he had openly rejoiced with Gates at my
improvement and tried, with the indifferent success of an unbeliever, to
play up at top speed that silly idea of an approaching adventure.

We had strolled aft, and now stopped to watch a tall Jamaica negro--or
so we thought him to be--asking Gates for a place in the crew. His
clothing was too scant to hide the great muscles beneath, and Tommy
touched my arm, saying:

"There's a specimen for you!"

Had he been cast in bronze a critic might have said that the sculptor,
by over-idealizing masculine perfection, had made the waist too small,
the hips too slender, for the powerful chest and shoulders; the wrists
and ankles might have been thought too delicate as terminals for the
massive sinews leading into them. He smiled continually, and spoke in a
soft, almost timid voice.

"I like that big fellow," I said. Perhaps I had been well called a
pantheist, having always extravagantly admired the perfect in form or
face or the wide outdoors.

Feeling my interests he turned from Gates, looking at me with dog-like
pathetic trustfulness. Among the things he told us briefly--for the crew
stood ready to cast off--was that he once followed the sea, but in more
recent years lived by fishing up sponges and at times supplying shark
meat to the poorer quarter of Key West. The carcass of a water fowl tied
to his boat, while he occupied himself with sponges, would sometimes
attract a shark; then he would strip, take a knife in his teeth, and
dive.

I glanced at Gates, but saw no incredulity in his face.

In another hour, at nearly dusk, Key West had grown small and finally
sank below the horizon, leaving only its three skeleton-like towers
standing against the sky--standing erect with all nerves strained,
watch-dogs of the darkening sea; ears cocked, to catch a distressed cry
from some waif out in the mysterious night.

Looking back along our wake I imagined the big black man standing as we
had left him on the dock, gazing after us with patient regret; and I was
glad to have given him the handful of coins at parting, little dreaming
how many times that loaf upon the water would come floating in to me.

Monsieur Dragot revealed himself more and more to our astonished eyes as
we sat that night on deck. He had been a professor in the University of
Bucharest, and hinted at an intimate entente with the reigning house of
Azuria. Besides being versed in many sciences, including medicine, he
spoke seven languages and read several others. But these things were
drawn from him by Tommy's artful questions, rather than being said in
boastfulness. Indeed, Monsieur was charmingly, almost touchily, modest.
Of his business in Havana he gave no hint, yet this happened to be the
one piece of information that Tommy seemed most possessed to find out.

"You'll be in Cuba long, Monsieur?" he asked.

"No one can say. A day, a week, a month, a year--it is an elusive search
I follow, my young friends. May I call you that?"

We bowed, and I deferentially suggested:

"If we can help you in any way?----"

"It is the beautiful spirit of America," he sighed, "to help those in
distress, yet there is nothing to do but watch--watch. For you have not
yet been here long enough to see a child in these waters--no?"

Tommy, perhaps because he came from the South and was on more or less
friendly terms with superstitions, glanced over the rail as if an infant
might be floating around almost anywhere. Our strange guest's mysterious
hints were, indeed, rather conducive to creeps.

Then, without further comment, he arose, tossed his cigar overboard, ran
his fingers through his mass of hair, and went below.

"What d'you suppose he meant?" I asked, in a guarded voice.

"Simple enough," Tommy whispered. "He's got apartments to let
upstairs."

"Get out, man," I laughed. "That chap has more sense than either of us!"

"Then he'd better come across with some of it. You remember the freckled
lad at Soissons who got fuzzy-headed from too much concussion? Well, he
saw children around everywhere, too! It's a sure sign, Jack!" But now he
laughed, adding: "Oh, I suppose our little Roumanian's all right,
only----"

He was interrupted by Monsieur, himself, who emerged from the
companionway door.

"I come again," he smiled apologetically, "because tomorrow our journeys
part, and I have shown scant consideration for your kindness."

"It's we who feel the obligation," Tommy murmured. "Now, if we could
only help you find the child--supposing, of course, that's what you're
watching for!"

Monsieur gave a deep sigh, appearing to be quite overcome by a secret
grief; but after a moment he looked at us, asking ingenuously:

"You think my behavior unusual?"

"Well, since you make a point of it," I laughed, and hesitated.

"I see, I see! But, my young friends, you must take my word that I
cannot tell you much." He drew us nearer. "This I may say: that, after
Roumania dropped out of the war, the new Chancellor of Azuria wired
imploringly for me to leave my classes at the University and come to
him--because for years I have advised with Azurian statesmen, frequently
going on special missions. By the recent death of the old Chancellor a
certain paper came to light. This was a secret agent's report sent from
Havana in 1914----I may not divulge its contents. But for the war it
would have been followed up at once. Whether the same hopes exist
now--well, I am here to discover. Ah, my young friends," his voice
trembled, "much depends upon this! I must--I must find the child if it
lives!"

Tommy's eyes grew round.

"I can say no more," Monsieur added. "Accept my thanks and gratitude for
the help you have given me. And now--_bon soir_."

He bowed, backing himself toward the stairs as though leaving a royal
presence, doing it so easily, so naturally, that we did not even smile.
When he had quite disappeared we turned and faced each other.

"What do you think now?" I asked.

"I think he's a treasure," Tommy cried. His face had lighted with a new
excitement. "If we want any fun on this trip, don't let him get out of
our sight! Stick to him! I won't deny he has a screw loose, but----"

"That makes it all the better," I laughed, adding: "Looks like the
Mater's toast might come true, after all, doesn't it!"--for I had
described our New Year's Eve to Tommy.

"Sonny, I've a hunch we won't even have to tiptoe over the hill to find
adventures with him around! He's their regular hanging-out place!"

Gates came up, and seemed vastly amused when we told him of our hopes.

"He doesn't look like much of an adventurer, sir, but he's certainly a
change from the great run of people I've met. Still, I carn't see how
we're going to keep him against his will!"

"Neither can I, Tommy."

"Use a little persuasion."

"But suppose he won't persuade?"

"What's the use of crossing bridges," Tommy grinned. "If he won't
persuade, then sit on his head--anything, I don't care! The main thing
is--keep him!"




CHAPTER III

THE GIRL IN THE CAFÉ


Next morning began the conversion, or rather the persuasion, of Monsieur
Dragot to remain a while longer with the _Whim_. Pete started off with
another triumphant breakfast and before our guest had gone far with it
his face was agleam with pleasure. Tommy and I put ourselves out to be
agreeable, telling him jokes that sometimes registered but frequently
did not. Yet we were on most affable terms when, stuffed to repletion,
we leaned back and lighted cigarettes.

"Professor," Tommy suggested, "I think if you stay with us you'll have a
better chance to find that child!"

Our guest beamed agreeably at the appelative, then looked toward me.

"I'm sure of it," I said. "We've nowhere to go but anywhere, and that
ought to fall in with your plans."

"_Pardieu_, you overwhelm me! You mean I may sail about with you,
searching?"

"Nothing simpler," I assured him. "We've rather taken a fancy to you,
haven't we, Tommy?"

"Double it," Tommy laughed. "We agreed last night that you looked like a
million-dollar bill to us!"

"Oh, my boys," Monsieur sputtered with embarrassment and pleasure, "you
disarm my power to thank you--see, I blush!"

"Damned if he isn't," Tommy grinned at me. "What d'you know about this
little gezabo, anyhow!"

Monsieur's face grew more composed as he showed his interest in a new
word.

"You say--gazebo?" he asked, blandly. "Is that not a belvedere?"

"Gazebo is, yes; but I said gezabo--that's you!"

"Your American Indian language?"

"Sure thing. Pure talk. If you're interested in Indians, stick around.
Why not get the Havana police to help us hunt the kiddie?"--I had known
that before long Tommy would be using a first personal pronoun.

"Bah! They are of no value! But even I have small hope of finding her.
The report was written nearly six years ago, and she has been gone
upwards of twenty years."

"So it's a she," Tommy looked over at me and nodded. "Well, nearly six
years, and upwards of twenty, plus what she was when she left home,
leads me to believe the lady's almost old enough to take care of
herself!"

Monsieur considered this a great joke, exclaiming:

"It is not so much as that! She is but three--to me, always three! Yet,
as you say, I might better find her with you than anywhere! A despairing
search, my boys!"

Tommy's eyes were twinkling as he murmured sympathetically:

"If it's a three-year-old you want, there's a place in Havana called
'Casa de Beneficencia Maternidad,' where furtive-eyed damsels leave
kiddies at twilight, ring the doorbell, and beat it. You might pick up
one there, as a last resort."

"But--but," Monsieur began to sputter, when I threw an orange at Tommy,
explaining to our agitated guest that he was a cut-up devoid of ideas,
really an intellectual outcast.

"Well," he cried, seeming to exude pleasure, "I will stay with you a
while, eh? Maybe we can teach him something--this cut-upping Tommy of
yours!"

He had fallen in with our scheme most agreeably, and later Tommy
confided to me that he was glad we wouldn't have to sit on the old
fellow's head.

Passing that afternoon beneath Morro Castle, the _Whim_ tacked prettily
through the entrance of Havana harbor and in another scant two miles
dropped anchor.

Havana Bay is a dancing sheet of water, as bright as the skies and
hardly less contagious than the city's laughter. But when one drops
anchor and then hoists it up, one recoils from the black and slimy mud
those blue waves hide; and this circumstance, slight as it may seem,
held a potent influence on our future.

Riding nearby was another yacht, in size and design very much like the
_Whim_, except that her rigging had an old-fashioned cut. Her masts were
checked with age and, where our craft showed polished brass, she long
ago had resorted to white paint. At the same time, she gave the
impression of aristocracy--broken-down aristocracy, if you choose. No
bunting fluttered at her masthead, no country's emblem waved over her
taffrail, and the only hint of nationality or ownership was a rather
badly painted word _Orchid_ on her name plate. Taken altogether, she was
rather difficult to place.

These signs of poverty would have passed unobserved by us, had we not in
coming to anchor swung between her moorings and the Machina wharf. Not
that it made any serious difference, Gates explained, nor were we
impertinently near, but it just missed being the scrupulously polite
thing to have done--and Gates was a stickler on matters of yacht
etiquette. So he felt uncomfortable about it, while at the same time
being reluctant to hoist anchor and foul our decks with the bottom of
Havana Bay. To be on the safe side he determined to megaphone apologies
and consult her wishes. Twice he hailed, receiving no answer. Two
sailors were seated forward playing cards--a surlier pair of ruffians
would have been hard to find--but neither of them so much as glanced up.

"Let the professor try in Spanish," Tommy said.

Monsieur took the megaphone and did so, but with no better success. Then
to our profound admiration he called in half a dozen languages; finally
growling: "Lascars, likely!"--and proceeded to hail in something he
afterwards explained was Lascar gibberish. All of which failed to
attract the surly pair who played at cards.

"Now you might try Airedale and Pekinese," Tommy suggested, but this was
lost on the serious little man. Yet he did call in another strangely
sounding tongue, then with a sigh laid the megaphone down, saying:

"They must be stuffies!"

"Dummies, sir, dummies," Tommy corrected. "Nice people don't say
stuffies, ever!"

"Your Tommy does so much cut-upping, eh!" he smiled at me. I had noticed
that when preoccupied or excited the idioms of his various languages got
tumbled into a rather hopeless potpourri.

Quarantine and customs were passed in the leisurely fashion of Cuban
officials, and Monsieur asked to be sent immediately ashore, promising
to return at sundown. There was a man, the secret agent, he explained,
who held important information.

"I'll have the launch for you at Machina wharf, sir," Gates told him,
but he refused to consider this, declaring that he could hire any of the
boatmen thereabout to bring him out.

"He's that considerate, sir," Gates later confided to me. "But I carn't
make head nor tail of him. Bilkins says he went in to lay out his
clothes, and the things he's got stuck in those bags would astonish
you!"

Nearing six o'clock a skiff drew alongside, being propelled by one
oar--a method much in vogue with Havana harbormen--and when Monsieur
came aboard we saw at once evidences of disappointment. His arms hung
listlessly, and his large head drooped forward as if at last its weight
had proven too great for the squat body.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"How do you know there is anything wrong, my boy Jack?"

"You look so killingly happy," Tommy said, joining us.

Monsieur's pale eyes stared for a moment, then blinked several times
before he murmured:

"The man I went to see is dead--murdered, just after he mailed that
report. So I have no information. These police called it suicide because
a knife lay in his hand. Bah! I could place a knife in the hand of any
man I kill!"

"Was he a friend of yours?"

"No. I have never seen him. But he knew something!"

"He evidently knew too much," Tommy suggested.

"You speak true, my boy. It seems to be a dangerous thing here to know
too much of certain matters!"

"Well," I laughed, trying to put a heartiness in my voice and drive away
his depression, "let's go ashore for dinner! Then the Opera--and
afterwards another bite where the high life eats? What-say, Professor?"

As it turned out, however, neither the dinner, nor all of Tommy's
banter, nor Madame Butterfly sung in Spanish (as if it could!) succeeded
in restoring Monsieur to a normal temper.

"We've simply got to make him laugh," I whispered to Tommy. "It's a
matter of principle now!"

"Then wait till we have supper, and get him soused," my confederate
cautiously replied. "That'll do it. But you'd better not drink much," he
added. "How are the nerves this evening?"

"I've almost forgotten them," I answered.

But Tommy was persistent at times. Unknown to me he was now preparing a
report to wire the Mater.

"Sleeping better?" he asked.

"Lots."

"Lying to me?"

"A little," I laughed outright. "But honestly I'm in heaps better
shape!"

"Oh, I've seen you improving from day to day, but we want to put it over
right. So don't hit the asphalt too hard tonight."

And in all justice to myself and my friendship to Tommy I really did not
intend to. What place was it that some one said is paved with good
intentions?

Leaving the Opera House we mixed with the laughing tide that flowed
along the Prado, and by the merest chance--destinies of nations, much
less our own, sometimes rest upon a merest chance--dropped in for supper
at a fashionable place patronized by those who wish to see the brightest
of Havana life. There were other places, of course, that might have
offered quite as much, but this one happened to be on the route we had
taken.

Midnight passed, but still we lingered, seated on the latticed balcony
that encircles an inner court where cabaret features are
held--suggestive of a bull ring. One rather piquant Spanish girl,
playing her accompaniment on a guitar, gazed softly up at Tommy while
singing about some wonderful Nirvana, an enchanted island that floated
in a sea of love. It was a pretty song, even if more intense than
temperate, and pleased with it he tossed her a coin; whereupon she
tilted her chin and raised a shoulder, asking in the universal language
of cabarets if she should not come up and drink a health with the
_imperioso Señor_. But he, whose heart was beating against a twenty-page
letter from a nymph in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, laughed a
negative, this time throwing her a flower that she kissed lightly and
put in her hair.

We had supped well, the mandolins were now tinkling, incessantly, and
this, mingled with the silvery tones of glasses touched in eager
pledges, created an ensemble of sounds dear to the heart of every true
Bohemian. Effects were good here. The ceilings and walls of our balcony
were lighted by vari-colored electric bulbs artfully placed amidst
growing vines that drooped in festoons above the tables, producing a
fairy-like enchantment. And, indeed, the café proved to be a mart not
only of enchantments but entertainments, including a popular gambling
salon.

At last, in desperation seeing that Monsieur refused to be cheered,
Tommy sprang up, saying:

"Come, gezabo, let's court Dame Roulette! Join us, Jack?"

This I declined, and watched them move off arm in arm. But a strange
thing arrested my attention for, as they preceded down the corridor, I
saw a man in yachting clothes--the uniform of a captain--draw quickly
back into an alcove as if wanting to escape discovery. When they had
passed he looked out, more fearfully than curiously, and after a moment
of indecision slowly followed them. Urged by a suspicion that this was
in some way associated with the professor, I arose and also followed.
Yet upon reaching the salon the stranger was nowhere to be seen. Tommy
and Monsieur were each buying a stack of chips, the place seemed quiet
and orderly, so without being observed I returned to my table.

Now left alone I leaned back, idly twisting the stem of my glass,
looking over the sea of merry people who made a picture that quickened
interest. For I am particularly fond of sitting apart and watching an
assemblage of handsomely groomed men and women laughing, talking and
making love. I like to guess whether fears or tears or desperate courage
hide behind their gayety; whether the rapidly wagging tongues are
uttering inanities or planning naughty things; whether the love-making
will stop with coffee and liqueur, or, lighted by them, burn into
eternity.

All phases of human banality and human enigma seemed to be represented.
There were languid beauties of the Latin type whose drooping eyes might
have expressed _ennui_, passion, pride--anything, in fact, that one's
humor chose to fancy; the blonde by adoption was there, with heavy
ear-rings of jet, whose habit was that of looking slant-wise through her
cigarette smoke and raising one black, though carefully plucked,
eyebrow; also there were a few American women, by far the most smartly
dressed. Great was the throb of life in this discreet and fashionable
café. I felt its tremendous emphasis, and was content.

Then, quite without warning, I caught my breath as my glance fell upon a
girl dining with an old chap but three tables away. Among the habitués
of the Ritzes of two continents there could not have been found another
like her, for never had I beheld a face as exquisite--and I've seen
many. It possessed a beauty that left me helpless--yet there was an
indefinable sadness in it that might have suggested a haunting fear.

One of the lights among the vines hung close to her, and I could see
these things. Even could I see the color of her eyes, deep purple
eyes--the tone the wild iris takes at twilight. When she leaned one way
I might have thought the rich abundance of her hair contained spun
copper or deep red gold, and again I would have sworn it matched the
mellow brown of chestnuts; in all forming an arrangement of waves, each
refusing to stay in place yet never really getting out of order, each
coquetting with a subtle mischief that found an echo in her lips. Her
neck and shoulders were of that perfection that men realize but can not
analyze; and her mouth, laughing or in repose, was maddening.

And there was an added charm quite apart from hair and eyes and lips.
This I had never before seen in any face. Animation? Yes, and more.
Interest in the life about her? Assuredly, to a very marked degree.
Wildness? That was it!--a wildness, subtly blended with refinement, that
found expression in every quick look; as if someone had put a fawn there
from the forest and it was trying, half humorously, half confidently, to
keep itself from running away in fright. It was this glory of wildness
that she typified which made my cheeks grow hot with watching.

But who has ever made a picture worthy of his dreams! How, then, can I
describe this girl, when painter, sculptor, writer--all--would miserably
fail at attempting to portray a beauty whereon imagination might gaze in
frank amazement and admit itself surpassed! Here, indeed, was all the
vital, colorful magnetism of a type that men are quick to die for!

Her gown--yet how can man describe a woman's gown? It was a very rich
affair and added to the picture. But this I did observe distinctly, that
in revealing her arms and shoulders there was no slightest hint of that
abandonment of _décolleté_ which denotes the approach of feminine
despair, nor was the color in her cheeks a result of anything less pure
than the kiss of air and sunshine.

Her _vis-à-vis_, almost too old to have been her father, was one of
those whose nationality is difficult to place. His hair, mustache and
Vandyke beard were gray; he was tall, thin, and perhaps seventy-five
years old. His complexion impressed one most unpleasantly because of its
sallow, almost yellow, hue; and although I had not yet had a full-face
view of him I intuitively knew that his teeth were long and thin and
yellow. A slight palsy never let his head be still, as if some
persistent agent were making him deny, eternally deny, an inarticulate
accusation--as accusations of the conscience perforce must be.

Despite his grumpy silence he showed an air of repressed excitement,
sending frequent, shifty glances over the room; and that he possessed
the temper of a fiend I did not doubt after seeing him turn upon the
waiter for some trifling omission and reduce that usually placid
individual to a state of amazed incapacity. Then a quick, really a
pitiful, look of terror came into the girl's eyes as she shrank back in
her chair. It lasted but a second before she was again making herself
agreeable--acting, of course--and I wanted to cross to him and demand:
"Why is this lady afraid?"

I hated the man; at first sight I loathed him. It was one of those
antipathies sometimes observed in dogs that see each other from a
distance--hair up and teeth bared. The feeling is spontaneous,
unpredictable, and the usual result is fight.

Up to this time she had not seen me, or even known of my insignificant
existence; but suddenly, as though it were a sally of banter whose blade
he parried in the nick of time, her laughter-bathed eyes darted past him
and squarely met my own; her lips sobered into a half parted expression
of interest and, some strange thought--perhaps unbidden--coming into her
mind, sent the blood surging to her cheeks. As quickly as this happened
it had gone, and again she seemed to be absorbing the attention of her
_vis-à-vis_.

Once, years ago in the Dolomites, I thoughtlessly struck my staff upon a
piece of rock when, lo, a wonderful tone arose therefrom. And the memory
of that rich, unbidden sound was re-awakened now as the contact of our
glances stirred something which thrilled me with a maddening sense of
harmony. As an E string vibrates when another E is struck somewhere near
to it, so my being vibrated with each tilt of her head, each movement of
her lips. Yet however much I conjured the magnet of my will to make her
look again, she successfully, if coquettishly, resisted.

The Spanish waiter came up softly to refill my glass; an attention I
permitted, murmuring happily:

"Right, kiddo! Stay me with flagons, comfort me with champagne, for my
heart is faint with love!"--only Solomon didn't sing it quite like
that, the fickle old dog, nor did my waiter understand me, which was
just as well.

Engrossed with watching her I saw a new look come into her face as she
quickly whispered something across the table. Her _vis-à-vis_ turned
impatiently as a man approached them, who to my surprise was the yacht
captain--the fellow who had apparently followed Tommy and Monsieur. He
was a well-built blond, with a bullet-shaped head, high cheek bones and
deep set eyes--pig eyes. His right cheek bore several scars which,
considering his type, strongly suggested a German of University dueling
experiences. So I looked on him with a livelier suspicion, even as she
seemed to be doing.

In an undertone he now said something that brought the old man to his
feet. With fear written on their faces they talked for several minutes,
during which the blond jerked his head once or twice toward the gambling
rooms. The girl had leaned forward watching them intently. Then with a
peremptory order the old one sent him away and sank back into his chair;
but a moment later, clutching the tablecloth, he spoke a few words that
made her recoil in evident horror.

I did not know what to do or what to think, so I merely watched with
every sense alert. I saw him call the waiter for his settlement, I saw
him take out a large roll of money and with trembling fingers peel off
the outside bill--a new and crinkly fifty-dollar note. I saw the girl
idly marking on the winecard with a small gold pencil, though her eyes
were veiling an intense excitement; and when the waiter returned with a
pile of change which the old man began to count, I saw her furtively
slip the winecard to her lap. A moment later it fell to the floor as she
arose to leave.

Together they started toward the exit, but having taken a few steps she
left him with a brief word and returned, presumably for her glove.
Partially free from his eternal vigilance, she raised her eyes without
dissimulation and looked quickly, appealingly into mine; then down at
her hand, on which she leaned, whose fingers were unfolding from a
little ball of paper. Again into my eyes she looked--a look of infinite
appeal.

Across the void from her world to my own she was signaling--trying to
tell me what?--and frantically my fancy sprang to translate the message.
But as the man, with growing agitation, had been watching narrowly
throughout this--a condition of which I felt sure she must be acutely
aware--I dared not make the slightest sign. Yet she seemed to understand
and, joining him, they passed out.

I pounced upon that crumpled ball of paper and was back in my chair
unfolding it with nervous fingers. Feverishly pressing out the creases I
saw that it was, indeed, a corner torn from the winecard, and written
upon it--nothing. Absolutely nothing!

Perhaps I should have laughed, but as a matter of fact I cursed. Deep in
my soul I cursed. Her little joke, her pretty bit of acting, had left a
stinging sense of loss. As suddenly as this ruthless comet swept into my
orbit it had swung out and on; for one delicious moment we had touched
across the infinite, but now my harmony was shattered, the strings of my
harp were snapped, curled up, and could not be made to play again.

But the Spanish girl was playing her guitar, once more singing her
impassioned song of the enchanted island in its sea of love, which made
me pity myself so much that I permitted the waiter again to fill my
glass. What a wondrous adventure this night might have brought!

Such thoughts wore not to be profaned by the companionship of Tommy and
Monsieur, so I slipped away, hailed a cab and alighted at the Machina
wharf. The boatman there, whom I aroused to take me out, was one of the
most stupid fellows I've ever encountered. At any rate, someone was
stupid.

Going aboard the yacht I stood for a moment listening to the lonely
sweep of his oar sculling shoreward through the murky night. Over the
castellated walls of La Cabaña raced low, angry clouds. Was it a storm
brewing, or had some supernal madness touched the night?

The watch forward called in a guarded voice: "All right, sir?" to which
I answered, "All right," then went cautiously across deck and crept down
the companionway stairs. The cabin was dark so I felt for my stateroom,
passed in and closed the door. Somehow my fingers could not locate the
light jet, but what matter? In three minutes I had undressed and was
fast asleep.




CHAPTER IV

NIRVANA


A pleasant sense of motion came over me that suggested cradling waves,
and I was sleepily wondering why we had gone out on a day that portended
storms, when a tapping at my stateroom door was followed by someone
whispering:

"Aren't you ever going to get up, you lazy old dear?"

It was a girl's voice.

Gradually and cautiously I drew the sheet about my chin, feeling no
little confused to have a girl five feet away whispering pet names at me
through a thin partition.

"Aren't you?" she repeated, more sweetly imperious.

"You bet," I stammered.

"Then do hurry! It's almost ten, and I've been waiting such a long
time!"

Whereupon I heard her moving off, pressing her hands against the panels
for steadiness, and there struck me as having been an endearing pathos
in the way she said: "such a long time!"

This was, no doubt, some of Tommy's doing. He had invited friends aboard
for luncheon, and was now daring one of them to play this joke. But my
glance turned to the room, to its equipment and toilette articles which
were large and curiously shaped, and the numbing truth crept into my
brain that the stupid boatman had put me on the wrong yacht.

I had known some tight places in France, but this one simply squeezed me
all over. There was nothing for it, of course, but go out and
explain--yet how could a chap appear at noon draped in a sheet! The
situation confused me, but I decided to search the wardrobe, of my
unknown host, to borrow his razor, appropriate a new toothbrush that
should be found in a box somewhere, and select flannels and linens in
keeping with the hour. Still balanced between confusion and panic I must
have done these things because, fittingly attired though with no very
good fit, I opened my door, stepped softly along the passageway, and
entered the cabin.

On a wide couch built in at one side a girl lay reading. Her head was
toward me, but as I advanced she arose with a low cry of gladness,
saying:

"So you're here at last----!" then with a little gasp drew back, facing
me in the most entrancing attitude of bewilderment.

It was the girl who had left that ball of paper!

The sea, always my friend, at this moment did a rather decent thing; it
gave the yacht a firm but gentle lurch and sent us into each other's
arms. Perhaps nothing else in all the world of chances could so
effectively have broken the ice between us, for we were laughing as I
helped her back to the couch; and, as our eyes met, again we laughed.

"I didn't know," she said, "that Father brought a guest aboard last
night!"

"Awkward of him, wasn't it?" I stammered, sparring for time.

"One is apt to be awkward in weather like this," she graciously
admitted.

"You don't know how profoundly aware I am of--of how terribly true that
is," I stumbled along. "Is he on deck?" For, oh, if I could only get to
see him five minutes alone!

"No, he's unusually lazy this morning; but I've called, him, the old
dear!"

A chill crept up my spine--crept up, crept down, and then criss-crossed.
But she must know of her mistake before we had gone so far that putting
me ashore would be a serious inconvenience--for I knew he would put me
ashore at the nearest point, if not, indeed, set me adrift in an open
boat. Therefore I suggested:

"Wouldn't it be a good idea to call him again? It's rather important!"

"Oh, you think we shouldn't have gone out in a storm like this? I've
been dreadfully uneasy!"

"No danger at all," I declared, with affected indifference, adding: "The
weather isn't half as rough as 'the old dear' will be, take my word for
it!"

A shadow of mystification passed over her wonderful face, yet she smiled
with well-bred tolerance, saying:

"You are quite droll."

"Drollery is the brother of good fellowship," I replied, helping her
across the reeling cabin. As I had feared, she went directly to my room
where the door had swung back showing an empty bunk.

"Why, he's up, after all," she glanced over her shoulder at me.

"I believe he is," I idiotically affirmed.

"But where?"--this more to herself.

"Hiding, maybe," I ventured, taking a facetious squint about.

"Hiding?" she asked, in mild surprise.

"Er--playing a trick on us! He's a funny old dog at tricks!"

"Funny old dog?" She drew slightly away from me. "Do you mean my father,
Mr.--er?"

"Jack," I prompted, more than ever embarrassed and wishing the ocean
would come up and swallow me; for I realized, alas, that my gods, by
whom I was reasonably well remembered in so far as concerned physique,
had been shamelessly remiss in their bestowal of brains.

"Jack?" she slowly repeated. "What an odd name!"

This made me feel queer.

"Where do you live," I asked, "that you think it's an odd name? The
States are crawling with Jacks! It's even the Democratic emblem!"

Her perplexity was fast approaching alarm when we heard a muffled report
above, followed by a trembling of the yacht. Someone called an order
that sounded far away in the wind.

"Hold tight," I said, "while I see if anything's wrong!"

But I did not leave her side, knowing exactly what had happened. We had
snapped our mainsheet, that was all; letting the boom swing out and
putting us in the trough of the waves where we might expect a few wobbly
minutes until the sailors could work in a new line. There was no danger
and I reassured her at once, but she merely asked:

"Was my father on deck?"

"I didn't look," I answered, wondering why she thought I knew.

"Won't you see?" Her patience was becoming exhausted.

"I'm crazy to. But first let me help you back--you can't make it
alone!"

"Oh, yes, I can," she murmured. "I always make things alone!"

I tried to fathom the meaning of this, but gave it up and started to go
on deck. If I could take her father off to one side and explain, well
and good. He would perhaps sympathize with my mistake when he understood
that it was partially the result of a desire to fill Monsieur with
spirits. Considering this, I spoiled everything by asking:

"What does he look like?"

"My father?" she gasped, in a wondering way.

"No--yes--certainly not! I mean--oh, this is intolerable! I don't know
your father, never saw him in my life--unless he was the one with you
last night when you drove me frantic with that ball of paper trick! But
what you did has nothing to do with my being here. I've not wilfully
followed. A stupid boatman mistook your yacht for my own when I was--I
mean to say, when I was too engrossed with the memory of you to notice
his mistake."

From alarm her look gave way to wonderment, then almost to mirth. It was
a hard place for a girl to be in, and I expected her to leave me now,
find the old chap and promptly have me hanged to a yard-arm. The fact
that there are no yard-arms on schooner yachts made no difference. And I
do believe she was considering that when a sailor passed us, looking
enough like Tommy to have been his twin brother.

"Jack," she said to him, "tell Mr. Graham to come below!"

The fellow saluted and left, and I stared at her in surprise, saying:

"Then my name can't seem very odd to you, Miss Graham!"

She was regarding me as though trying to discover what kind of a species
I was that had got on her father's yacht, when the sailor came back
followed by a husky brute in uniform. Intuitively I stiffened to meet
the crisis, but even at this eleventh hour a respite came.

"He ain't aboard," the other Jack whispered, and the captain--for the
burly one was only the captain, after all--saluted, saying:

"I've just now found out, ma'am, he ain't aboard!"

"Not aboard? What do you mean?"

"After bringing you on last night he went ashore again to get a little
ball of paper, but told me to sail the minute he returned. I don't
understand it, ma'am, for later the watch woke me to say Mr. Graham had
come."

"Good Lord," I groaned. "It was I, and not your father, who answered the
watch."

For several minutes we stared blankly into each other's faces, but it
was she who broke the deadly silence.

"We must hurry back," she calmly told him, adding with a nervous catch
in her breath: "What a joke on Daddy!"

"A scream of a joke," I muttered, "----one he'll roar over till
God-knows-when!"

"We can't go back, Miss Sylvia," the captain now said. "When our
mainsheet parted the boom gybed so hard that it opened a seam. It may
hold on this tack, and it may not, but we'd sink if the weather hit us
on the other side. So I'm making for Key West."

A suspicious quiver played over her lips as the big fellow turned and
went upstairs, and I began to hate myself rather cordially.

"Do you happen to have that--that ball of paper?" she asked, when the
threatened storm of tears had been controlled.

"No, I threw it down."

A look of terror came into her eyes as she gasped:

"Then he'll find it!"

"It won't matter if he does! You hadn't written anything on it!"

"Did you look on both sides of it?"

"I--I think so; of course, I must have. Did you write on the other
side?"

"I don't know which the other side is that you refer to," she answered
with some show of anger. "There were two sides, you know. Still, it
can't much matter now whether it had any sides or not."

This was very perplexing, the words no more so than the way she looked
at me while pronouncing them. Yet I hardly thought it should give her as
much concern as our leaky boat. The storm had grown worse, and more than
once she glanced anxiously at the portholes whose glass, over half the
time, were submerged by swirls of greenish water.

"It'll turn out all right," I said, gently. "And you mustn't be afraid
of this storm."

"I'm not afraid!"

"Yes, you are," I tenderly persisted, "but your skipper looks like a man
who'll bring us through."

"Your concern is most flattering," she frigidly replied. "But fear of
storms, and distress over the unhappiness one may be causing others, are
quite different phases of emotion."

"I stand corrected and rebuked," I humbly acknowledged. "Yet I want you
to know that my concern springs from a deeper source than flattery. I
want honestly to assure you----"

"Of course, there's less danger here than in port," she continued in the
same icy tone, utterly ignoring me, "for here, at least, we can't be
boarded at night by irresponsible people."

I winced.

"By people who drink," she added.

I winced again, for I seemed to be getting the winces now, and couldn't
stop.

"That isn't fair, Miss Graham! Circumstances are against me, but you
might suspend judgment till you know me better!"

"The circumstances require no further evidence," she said, with supreme
indifference.

"But circumstantial evidence," I felt pleased at turning her phrase,
"often wears the cap and bells, instead of the wig and gown!"

"I'm discovering that," she murmured, and added with a touch of sarcasm:
"The knack of making a catch phrase is often very agreeable, but
presupposes no presence of an idea."

Now I thought this most unkind of her, because I had been quite set up
by my retort; so, arising with as much dignity as the waves would
permit, I buttoned my coat, remarking:

"Then I'll go on deck, and leave you."

The coat was tight and, while fastening it, I felt something in an inner
pocket press against my side. There are few impulses more natural than
to investigate anything that has a curious feel in one's pocket, so
thrusting in my hand I brought forth a small round frame of brass, made
in the imitation of a porthole, encircling her photograph. This would
not have happened had I remembered being in her father's clothes, but
it was done, and I stood looking first at the picture and then at her.

"Give it to me," she cried.

"I don't see why," I temporized, not at all loath at having this chance
for revenge.

"It's mine," she imperiously announced.

"It may be a picture of you, but, as you perceive, not at this moment
your picture," and my eyes lowered again and lingered on it, for it was
indeed a wonderful likeness, moving me strangely by its amazing beauty.
The frame, too, gave it added charm, as she seemed really to be looking
out of a porthole.

"Give that to me this instant," she said, with such a show of passion
that I passively surrendered it, and started to walk away. Yet some
cruel power held my feet. I tried again to move, but could not.

Overhead the men were working desperately at the pumps to keep us
afloat. One of them left his place and passed us, whispering:

"It's no use--we're gone!"

The cabin was in twilight as I again turned to her. She had crawled to
the far corner of the couch, and lay staring at the ceiling--waiting.
Here in this dismal room, alone and facing death with a courage amazing
to behold, she made a picture which so stirred me that despite earlier
wounded feelings I went to her side. The little hands were cold and
inert when I took them, but her fingers tightened ever so gently.

"Did he say we're going down?" she quietly asked, without turning her
head.

"Yes," I answered--though both of us spoke in whispers.

"I'm sorry to have been unkind," she said, withdrawing one of her hands
and laying it on the back of my own--for Death is a great leveler of
conventions.

The pathetic resignation in her voice brought hot tears to my eyes and,
raising her fingers to my lips, I murmured:

"You're the sweetest angel I ever knew!"

For a long time we sat in the gathering darkness, holding to each other
as two little children lost in the night. Finally I heard her whisper:

"Why am I not afraid--now?"

I turned and looked down at her; down into those eyes gazing back at me
through a magnetizing moisture that drew my face nearer, nearer.

"Because," I said, "we've found something which outlives death!"

"Yes," she whispered, as her arms moved sweetly up around my neck--but
the next instant they held me off, as she gasped: "Look! Look! The end
is here!"

Quite a foot of water was swashing back and forth over the cabin floor,
while a steady stream poured down the companionway stairs. Yes, the end
was here!

"Take this," she hurriedly pressed into my hand the round brass frame
that held her picture--the frame fashioned after a porthole. "Keep
it--then come to me! Swear!"

"I swear," I gasped. "But where shall I find you? In what strange land
will you be?"

Her eyes were wide with a frightened look that even in our extremity
gave the lie to fear. Through parted, expectant lips a trembling sigh of
inexpressible sweetness seemed to carry her answer; it was brought by
the mystery of her look, by the clasp of our senses--for I know she did
not speak a word:

    "I'll wait beneath the palms on one of many, many islands,
    Set as emerald jewels in an ever-changing sea;
    My hammock swings beside a pool of purling, crystal water
    Whisp'ring to the shadows of a lonely Arcady;
    The Spanish moss hangs solemn in long streamers from the cypress,
    The paths are soft and noiseless with dead needles of the pine,
    The nights are still and fragrant, and I'll wait----

Ah!" she broke the measure with a despairing cry and struggled to get
from my arms, as another voice, far away but familiar, began to call my
name. Then slowly my eyes opened and beheld Bilkins looking down at me,
in my own stateroom, where my clothes were lying as I had thrown them
off the night before.

"I've called you twice, sir," he was saying. "It's almost ten o'clock,
and I'm afraid your bath is cold."

"I want it cold," I murmured, staring up at him. "God, Bilkins, I've had
a most extraordinary dream!"

"If it's bad don't tell it before breakfast, sir, whatever you do! Just
hold on a minute, and I'll bring your tray right in!"




CHAPTER V

"TO THE VERY END!"


I dressed hurriedly, wanting to be on deck and get a more searching view
of the yacht near which we had anchored. Stepping out into the cockpit,
therefore, I looked hungrily toward her mooring place, but it was
vacant.

"Where has she gone?" I asked Tommy, who was the only one about.

"The etiquette of this yacht requires its owner first to say 'good
morning' when he comes up at break of day," he grinned at me accusingly.
"The little professor won eight hundred dollars from the proud Castilian
last night--I hope Dame Fortune was as kind to you!"

"She was diverting," I admitted. "Where's Monsieur now?"

"'Sleep. We didn't turn in till an unholy hour. He got up at seven from
force of habit, fussed around a while, took some pictures of the
neighborhood and developed them, but by that time the poor old door-mat
couldn't keep his eyes open. Do you know he wept all the way home last
night, telling me how good we were to him?"

We laughed.

"But, Tommy, where's the yacht that was over there yesterday?"

"Her? Oh, she cleared this morning--and listen to me, boy, if you want
to see a dream just cast your eye on that last film of Monsieur's!"

See a dream! Great heavens, if I wanted to see a dream!

He led the way aft to a ribbon of freshly developed film hanging from
the boom to dry and, as I gingerly raised it to the light, he went on to
explain:

"It was boorish of him, but I'm to blame. We were standing forward after
breakfast snapping the harbor when that yacht weighed anchor and swung
across our bow less than thirty feet off; and, Jack, with the prettiest
girl I ever saw--barring Nell--looking out at us through a porthole.
'Shoot her,' I whispered. So he swung his camera and shot, and she gave
a darling little gasp and ducked."

I had come to the last negative and there, with the porthole in exact
imitation of the round brass frame, was the same beautiful face of the
same beautiful girl I'd left in that wondrous dream!

"Sylvia Graham," I cried.

"The devil," Tommy straightened up. "Graham's the chap who owns that
boat! Gates found it out this morning, but how did you know?"

My eyes were glued to the negative.

"They cleared for Key West, Tommy?"

"So Gates said. Has he told you?"

"I haven't seen him since yesterday," I murmured, still unable to look
away from that strip of gelatine which held the image of my world.

"He didn't know anything about it yesterday, either," Tommy announced,
and I felt him regarding me in some slight amusement, as though he
thought I had a secret up my sleeve that I was trying to keep from him.
"What's the cute little idea, son? I've told you where she cleared for,
now clear me up!"

"Tommy," I let the film swing back and caught him by the shoulders,
"Miss Graham's father carries a photograph like that in the inside
pocket of a white flannel coat which hangs behind his stateroom door!"

He looked me up and down, this time more seriously, and murmured:

"Whiz-bang!--but you must have been heroically decorated last night!
Still, I can't see that it hurt you much, for you look about twice as
fit as when we left Miami."

"I'll bet I didn't drink an ounce more than you, or Monsieur," I
declared. "The facts of the matter are, Tommy, that there's a lot mighty
curious about this picture!"

"Really?" he grinned. "You go below and take something with a dash of
bitters in it."

"Dry up," I snapped. "I tell you I'm going to catch up with that yacht
if we have to follow her around the world!"

He gave a low whistle, saying with good-natured tolerance:

"Looks like the big adventure's on the wing, doesn't it! Well, I don't
mind chasing the old tub, or doing any other damphule thing in reason,
but what's the game? Put me next! When was this earthquake that loosened
all your little rivets? Speak up, son--I'm your _padre_!"

"It's hard to explain," I turned again to the negative, feeling too
serious for his asinine humor. "But I'll honestly try to before night.
This girl needs me. I don't know why or how, but she does. What's more,
I'm going to find her. It's the most unheard-of situation, old man."

"I'd be ashamed to belittle a situation like this by the mere term
'unheard-of,'" he now laughed outright. "Anyhow, she doesn't need you at
present quite as much as you need scientific attention--and I hear the
professor moving around!"

Stepping to the companionway door he bawled some nonsense to our guest
about bringing up his medicine chest and a rope, then turned back to me.

"You see, Jack, I consider this to be serious. As long as I've known you
that lady in the porthole is the first female you've ever thought of
with any sign of, what I might call, _ardeur_. Where you met her is your
business, but how you're going to get her must naturally concern us all.
Hence Monsieur to consult with!"

We could hear Monsieur's grunts and wheezes before he appeared, and on
catching sight of me he actually skipped to us. It was a grotesque
exhibition that made me burst out laughing. His hair was tousled, his
eyes were half closed, and he looked about as much like a scrambled egg
as anything I could think of.

"We lost you last night," he cried. "You ran away from us?"

"He was poisoned," Tommy blandly answered, "and now his heart's kind of
upside-down and twisty."

"Upside-down and twisty?" he gasped.

"Tommy doesn't mean it's anything dangerous, just an affection; a kind
of--a kind of----"

"A kind of affectionate affection," Tommy put in. "You see, he was stung
there, and it itches, and he can't scratch it."

"Stung on the heart? _Sacré nomme!_" The old fellow clasped his head in
both hands and stared at us.

"You fascinating little ass," Tommy murmured, "did you ever hear of
love?"

"Love?" the professor's face beamed into twice its usual breadth. "You,
my boy Jack? Is she a Spanish mademoiselle?"

"Good Lord, whoever heard of a Spanish mademoiselle! No, Jack says that
she's a lady in need, who lives in the pocket of her father's white
serge coat that hangs behind his stateroom door; and she's in a helluva
lot of trouble, but Jack doesn't know where else she is, so we're going
to comb out the universe and find her! Get the idea?"

"I will drink some coffee," he stammered, and disappeared.

Tommy and I decided that we must be after the _Orchid_ without losing a
minute, as there was still a chance of drawing in sight of her before
she could leave Key West. Yet I first had a mission to fulfill at the
café, nor did I confide this at once to him lest he brand me a total
wreck. I knew that he was delighted at the prospect of this bizarre
chase, however chimeric it might seem to him, for he possessed the
faculty of "playing-true" even in the veriest of fairy-tales. So for the
moment I let the other matter rest, not realizing at the time that he
had read more of it in my face than I meant to show.

Gates, also, had caught the excitement and was waiting with the launch
to push off; and thus, while he concluded official duties at the port, I
entered the café--in the present unfriendly light a changed place from
the night before. As luck would have it, my own waiter was the first man
I saw.

"Do you remember finding a small piece of crumpled paper on my table
last night?" I asked.

"_Si_, Señor; the mad _caballero_ came for it."

"Did he get it?"

"But, no, Señor," the waiter lowered his voice. "Yet he came near to,
being much angry, and calling you--pardon me!"

"Well, what? What, man?"

He still hesitated, so I carelessly took out my wallet. It's amazing,
the power of a wallet!

"He demanded the paper of our _maître d'hôtel_, saying you, Señor, were
a pig of a detective--and as we admire the detective not at all,
everyone searched for it. But I had seen other things, Señor," he smiled
knowingly.

"You have it?"

"_Si, si,_--but not so loud! Could I give it to the old one? Even a poor
waiter may sometimes observe! _Mas vale saber que haber, Señor_," he
shrugged and smiled as the ancient proverb slipped from his tongue.

"You've a mighty level head on you, kid," I agreed; a metaphor he may or
may not have understood. There was no doubt in my mind that his words,
"wisdom is better than wealth," were never more aptly spoken.

"I saw it after you left, Señor, and put it away--so! The mad
_caballero_ soon came--he was not happy. We searched the floor, and all
the time he was shaking his head and mumbling that Mademoiselle had
confessed to writing it--and to a detective! He was quite crazy. Ah,
with what care and sympathy did I help him, Señor, and how generously
did he reward my careful search!"

He shrugged and smiled, then drew the paper from his pocket, and I
slipped it into mine--passing him back another kind of paper that he
slipped into his with a grateful bow.

"Do you know who the man is, or if that was his daughter?"

"No, Señor. I have seen them, but can not remember where. Carlos served
their table--but Carlos is stupid," he shrugged compassionately.

The moment my cab turned the first corner I feverishly took out that
precious paper. Sure enough, on one side were marks _I_ had not seen,
but the pencilling was very faint--having had the soft tablecloth for a
desk, perhaps--and showed only a meandering line, curving in and out
through a group of dots. From every angle I studied it, coming to two
conclusions: first, that it could mean nothing; and second, that I must
have imbibed more freely than I thought to have overlooked this.

But now I saw, fainter than the dots, something that resembled written
words. They were so obscure, indeed, that although the light was
excellent my jostling cab made it impossible for me to decipher them.
Telling the driver to stop, I bent over again, and laboriously read:

"I am on Mr. Graham's yacht in great da----"

At this place, as I looked back upon last night, the old chap had
indicated his wish to leave, and she, tearing off a corner, had let the
wine card slip to the floor. It explained the broken word, the sudden
interruption; and this much was not a dream, neither was the disturbing
message in my hands--for what else but "danger" could the "da" mean?

All was ready to weigh anchor when I stepped aboard, and when we were
outside the harbor, drawing nicely toward the north, Tommy came up
grumbling.

"This mystery's getting heavy," he said. "Put us wise!"

So I pushed him into a chair, and called the professor and Gates; then
when the four of us were comfortably settled, the cushions fitting our
shoulders, our pipes alight, our spirits glowing with that exhilaration
which a yacht can bring as she lays over and cuts the waves, I told the
story from beginning to end--sparing Sylvia where I should.

For some minutes they smoked with their eyes downcast. Then Monsieur
looked up in his mild way, asking:

"May I see the paper?"

I passed it to him and we drew together, studying it.

"This is the most singular part of the affair," he said, leaning back,
"because it first came to you in fact, although the man's returning for
it was told in the dream--and later verified. The dots and line mean
nothing, perhaps, but that interrupted message!--ah, truly it spells
danger! What danger? She spoke of no danger in the dream?"

Now, it may seem strange or not, but I had begun to lose track of the
places where the dream came in and where they left off. The actual was
so woven with the unreal that I had to stop and consider this question.
The paper episode, the vividness with which Sylvia had appeared to me,
the brass frame made in the imitation of a porthole, and the camera's
film, all contributed to a confusion not unshared by my three friends.

"It's a darned funny coincidence," said Tommy, in an awed voice. "But,
Jack, you don't think more seriously of it, do you?"

"Would we be chasing these people if I didn't?" I temporized with
another question.

He seemed to be troubled, glancing toward the thoughtful professor as
if expecting him to speak, and when this was not forthcoming he asked
again:

"Well, friend gezabo, what do you think?"

The little scientist lowered his pipe, sighed and impressively answered:

"It is not given to all men to see this invisible agency at work."

The profoundly solemn way he said this made Tommy's eyes grow round.
Ghost and mystery tales imparted during his childhood by black mammies
and other negro servants had endowed him with a considerable amount of
superstition that not infrequently prevailed against his better
judgment. So now, when the erudite Monsieur treated my experience with
reverence, even introducing an element of mysticism, Tommy wavered.

"Whiz-bang! You don't really believe that spooky stuff, do you?"

"To my knowledge," Monsieur answered, "I have seen one case. You have
heard me speak of Azuria. Well, many years ago a friend of mine,
daughter of our King Christopher, fell to worrying about her cousin, a
profligate who divided his time between the palace and Paris. As a
punishment for various escapades the King had curtailed his allowance to
a mere pittance, yet he seemed in spite of this to have as much money as
before. It was this fact that worried my friend--the fear of a scandal.

"One night she dreamed that her child, a girl of nearly three, was being
kidnaped. She arose in her sleep to follow, walking the length of the
palace, and awoke to find herself in the cousin's room--standing,
indeed, behind his chair as he bent beneath a shaded lamp earnestly
working on a plate for spurious money. Instantly she threatened to
expose him to the King.

"Well, to shorten a long story, that night he did actually kidnap the
child, leaving a note to my friend in which he suggested a compromise.
But there was no compromise with villainy in her make-up. The old King
was much affected. Yet there were things in the air at that time,
delicate situations of state, which demanded consideration. The
kidnaping, if made public, would have produced a most disquieting effect
in certain quarters. Our treaty with a powerful state had just been
signed, based on the little princess' betrothal--you see? Therefore, her
disappearance must be kept a secret for a while, so the police of the
world were not notified. But that night ten men--a few of them loyal
subjects and the others paid agents--left the capital. Thus a relentless
search began, being carried to the ends of the world. A noted rogue,
that fellow was--yet, strange to say, in earlier life a man of parts, an
esthetic, an artist and musician of great ability; but _mon Dieu_, what
a scoundrel!"

"Where did they find the little princess?" Tommy asked, after a pause.

"She was never found," he answered softly. "Word once came that she had
died; again that she lived--but this I begin to doubt. So her mother
reigns as regent, and in sorrow. Old Christopher had two daughters, the
younger of whom----" but he stopped in confusion, his face turning very
red. Later I remembered this.

We fell into a silence, a mutual sympathy for the bereaved lady who had
been so wronged. At last Tommy asked:

"Do you cross your heart that Jack's dream was anything like the one she
had?"

"Dream?" Monsieur ran his fingers through his shock of hair. "Who can
say? Was she dreaming, or did she see a vision? If a vision, why did it
mislead by urging her into the very step that brought disaster? That
scoundrel might never have considered kidnaping the child had the mother
remained unsuspicious of his occupation! Yet visions are sent to warn
against, not to court dangers. Again, some hold that he happened to be
contemplating this step as a means of escape should discovery come, and
so it was his thought transmitted to her."

"For goodness sake talk sense," I cried. "What difference does it make
whether they were dreams or nightmares, or how much the cousin was
thinking! What we want to know is where does my dream come in!"

He looked so hurt that I apologized by saying his fairy talk had sent me
off my head. Small wonder, for when our guest attempted to explain a
theory he proceeded on the assumption that we were as well versed in it
as himself. Anyway, we smoothed him down and now, looking at us
solemnly, he said:

"Latter-day English-speaking psychologists to the contrary
notwithstanding, we know in the East that souls do travel abroad; that
they will speak, one to another, while our bodies sleep--while we are
steeped in that mysterious period of mimic death which leads us so
uncannily near their twilight zone! Some men hold that our dreams are
vagaries, as a puff of air or a passing breeze; others that they are
unfulfilled desires; still others that they are the impress made by
another soul upon the subliminal part of us, that leaves to our active
senses but imperfectly translatable hieroglyphics. Does that show you
nothing?"

"Well," I temporized, "I can't say it shows me much. How about you,
Tommy?"

"Smell a little smoke, but don't see any bright light yet. Elucidate,
professor!"

He sighed, giving us a look of pity, I thought.

"If I call to a man, and the space is great, my voice may fail before
reaching him. Yet if it hangs its vibrations on a puff of air, a passing
breeze that blows in his direction, he hears me! So does the soul employ
the passing breeze--by which I mean the capricious thing called
dreaming--to enter our consciousness that might not otherwise be
reached. The impossibility is to say which is which--that is, which is
the unfulfilled desire, which is but the capricious passing breeze, and
which is the message from another! If in the dark an uneducated fellow
sits at a piano he might play several lovely chords, yet while they
sounded well there would be no intelligence behind them. Such is the
chance dream! But a master-player could produce a rhapsody, expressing
to one who listened hope, love, desire, warning--everything. Such is the
harmonious blending of soul and soul in sleep! And how can we tell which
is which?"

He paused and gazed out at the water, and I saw in his face the
peculiarly wistful expression that so often accompanies thoughts which
are both elusive and far away. The index finger of his right hand was
slightly raised, indicating a subconscious impulse to point upward.
Slowly turning back to us, he said in a tone of solemnity that lingers
with me even now, a year later, as I write of it:

"In the Psalms we find these merciful words: 'He giveth His beloved
sleep.' Yet they are but an imperfect translation of the original, which
reads: 'He giveth _to_ His beloved _in_ sleep.' Do you not see here a
greater meaning? Do your minds not at once grasp the corollary?"

"Then you mean," Tommy asked, "that every dream is intended to express
something?"

"I will not go quite that far, although there are men highly practiced
in the science of psycho-analytical research who stoutly affirm it. Ah,
the great difficulty is in drawing the line--in determining which dreams
are but passing breezes and which are sent to us upon the wings of
angels!"

"You've studied those things," I ventured. "Which was mine?"

"Study!" he cried, with a fine degree of scorn. "Yes, we study! We
gather around the brink of a black well and steep ourselves in thought;
we wrinkle our brows and tear our beards. Cries one: 'I know what is
down there!' Another turns to him: 'You lie!' A third challenges: 'Prove
yourselves!' And thus do professors, students, psychologists, churchmen,
laymen, infidels, and fools, gather about the pit! This much for study,"
he snapped his finger. "Unless a man have faith, he is in darkness to
the end of his days!"

"All the same, I believe someone tried to warn the princess," Tommy
insisted. "And it couldn't have been anything less than a master-player
that got off that rhapsody to Jack last night!" There was a note of
teasing in this that the others did not detect.

"Well, Mr. Thomas, you're wrong, sir." Gates, who had been listening
attentively, now uncrossed his legs and spoke. "There isn't a single
curious thing in Mr. Jack's dream. Anyone can see how it came
about--with my apologies to you, sir," he bowed to Monsieur.

We laughed, because Gates had not impressed us as being much of a
psychologist, and Tommy said:

"If you explain how he knew what Graham's name was, I'll listen."

"Why, sir, he saw it on the paper the night before--for it was there, as
sure as you live, and he says he looked at the paper. The only thing is,
he didn't know he saw it--being a little gone in his cups, as you might
say. But he did see it, and it soaked into his head, waiting till arfter
he got to sleep before stirring around."

"That's my first clear idea," Tommy's face brightened; and Gates, thus
encouraged, added:

"The reason he dreamed the old man went ashore for the paper was because
he saw the lady being watched when she came back to her table--and I'll
venture he thought right then that the old one was about to come back,
too, and see what she was doing. Didn't you, sir?"

"I believe I did," I murmured.

"So that stuck in his mind and came out the wrong way, just like dreams
sometimes will. As for the photograph and brass frame--why, Mr. Thomas,
you and the professor took on so about that picture when he'd developed
it that Mr. Jack could have heard you in his sleep, and got that part of
his dream from what you said!"

"It does fit, doesn't it," Tommy cried. "And, Jack, the poetry Sylvia
breathed at you--wasn't it about the same thing our little Spanish girl
sang?"

"It had the same general idea," I admitted.

"There you are, sir," Gates announced, with a satisfied air. "So there
isn't a thing unusual about your dream, arfter all. It's as reasonable
as the general run."

Monsieur did not relish having his big occult smoke blown away in this
fashion; he looked at us with rather a sickish expression, as a boy
might have if someone stuck a pin in his toy balloon. But it was such a
relief to get back to practicalities that we let him sulk.

"Jack," Tommy asked, "do you think her real name is Sylvia?"

"Yes; I'm sure of that, anyhow!"

"How're you sure of it?"

"It fits her so absolutely," I answered with decision.

"But Revenge would fit her, too, wouldn't it? That's sweet," he grinned.

"Or Constancy," the professor smiled, for once becoming inspired as he
threw off his grouch.

"Try Ignorance!" This again from Tommy, who made an attempt to look
blissful and only succeeded in making himself ridiculous, I thought.

Old Gates now stretched, cocked an eye up at the weather and, in a
drawl, asked:

"Would it be supposing a great deal, sir, to suggest that the lady might
be named Much-Learning?"

Whereupon we laughed uproariously, and Tommy slapped him on the knee,
exclaiming:

"Papa Gates, you've hit it! Truly, she hath made us mad!"

"All the same," I cried, arising and laughing down at them, "there's one
thing you can't explain away! The big adventure's come at last!--the
wildest chase----"

"Love chase," Tommy interposed.

"Chase," I repeated, "that man ever started! Are you fellows game enough
to see it through--to the very end?"

"_Are_ we?" Tommy yelled, springing to his feet. "To the very end! What
say, Gates?--Professor?"

"To the very end, sir," the old skipper's face beamed happily.

"Why, yes, my boys," Monsieur declared. "To the very
end,--_certainement!_"

And Gates must have confided this to the crew, for later, as I passed
the mate, that worthy gave his forelock a pull and whispered:

"To the very end, sir!"

It pleased me immensely.




CHAPTER VI

A VOICE FROM THE WATER


A perfect tropical night crept down on us, with the sky a deep and
velvety blue, and the stars low enough to touch. Brilliant
phosphorescence dashed from our bow and a silvery streak trailed in our
wake emphasizing the enchantment as the _Whim_ rose, leaned, and dipped
over the bosom of the breathing Gulf. So, also, were my hopes; now up,
now down, on the breast of another fickle monster. Love and the sea!
Have they not always been counterparts? Do they not span the known and
unknown in each man's world, carrying some in safety--others destroying?

It must have been nine o'clock when the forward watch called and,
springing to the rail, peering through the darkness, we saw down upon
the horizon the fixed white eye and three red sectors of the Key West
light.

"A good run, Gates."

"Nothing of our size can beat it, sir."

"You think the _Orchid_ will be in harbor?"

"I carn't say, sir. She had six hours' start of us, and could have
left."

"How long do we lay off this burg?" Tommy asked, sauntering up.

"That depends. If the mysterious yacht's here we'll stay till something
happens."

"And if she isn't," he nudged the professor, "we'll comb out the
universe. You get that, don't you? A nice fat job, I'll say it is!
How'll we know which way to start? Gates, couldn't you get a peep at her
papers in the port?" But the skipper solemnly shook his head, saying:

"It carn't be done, sir."

"Well, Jack, when customs are finished we'll take the launch and comb
out the harbor, anyhow! She'll be anchored nearby, like as not."

Not caring to tie up at the dock we chose a berth far enough out to
escape the electric glare ashore, and had hardly swung-to when Gates was
off in his gig to clear our papers. The port officials were astir and
accommodatingly looked us over without loss of time, for the skipper had
mentioned our wish to leave whenever the spirit moved us. Those, indeed,
had been his identical words, and I wondered if they were
prophetic--whenever the spirit moved us!

They were a nice pair of fellows, those American officers, and before
going into business--a mere formality in our case--we gathered in the
cockpit for a long straw and a bowl of ice. The occasion was more
agreeable for possessing that sense of aloofness one feels at being on
the edge, yet safely beyond the reach, of a little city's night
diversions and excitements.

"I suppose you've nothing dutiable," one said, knowing we had left
Havana unexpectedly soon.

"Nothing," Tommy volunteered.

"But, yes," Monsieur exclaimed. "I shall declare!"

"About the only thing he brought away was a wad of money from a roulette
game," I laughed.

"Ah, I surprise you," he cried, in high good humor, ducking below; and
was soon heard struggling up the stairs, crying: "Give me help!"

Into our hands then he began thrusting packages of cigars; packages
containing a dozen boxes each, until the cockpit looked like moving day
in a tobacco shop. Behind the last of these, he came.

"Oh, _là là_," Tommy's jaw dropped. "Where did you tie up with this
stuff? We've been together all the time!"

"Not all the time," the professor chuckled. "Before you were awake this
morning I was in town for camera supplies, and brought back, also, much
of that most genial and ameliorating of influences exerted upon us in
life--cigars! How much do I pay?"

"How many have you?"

"Ten thousand."

"Ten thousand cigars!" We stared at him.

"That's a lot of ameliorating influence," one of the officers laughed.
"But, in spite of it, I'll have to charge you on nine thousand, nine
hundred--unless a hundred belong to each of your friends. Everyone's
entitled to bring in a hundred free."

"A hundred are mine," Tommy spoke up at once. "I haven't won cigars so
fast, ever! Jack, you for a hundred. Gates, you, too. Colonel," he
turned to the officer--out of the Army he scattered the titles of
Colonel, Judge, Governor and Parson with a free hand--"suppose you all
take a hundred each. It'll be a whole lot cheaper for Sir Walter, here!"

The professor was giggling.

"They have cost me nothing," he cried, "for last night I have won almost
a thousand dollars at that wretched place--see, here is plenty with
which to pay!"

And a fortunate thing it was that he had, being called on for something
in the neighborhood of three hundred dollars.

The officer--Hardwick, by name--and his associate were good fellows, as
I have said. They had greeted us as congenial spirits and, probably on
this account, I noticed some embarrassment on his part when he leaned
into the light and slowly looked over the money Monsieur had given him.
The rest of us were conversing in a more or less distrait fashion till
this unpleasant duty should be finished, when he took an electric torch
from his pocket and flashed it on one of the bills; then on another, and
so through the lot. Hesitatingly he touched Monsieur's arm, asking:

"Is this the money you won last night?"

"That? It is just as they paid me."

A moment of silence, then:

"I'm sorry to tell you, but these two fifty-dollar bills are
counterfeits."

There ensued an absolute hush, and before my eyes arose the vision of
Sylvia's father paying his supper check with a crisp fifty.

"Counterfeit," the professor mused, putting out a hand for them and
moving nearer the light. "Strange! Just today I was speaking of a
counterfeiter!" And Tommy, in an awed voice, asked:

"You don't think it's more dreams?"

The officials, I rather suspected, were beginning to look at us askance.
Our various attitudes at this discovery were scarcely in accordance with
the usually accepted actions of innocent people; on the contrary, with
but a grain of imagination, we might be branded as a trio of rascals
trying to stall out of a tight place. My apprehension was more confirmed
when Hardwick, a shade less cordial, said:

"As a United States official, I should like to hear your views about
these."

Now Tommy looked across at me and I saw that he was awake. Monsieur, on
the other hand, remained blissfully indifferent that anything might be
out of the ordinary--except, of course, being loaded with a hundred
dollars of bad money, which does not happen every day.

"My counterfeiter?" he smiled innocently. "Yes, he could have done
these. His plates are all but perfect. And these bills--you will admit
they almost fooled you!" Whereupon he laughed.

Tommy fidgeted, saying:

"Have a care, gezabo, or you'll be sending us to the rock pile!"

"My friend is cut-upping," Monsieur beamed on the official, but met with
no more hearty response than the dry acquiescence:

"I've no doubt of it. But suppose you tell me more of your other
friend--the counterfeiter!"

"Friend? _My_ friend?" Monsieur's face now became the picture of horror.
"I was telling these boys of one who disappeared years ago, and
afterwards the police showed me some plates found in his rooms! _My_
friend!"

Hardwick began to laugh.

"Please accept my apologies, but, really, for the moment----"

"Don't mention it," Tommy interrupted him, handing across a newly opened
box of cigars. "I understand you--the professor couldn't!"

Returning to the important subject, Hardwick said:

"Whoever put these out is probably in Cuba. You got them at the
café----?"

"Quite so," Monsieur exclaimed, warming up with the notion of doing
detective work. "I was playing roulette--but, pardon me, you have
heard."

"Do you remember any one around the table who showed new-looking bills?"

"No. We were the only ones playing, and but a few were looking on."

"The restaurant was crowded," Tommy said, "and connects with the
gambling rooms. Mightn't they send money back and forth if needed?"

"Quite probable."

In the silence that followed I started twice to tell him that Sylvia's
father had used a new bill of that denomination, yet the words would not
come. It seemed a sneaky thing to do, after she had turned to me for
help. Yet, if she were in danger, what quicker way to safety than arrest
the old vulture who had her in his power? So I said:

"Mr. Hardwick, last night in that restaurant I saw a man----" but this
time something stopped my words. It was a voice, a girl's voice,
beautiful with an impassioned ring of protest, that cried from some
place near us on the water:

"It isn't fair!"

It isn't fair! Oh, the just and pleading accusation of that cry! I
sprang up, loudly calling her name:

"Sylvia!"

There was not a breath of sound. Those with whom I had been conversing
were as mute as graven images, but in the black pall just beyond our
taffrail drifted the magnetic presence toward which every nerve and
fiber of my body pointed;--pointed, aye, tugged and wrestled with my
poor flesh to be free! Yet, silence; all silence. No sound, no vision,
no anything to guide me, other than my flashing brain and thumping heart
which spoke of her.

I saw one of our sailors staring at the water with strange owlish eyes,
and yelled at him:

"Into the gig, man!"

But this was frustrated before he moved, for some black shadow, showing
vaguely, glided out from beneath our rail and disappeared. I could not
be sure that I saw it, but the sailor did because he crossed himself.

"It ain't no use--now, sir," he managed to say.

My own eyes were trying to follow the eerie, silent thing which had
passed so spookily into the night, leaving the merest suggestion of
phosphorescence after it. Then an arm slipped affectionately about my
shoulders, and I felt that Tommy was also standing by, looking along the
trail of deadened sound. His face showed excitement, but he whispered
steadily enough:

"Come and sit down."

Indeed, now that the thing had disappeared, I felt like an ass; and,
resuming my seat, attempted to make the best of it.

"Really," I laughed, "you fellows mustn't judge a man too critically.
There was something in the voice of that young lady which took me off my
guard, and recalled--well, it recalled what you've all probably had
recalled by one means or another, at some time or other, during
your--er--lives." And I gave a weakish smile, waving my hand toward any
old thing in sight by way of saying: "You know, old chaps, how just that
one girl plays the devil with a fellow, sometimes!"

But the government officials received this in a different spirit than
that which I had hoped to arouse. They looked at me with a gravity most
disquieting, and Hardwick, suspicion written in every line of his face,
asked:

"Is the young lady a member of your party?"

"Heavens, no," I answered quickly. "Oh, no," I vigorously repeated. "We
don't know her, at all--none of us!"

An ominous silence followed this emphatic denial, and I could actually
_feel_ him making up his mind about us. It was an awful moment. At last
Tommy flecked the ash from his cigar and, with great deliberation,
asked:

"Colonel, do you believe in ghosts?"

"If you're serious," Hardwick snapped, "I certainly do not!"

"I'm serious, all right," Tommy purred, and I knew, from the unusually
soft quality of his voice, that, indeed, he was--"for, if you don't
believe in ghosts, you believe we're a bunch of damn crooks--oh, yes you
do!--and I may say that if you don't, you're a damn fool. _Now_ you see
how serious I am, and how serious this affair is! This man was telling
the exact truth when he said that none of us have ever heard that voice.
If we actually did hear it just now, the coincidence that brought a
small boat past us at this time of night, and prompted some woman in it
to speak when and what she did, is more inexplicable to me than you
think it is to you--because you've made up your mind to understand it. I
can, however, understand how any sweet voice on a night like this might
make my friend skid off his usually sane and normal track, because----"
he hesitated, adding slowly: "Hardwick, I can't go into my friend's
private affairs, but I wish to tell you that he's had a hell of a jolt,
and on account of a memory--a memory, Hardwick--we're at Key West
tonight. I trust, sir, that you won't misjudge, but rather fit these
fragments and supply the needed others; for I know that your
appreciation of--er--things is too delicate to allow me to proceed."

Be it noted that Tommy did tell but the simple truth; and, what is
more, he told it with such sincerity that, in a large measure, our
embarrassment became shifted over to our guests. Personally, I felt like
a howling ass to be staked out and exhibited as somebody's jilted Romeo,
but this was a welcome compromise; thrice welcome, since Hardwick's next
words showed that he had forgotten, or dismissed, the prelude to my
burst of confidence about "a man in the restaurant," for arising he
said:

"Well, we've kept you longer than we should. If this gentleman will give
my government good money for its revenue we'll bid you _bon voyage_. I
suppose there's no objection to my keeping those?" He pointed to the
spurious bills.

"I have paid dearly for them," the professor remonstrated.

"I'm sorry, but you won't lose any more than you've already lost--nor
gain more, as you won't think of using them!"

"Why should I not use them? I will use them--_certainement!_"

"Be explicit, or forever hold your peace," Tommy laughed. "Can't you see
the man reaching for his handcuffs?"

But Monsieur, thoroughly aroused, waved the crisp bills with a great
show of indignation, crying:

"If there is a way to run this cheat to earth I, alone, will know it!
Then you will want me to be telling you! For my own pleasure I have made
a study of counterfeiters and their methods. Perhaps it may surprise you
to learn that the police of Europe come to Bucharest and consult with
me, eh? Thus, if I may also help you, I must retain my bills!"

We laughed, although I felt tremendously proud of the professor, having
had no idea he was such a wonder; and Hardwick said, bowing:

"Then help yourself so I, also, may be helped. But let me take one for
my government and, when you finish with the other, mail it to me with
your report. I shall appreciate your assistance, really."

Monsieur was delighted.

They left us then, and again we settled about the cockpit; each waiting
for one of the others to begin. My own thoughts were like a whirlwind,
and my ears strained with listening toward the black Gulf--listening for
a voice, or the unnamable noise of the gods knew what, that might float
to me across the water. I think Tommy half expected me to suggest that
we take one of the small boats, and went to his room to put on darker
clothes. In a few minutes Monsieur yawned and followed him--though I
rather suspected that his yawn was caused more by nervousness than the
want of sleep. A moment later Gates, standing near the wheel, softly
called my name, so I arose and went to him.

It must be remembered that Gates was absolutely dependable. There were
no frills about the old skipper, he shared not one superstitious
sentiment in common with Tommy, and it is extremely doubtful if he knew
the sensation of fear; therefore, when I saw his face, I was astonished,
and in alarm asked:

"Are you ill?"

"No, sir, but I'm sore upset. Please come a bit more aft, sir."

Taking a few steps till we were abaft the traveler, he turned and
whispered:

"Mr. Jack, someone's been trying to blow us up!"




CHAPTER VII

A BOMB AND A DISCOVERY


It seemed that either Gates or I must be out of our senses.

"Blow us up!" I gasped, staring at him.

"As sure as you're born, sir! 'Twas about the time you called over the
rail. A little before that, as you gentlemen were talking, I heard a
small boat. She came near, and she came up sneaking. First I thought it
might be a sponge fisher with more curiosity than manners, but as she
didn't start on again I begun to cock my ear. Then something gave a rub
against our rudder post. I didn't like it. I was sitting back there,
anyhow, so just got to my hands and knees, and peeped over."

"Why didn't you challenge?"

"Because there's been strange doings these twenty-four hours parst, and
I knew your affairs might be taking a serious turn. I thought you'd be
wanting to know their play, 'stead of scaring 'em off. So I peeped and
listened. With my eyes getting fair used to the dark I made out a dinghy
with four men, and think they'd bent a line about our rudder post, for
the for'ard man seemed to be working at us silent and farst. The middle
one had the oars, ready to pull away. In the stern sheets sat the one I
guessed was boss and, kind of squatting down in front of him, was a lad.
To tell the truth, sir, I felt squirmy, for those night-hawks were up to
something mysterious."

"Wait a minute, Gates--did you recognize them?"

"Not me, sir. As I was saying, the fellow aft now parssed up a bundle to
the for'ard chap, who took it gingerly and began farstening it on to us
somewhere--I couldn't see. The young lad leaned over and looked at it,
then he up and sings out: 'It ain't fair!'"

"Yes, yes," I caught him by the shoulders. "Go on, Gates!"

"Mind out this thing under my coat," he warned. "Well, sir, the one that
was boss made a grab for him--Lor', how he did jerk him!--and the others
froze like stone. They stayed that way while you were calling, then the
dinghy glided off--the one aft still holding his hand over the lad's
mouth and kind of choking him with the other."

My blood was fairly steaming, and I cried out what was uppermost in my
mind:

"That wasn't a lad, Gates! It was a girl!"

His jaw dropped and he stared at me, but slowly shook his head.

"No, sir, it warn't a girl, or the fellow wouldn't have handled her so
rough. Besides, sir, he wore--the lad, I mean--a jacket and cap like you
or me."

"That doesn't mean anything. I tell you it was a girl--I'm sure of it!"

"Well, sir, you're wrong; for when they got out five fathom or so they
stopped--to listen, maybe. You were back in the cockpit by then, and I
guess the fellow must have let up on the young-un; for, all at once,
he--the lad, I mean--raked a match along the gunnel, for to take a
smoke, d'you see! My word, but the way he was grabbed this time would
have shocked you. I couldn't see it, but you could hear the youngster
gurgling. That shows it warn't a girl, sir!"

"What shows it? Because you think she wanted to smoke? Girls do, Gates!"

"They do that, sir, and I'm not gainsaying it; but they do it sociable,
arfter dinner, setting 'round the cockpit, as you might say. It's seldom
any of 'em has such a mortal craving for tobacco as to have to take a
suck at a little cigarette every time a man chokes her by the throat. My
word, no! It's the male sex that wants the weed under those
conditions--not a girl, sir!"

But I was seeing an entirely different version of the affair, so far as
the smoking went; and Gates would have seen it, too, if he hadn't been
so excited. She had not wanted to smoke, at all, but to signal us! I
knew it! I was never more sure of anything in all creation!

"And besides, sir," Gates now added, "no one would push his fingers into
a girl's throat like----"

"Stop," I cried, for I could not listen to more of this. If ever I
wanted to kill it was then. I wanted to get my own fingers on that
scoundrel's throat as he had dared touch hers; and in my heart I swore
by all the gods, by all the stars and moons and other things in the
heavens and under the sea, that I would strangle out his miserable life
by inches, or leave my bones to bleach on the shore of her unknown
island. Wherever it was, I would find it; wherever she was, I would find
her!--and God help him when he came my way! It was a classy oath, and I
felt a lot better for it.

"Now, sir," Gates's voice began to tremble with passion as he held up a
black thing that had been tucked under his coat, "this invention I took
off our rudder post when I rowed 'round to see what they'd been up to.
It's a dirty bomb, fixed to start us off for Davy Jones's Locker
sometime tonight, sir!"

"You're sure it can't start us off now?" I asked, taking it from his
hands.

"Not lest you get too familiar, sir. I've disconnected the clock part of
it."

"Have you any idea what those men looked like?"

He solemnly shook his head.

"You can't guess who they were, or why they wanted to blow us up?" I
persisted. "Shall we notify the port, or what?"

He stood a while silent before answering.

"Mr. Jack, God knows who they are. It was too dark for me to get any
satisfying squint at 'em; but I never saw 'em before--that I know. Three
things are sure: they're either lunatics, or they've taken us for some
mortal enemy, or----"

"Well?"

"Or I'm wrong in those two guesses, sir."

"But you think they're from the _Orchid_, don't you?"

"On another guess, I'd swear it, sir."

"And you're positive you never saw the yacht till yesterday--in any
port?"

"Never, sir. I even made inquiry about her in Havana before we cleared
to-day--that is, without exciting comment. A one-eyed stevedore said she
drops in there maybe once or twice a year, but he didn't know from
where. _I've_ never seen her, and I've sailed close to thirty year most
everywhere in these waters during winter seasons!"

"Well, I'm stumped," I admitted. "Let's take this to the professor and
see what he makes of it." So we went down together.

Monsieur, in his stateroom, sat bent over his counterfeit bill when I
quietly shoved the bomb in front of him. He sprang up with a broadside
of expletives that in the sunlight would have cast a wondrous rainbow.
It was a way with the little professor, and we had learned to keep
respectfully distant during such periods of effervescing energy.

"Tied to our rudder post," I told him.

He seemed to grasp the entire situation at once. I have never known such
a genius for corraling facts! In an instant his mind apparently galloped
completely around the boundary of our discovery, and then circled in.

"You have made it harmless," was his first oral observation.

"Gates did, yes; he disconnected the clock-work."

"It is quickly made, and crude," he mused, turning it over in his hands,
"but the work of one who is not a novice. Give me the other part!--um!
Very pretty, very pretty, indeed!" Then he looked up, calling: "My boy
Tommy, come! We are to see what we shall see!"

"See what?" Tommy sauntered in; but as we explained the situation he
looked positively hopeful. For the chief quality in Tommy that made him
so likable was his abiding love of danger. He would rather flirt with
death than a ravishing coquette--though I will not deny his preference
to play the pair.

"Oh, boy!" he now chuckled, giving my arm a squeeze.

As we gathered about the table, Monsieur took a knife and began to press
its blade into the covering of the bomb, saying:

"I have known the builder of one of these to leave his tracks inside,
trusting the explosion to obliterate them. But sometimes the machine
does not go off."

"Let's hope this'll be one of those times," Tommy murmured, "or we'll
pretty well leave our tracks all over the Gulf. Don't use any bad
judgment, Professor. Centuries are looking down at you!"

"I shall try not," he smiled, pushing the blade deeper and giving a
gentle twist.

"I should say he ought to be doing that ashore, sir," Gates whispered.
"Lor' knows this is no place----"

But Monsieur was speaking again.

"The gentleman who left it with us may have used bad judgment by not
exploding it himself. So much the worse for him. Steady!" he grunted,
peeling off another slice of the wrapper. "Yet, if criminals did not
sometimes use bad judgment, a sorry plight would be ours, eh? Moreover,
it is natural that they use bad judgment, for, being criminals, their
judgment is bad--primarily bad, or they would not be criminals."

"Please work without your tongue or talk without your hands," I said,
with a touch of irritation. "That thing's nervous for undivided
attention!"

The professor may not have heard, and in a monotone continued:

"The man who made it knew his business; therefore he is a student of
this type of explosives; therefore a police agent, a--what you
call--crank like myself, or a destroying criminal--that is, an
anarchist. Therefore he is the last named, since neither of the others
would want to blow up a gentleman's yacht. It seems clear to you?" he
asked, without raising his eyes; but none of us cared to divert his
attention by answering.

By now Monsieur had peeled off several pieces of the wrapper, and was
sprawled over the table with a powerful magnifying lens. For some time
he minutely studied them, finally squinting closely at a particular one
and beginning to show increased excitement. Arising and pushing by us,
he went to his many boxes and returned with a small glass-stoppered
bottle. It must have contained an acid; at any rate, he touched a drop
of it to a piece of the inner wrapping, then bent over to watch results.
Finally, with very bright eyes, he looked up announcing in a voice of
triumph:

"This paper is the kind they use for printing money on!"

We stared at him, but he volunteered nothing further, having again bent
over his search. For several minutes we watched in silence. Then he sat
up with a snap, as a steel spring might be released.

"The man who made this bomb made my counterfeit bank note," he cried.

Tommy and I jumped.

"Just so," he continued eagerly. "The bomb is a hurried affair,
impromptu, constructed of materials happening to be at hand when needed.
That necessity, we assume, arose within the last few hours, since we
have been in these waters but shortly. Here is a piece of the wrapper.
You make nothing of it, yet to my experienced knowledge I see the
identical paper on which my money is printed. The counterfeiter,
possessing a good resisting paper and suddenly desiring to make a bomb,
employs it. So much for so much! Now we have him a bomb-maker and a
counterfeiter;--then we shall eliminate the anarchist!"

"Why?" I asked.

"Because a counterfeiter of such skill--and this engraving is the work
of a master--implies long and intense application; therefore a secluded
life rather than one of following the red flag. Moreover, an anarchist
would be tempted into this risk, such as tried upon us, only to destroy
someone of great importance--which I may conclude no one of us is. And
irrespective of these reasons counterfeiters do not sympathize with
anarchy. The psychology of each must be diametric, for if there is no
government to make money there is no money to counterfeit. So the
anarchist in our case lacks motive, but the other finds it if he
suspects us of knowing his secret. So much for so much. Do we know any
counterfeiter's secret? No. Then a final theory: the placer of this bomb
has mistaken us for an enemy--he thinks we are whom we are not!"

"That's what I said," Gates interposed.

"But he does suspect us of knowing it," Tommy exclaimed, "or why did he
tell the waiter Jack was a detective?"

The professor, obviously disappointed, turned again to the bomb that was
fast reaching a state of _déshabille_--if bombs can be said to reach
that state.

"You assume this to be the work of people on that yacht," he said, with
a touch of annoyance. "Can you sustain that theory?"

"Why, of course, sir," Gates declared.

"A mere presumption, _mon Capitaine!_"

"But the voice," I challenged. "Don't you suppose I recognized it?"

"Tut-tut, my boy Jack! You have never actually heard the lady's voice!"
And as this was true I had nothing further to offer; but he brightened
up, adding: "We shall now go to the stomach of the bomb, if only to
enjoy ourselves."

"You've a curious idea of fun," I grunted.

"Just go easy," Tommy said. "She may be ticklish."

"Why not sink the wicked thing at once, sir," Gates urged. "We've seen
enough now to keep us awake nights, and I haven't any craving to look at
its stomach, Lor' knows I haven't!"

But the professor would not listen. Already he had recommenced the
exploration, gingerly removing some wires wrapped about the explosive
center, while we almost held our breaths lest he touch the wrong thing.
Once he smiled, and murmured: "_Le capitaine_ is right--it was made on
the _Orchid_!" Yet he did not stop work for this, and soon brought to
view two half sticks of dynamite, one of them ingeniously capped.
Leaning above this now, with his elbows on the table and his head in his
hands, he sank into a profound study, then startled us by giving a snort
and springing up, jostling the table so violently that the dynamite slid
gracefully toward the edge. Most happily Tommy grabbed it in time.

"Lor', sir, 'twas a close shave," Gates whispered, wiping his forehead.

But Monsieur remained blissfully unconscious of the mess so narrowly
averted. He was staring, breathing heavily, blinking and thinking. As
though walking in his sleep he again went to his mysterious bags, took
out something and began to study it through the lens. Then with a yell
he rushed at me, hugged me, kissed me on the cheek, held me off, and
hugged me again, crying over and over:

"I am right--I am right--I am right!"

He now caromed from me and in the same manner embraced Tommy, and after
this he tackled Gates. But Gates did not understand the continental
fashion of masculine salutations, and sternly disengaged himself,
saying:

"You carn't be right, sir! I don't know what's the matter, but it's easy
to see you carn't just be right!"

"_Sacré bleu!_" Monsieur stepped back, actually weeping with happiness.
"What stupid idiots we are! Can't you see?"

"I can see one," Tommy grinned at him sweetly.

"Ah, but look!" He thrust before us the thing he had taken from the bag.
It was that precious kodak film of Sylvia. "Look!" he cried. "You say
she is near to twenty--he, to seventy-five! But, more than all, I see
with my lens that here is the breathing likeness of the mother! Where
are your eyes, my boys? _Ciel_, must I tell you? She is the kidnaped
princess of Azuria!"

You who read may have surmised this; so might we, had we been reading
instead of making history. The human mind that leans above a printed
page possesses a more concentrated grasp of facts than the human atoms
who run over the earth collecting them. So I caught my breath and simply
stared, too dazed to speak. It seemed as though something had given me a
surprising whack that sent a thousand sparks before my eyes. But then
slowly the whole structure began to unfold. Each step of evidence we had
picked up since the memorable night but twenty-four hours ago, now took
its place as the panorama--not flawless, but with inviting
possibilities,--and passed across my brain.

It was very late when we pushed back from the table. In its center were
the counterfeit bill, the magnifying glass, parts of the thoroughly
dissected bomb, several pages of writing pad with the professor's
deductions; and by these were some of Gates' charts, the paper I had
procured from the waiter, and another page containing those mystic
sentences Sylvia had spoken for finding her island--because I thought it
fair to her that this should be laid before my friends, especially as
she had only said them in a dream.

Strangely enough the professor was willing to admit them to his scheme
of carrying on our pursuit--a chase which he now seemed determined to
direct--when even Tommy, the superstitious Tommy, declared they would
throw us off the track a thousand miles. I could think of no plan, for
altogether it did seem like combing out the universe for two human
atoms.

"We have one sure way, of course," the professor leaned wearily back.
"Keep the _Orchid_ in sight. If we do this till she reaches her lair,
all is well."

"I wouldn't doubt she sailed, sir, right arfter placing the bomb," Gates
ventured.

"Then we can't keep her in sight," said Tommy dolefully.

"Do not thwart me," the little fellow cried, with a sudden flare of
anger that made us smile in spite of the serious work at hand.

"We'd better go ashore first," I suggested, "and get authority to
capture her. The government can deputize us by sending along an
officer."

"Authority!" Monsieur puffed out his cheeks and snapped his finger.
"That for your government's authority! I have the authority with me!"

"You!" I exclaimed.

"_Certainement!_ I was one of those true friends who left the palace
years ago, with the old King's authority in my pocket! It is in that bag
now! It is absolute--absolute!--protecting me against anything I may do
in effecting her rescue and return. It is by far more powerful than
anything your government could give us! A King's order makes the police
of the world my underlings! Besides that, she is my special charge, and
no power this side of Azuria can abrogate my authority over her!"

A cold hand wrapped its fingers about my heart. The hopelessness of our
search would have been depressing enough had it not contained the spice
of chase, but to feel that it might be fruitful only to have her
snatched off into a world as unknown, as impossible to me as this far
off kingdom, was crazing. To me it would be like seeing her transported
from one star to another, while I remained on earth to gaze my eyes out
and eat my heart out with endless longing.

"Her mother is regent, you say?" Tommy asked, intuitively sympathizing
with my state of mind.

"Yes. In Roumania a woman may not ascend the throne alone, but in
Azuria, where the Ruman blood has never mixed, she may act as regent if
her heir is a girl too young to marry. But now," he clapped his hands
joyfully, "we can complete the alliance with a neighboring prince--and,
ah, what joy there will be!"

"You've got to catch her first," Tommy said, not without a trace of
spite. "Even if we get near enough to see him, at all, he can see us,
too; then lead us off the track till night and make a run for base."

"So he will, my boy Tommy. And if his lair is to the west, he will
doubtless lead us to the east. But we must sail at dawn--then we shall
see what we shall see!"

"Good night," I said, abruptly kicking back my chair.

Thus our meeting broke up; Gates going first to sink the dynamite and
then leave orders for all canvas to be stretched at peep o' day. Tommy
came on deck with me, and we stood a while looking into the black water.
Off in the town, in a side street near the wharf where sailors'
amusement halls are clustered, some tipsy fellow was bawling a love song
at the top of his voice. He seemed to be the only thing awake in Key
West at this hour. When the song, or his voice, gave out the silence
settled heavier than before. A ship's bell, far over the water, began to
strike, and we counted five mellow strokes: one-one, one-one, one!

"Half-past two," Tommy whispered, "I wonder what Nell's doing!"

"Dreaming of you, no doubt," I tried to laugh. "Maybe you and she are
wrecked on a desert island at this blissful moment."

"I wish we were," he murmured, without looking around. "And you and
Sylvia, too!"

"Cut it," I growled. "She's a princess, Tommy, and that puts the kibosh
on my dreams."

"Nell's a princess, too," he said gently, "and I still hang on. Tilt up
your chin, Jack, and things'll squeeze through for us! We'll ship the
old counterfeiter to prison, or kill him, and then----"

"And then," I said bitterly, turning to go below, "Princess Sylvia goes
to the arms of some popinjay prince!"

But I had taken only a step when his hand fell on my shoulder like a
piece of steel and whirled me around. There was nothing gentle in his
voice this time as he sharply commanded:

"Look at me, you damn slacker, and let's see if I'm talking to the man I
fought the Boche with!"

I must have appeared rather well indignant with him, for he gave a low,
reassured laugh, adding:

"That's better. Now I want to say, once and for all--and I swear it on
each of these stars, both for myself and Nell--that if we catch up with
Princess Sylvia, and you let her be taken away, I'll punch your face
into a jolly good pulp, so help me old Kentucky! Good _night_!"

"If you're man enough to do it," I yelled after him.

Fine old Tommy! I believe I loved him then better than ever before.




CHAPTER VIII

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 tête-à-tête 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!"




CHAPTER IX

A SHOT FROM THE DARK


During the first few hours of the afternoon we had looked on deck
several times, but felt better satisfied to remain below, out of the
drizzle. Now the captain's big voice rumbled some kind of good news, and
each of us made a dash for the stairs.

Even as we piled out into the cockpit the mate gave a yell and sailors
sprang to haul down the topmast-and main-topmast-staysails. Off in the
southwest, which had been leaden from horizon to meridian showing no
distinction of water and sky, appeared a spot of light, a glow, growing
rapidly brighter. Before it the misty rain was being wiped as if by
magic from the air.

Looking toward the northward I beheld the other yacht standing out in
bold relief upon a blacker, more dismal background. She was beautiful at
that moment--her sides and sails unnaturally whitened against the gloom,
suggesting a cameo set on a piece of slate. Our blocks began to creak,
sails bulged into huge scoops, masts tilted majestically, and the
_Whim_, freed from her enforced idleness, bounded in response.

"Wind!" Tommy shouted, his arms held skyward. "Aphrodite, sweet and
mighty, send a gale before the nighty!"

"But," Monsieur looked at him reprovingly, "Aphrodite is not goddess of
the wind!"

"Who said she was?" he innocently asked.

"You conjure her for the gale--bah!"

"That's because she rhymes with nighty, gezabo! When my Muse sings, to
hell with mythology! Come join the clouds--you're sordid!"

"These have been sordid clouds," the little fellow laughed. "I would
rather join you in other, but a more genial, wet."

"Gates, how long before we catch her?" I called.

"I carn't measure her speed yet, sir, but should say we won't be far
behind in an hour and a harf."

"Then," Tommy announced, "we'll go below and drink to the safety of our
sweet Princess--for, unless I'm greatly mistaken, this day will see the
finish of one good yacht! Give over the wheel and join us, Captain!"

It was a hilarious four that touched glasses in the cabin, and after
Gates went above we set to work in good earnest on our arms and
cartridge belts. Having seen that each piece worked perfectly we
followed him up, and the sight which greeted our eyes made us laugh for
joy.

How we accomplished it only Gates could have told, but now in the late
afternoon light the _Orchid_ seemed to be less than half her former
distance. Looking over the rail at the flying water I felt a great pride
in my father's craft, for she fairly skimmed along. Monsieur began at
once to hug the captain, and this time the old skipper did not mind--at
least, he permitted it.

There was, of course, some concern along with our happiness; first of
importance being the declining day that held scarcely more than an hour
of light. Had it been otherwise, had the blessing of good sailing
weather come to us earlier, we might have held an immediate council of
war; but this for the present could be left. It was a profound
disappointment, though, and showed in our strained silence. Gates stood
at my elbow.

"How'll we find her in the morning--if we don't catch up pretty soon?" I
asked.

"I was thinking of that, sir. Now, as she sees we can sail circles
around her with a good breeze, she won't hold the same course, and can
give us a mighty slip during the night. We're almost in----" he
hesitated, and again ventured: "We're almost in close enough to send a
shot across her bows, sir, if you wish to bring her about!"

Tommy, overhearing, let out a yell of joy. The old skipper's suggestion
electrified us all, particularly myself, for it promised that he would
see this affair through at any and all costs--and I had been
apprehensive regarding the attitude of Gates, lest his love for me, or
for the _Whim_, cause him to balk short of the danger line. So, hastily
imploring Monsieur to hug him again, I dashed below for one of the
rifles. This arm was a neat high-power sporting model, but I thought it
might persuade our kidnaper to look around.

Coming up, however, I found that another plan had been adopted. Gates
and Tommy were busily unlacing the canvas cover from our brass cannon.
While it was only used for signaling, it could make a stunning racket.
Bilkins was holding a box of blank shells, each containing somewhere
near twenty drams of black powder. As I approached, Tommy was excitedly
arguing with Gates who, this time, seemed to demur.

"It's not of the _Orchid_ I'm thinking, sir," he turned appealingly to
me, "but ourselves! Miss Nancy--as Mr. Thomas calls this young howitzer,
here,--won't stand much fooling. She warn't built for it, and if we go
pressing her too hard she'll bust a stay--which is the same, sir, as
sending harf of us to the sick-bay!"

"What I want to do," Tommy explained, "is load her up with sinkers and
truck like that, and touch her off right! Just a blank won't tell those
devils anything, but if we pepper 'em with a hat full of old junk
they'll haul-to in a jiffy!"

"Surest thing in the world," I cried. "Suppose she does bust a stay,
Gates! We can huddle in the cockpit and fire her with a long
lanyard--then let her bust!"

"That's easy, sir," he still remonstrated, "but suppose Miss Sylvia's
looking out a porthole and stops one of the sinkers!"

The thought of it made me shiver. Tommy, however, his enthusiasm
undampened, acquiesced at once, saying:

"Righto, Gates! Blank it is! Cartridge, Bilkins! I'm ready--say when!"

"Wait! Let's get a bit closer, sir," Gates urged.

Several minutes passed. We were only four hundred yards from the
_Orchid_ now and cutting down the space. She stood off our starboard
quarter and, although a great deal more obscure in the gathering dusk,
her cabin lights came on changing the portholes to a line of golden
disks. Then another solitary light appeared, being carried aft by a
sailor who fastened it to the taffrail. It was the stern lantern being
swung out for the night, and I could not help smiling at this delightful
display of audacity, deliberately to put up that tell-tale beacon, right
in our faces, as it were.

"It's a good bluff," Gates chuckled, "but they don't intend leaving it
there for long, sir. I'd say we'd better fire now, Mr. Thomas, and when
they stop we'll have a little chat with 'em."

Tommy sprang up and pulled the string, and our eyes were dazzled, our
ears jarred, with a perfectly glorious explosion that lighted up the sea
for a hundred yards.

"Whiz-bang!" Tommy yelled. "I wish I had this thing in Kentucky! It'd
work wonders for the Democrats!"

Nothing happened aboard the _Orchid_. She did not vary her course an
inch. The sailor at the helm had given a frantic jump when Miss Nancy
went off, but resumed his place evidently aware that no missiles had
been fired.

"Load her up again," I urged. "Let's keep on till they get mad!"

Bilkins passed out the shells and the piece was loaded and fired, loaded
and fired, till we seemed surely to have waked old Nep himself. I do not
know how many rounds we shot but it must have continued for some time,
thoroughly engrossing us. Now suddenly the stern light went out, and
immediately afterwards the portholes, losing their glow, became as
nothing. The tropical night, always swift in coming, had fallen more
stealthily than we realized, and the yacht melted into darkness.

"_Sacré bleu!_" Monsieur raged--for the night was overcast and as black
as sin.

But Gates was already stripping the searchlight of its cover. When he
had swung open the big lens Tommy struck a match, which blew out. His
second was blown out by a hiss of air that preceded the flow of gas, and
the professor jumbled matters by trying his hand. But these efforts
scarcely took more time than the telling, and when the powerful streak
of light finally pierced the darkness the very first thing it showed us
was a white sail.

"I shouldn't have worried about night catching us, sir, if I'd thought
of this before," Gates laughed. "And there's plenty of extra acetylene
tanks, too, so she carn't get away now!"

"You'll have to haul down some sail, though," I replied, seeing that the
_Orchid_ lay nearly abeam of us.

"No quicker said than done, sir."

He went to direct this, while we held our light squarely on the fleeing
outlaw. Nobody was astir about her deck; indeed, so undisturbed did she
appear that the sailor standing statue-like at her wheel might have been
the only living thing aboard.

I breathed fast with thinking that maybe Sylvia might come up, and my
senses were so alert, my mind, eyes, ears so intently reaching toward
her, that now I heard what was indeed a most unexpected sound: a piano.
Grasping Tommy's arm I whispered this to him, and he nodded, saying in a
low tone:

"Yes, I hear it plainly. Reminds me of Monsieur's master musician
playing a rhapsody in the dark, d'you remember? Listen! Gods, it's '_De
puis le jour_,' from Louise!" Yet in the next breath he added: "Cheerful
girl you have, Jack,--she's switched off from her love song to Chopin's
funeral march!"

I dolefully smiled to myself, not at the funeral march but at the
realization that dreams are only dreams and nothing more, that Gates's
common sense had come nearer hitting the mark than all of our
professor's psychology; for I had seen no piano in that cabin, and five
minutes ago I would have sworn its interior was as well known to me as
the _Whim_. But an instant later my smile had given way to a cry of
rage, as a little streak of fire spat from one of the portholes and the
big lens of our searchlight, with a bang, shattered into a thousand
pieces.

"The nerve of it," Tommy yelled, violently shaking his hand that had
been resting on the brass frame. "Damn his hide, he nearly shot off my
finger!"

"Are you hit?" I asked quickly.

"Hell, no; but my hand feels like a pincushion! Say, he knows how to
shoot, though! I'll give him that much!"

"Those people are prepared for all that comes, I tell you," Monsieur
vigorously nodded his head. "They must even have violet spectacles for
looking into search-lights, else that fellow's eyes could not have stood
the glare."

Again the _Orchid_ was invisible. For a moment I thought that out of the
dark sky my gods were derisively mocking me; but it was a human sound, a
long, triumphant laugh, doubtless from the coarse-throated creature who
had made the lucky shot.

Gates, fearing we might answer it in kind, came forward to counsel
silence, at the same time sending a sailor for the megaphone and
ordering another to extinguish our own lights. With his knife he then
hastily cut the megaphone in half, keeping the large end whose openings
now tapered from about eight inch to eighteen inch diameters. As we
stood, not understanding what he meant to do, I heard across the water a
rattling of blocks and knew the _Orchid_, free of pursuit, was changing
her course. Gates cocked his head and listened, then whispered to the
mate who went back and changed the _Whim's_ course.

"Now, Mr. Jack," he said, in a guarded tone, "we're behind her, and
dark, too; so keep all hands as quiet as mice, sir! Take the wheel and
steer as I signal from under my coat with this electric torch, like
this: one long, means put your helm up a point, two long means two
points; but a short flash means down a point, two short down two
points. D'you understand, sir? We've got to keep close to her, or
daylight'll find her gone! I'm going out on the bowsprit and, with this
piece of megaphone to help, think I can follow by sound. They're apt to
make some noise, believing themselves safe. And their blocks are bound
to rattle when they change their course--which they'll be doing before
long as we're both headed for the coast of Florida, twenty-five or
thirty miles off. Now go back quiet, sir, and watch for my lights."

God bless old Gates, I said to myself.

Till well into the night that indefatigable sea dog sat astride the
bowsprit with the crude sound magnifier over his ear, while I, alert and
watchful, gripped the wheel as though I were driving a speed boat. In
the beginning he had sent a few signals, and we jockied this way and
that, but after perhaps an hour we settled down to another straight
course--though I could not tell how near we were, or if we were sailing
right, or if they suspected us.

Tommy had come aft to keep me company, and now asked in a whisper:

"What do you think about that piano?"

"I think she played like an angel."

"Son, you don't get the point. What do you think about changing suddenly
from that exquisite Charpentier love song to a funeral march--just
before the rifle went off?"

"You don't mean she was signaling?" I asked in surprise, for the idea
knocked me a little bit silly.

"I mean just that; of course, she was signaling, and taking a big
chance, too. You may put your own construction on the first piece she
played, but the instant she saw what they were up to she sent us the
flash. The only trouble about it was that we weren't anywhere near as
quick."

"But look here," I said, alarmed by another thought, "suppose she meant
it would be _her_ funeral march if we keep up the pursuit?"

Tommy considered this.

"I reckon not," he finally replied. "They might threaten us with her
death if we don't turn back, but there'd be no reason to kill her
otherwise. No, she saw them preparing to shoot--which you can't deny
that they did, jolly good and well."

"She's a queen," I murmured.

"Queen! That girl must be a royal straight flush in hearts, and if it
weren't for Nell I'd adore her to the tips of my teeth!"

At midnight I sent the mate to relieve Gates and gave the wheel to a
likely sailor, and after making sure they understood the signals we went
below for a bite to eat. Although the day of suspense had been wearing,
my brain was too active to permit much thought of sleep; but finally
Gates nodded, awoke with a jerk, and started off to bed. He had had no
easy time of it on the bowsprit, good old Gates!

Tommy and I talked in low tones while the professor sat to one side,
humped over and buried in thought. He was a strange looking spectacle
when buried in thought. His countenance then became all wrinkles, with a
kind of turned-up nubbin in the middle that I knew to be a nose, only
because I'd previously seen it--otherwise it might have been almost
anything that one does not expect to find in the center of a man's face.
Tommy regarded him a moment in silence.

"Monsieur," he whispered, "come join this confab. We're up against the
real thing in the morning, and may as well begin to lay pipe. The old
catamount who shot out our searchlight won't have any more regard for
our personal lights, let's keep that in mind. What's more, he has a real
excuse now, because we fired those blanks at him which he'll find it
convenient to say weren't blanks. So the business is coming off to a
certainty. What's your idea?"

"My idea?"

"I meant to be that flattering, yes. What do you think we'll be up
against when ordering the _Orchid_ to surrender?"

"I do not know; but something we are not expecting, you may be sure," he
dolefully answered.

"That sort of gloom won't get us anywhere," Tommy retorted. "Try another
thought!"

"It gets us very far! If we expect to experience what we are not
expecting, then we are expecting it! How can we be surprised when we are
prepared for the thing we are not prepared for? It is obvious. That is
my idea."

"Then you ought to keep it in a less fragile place. Try still another,
gezabo!"

But he was inclined to pout now, and would neither talk nor listen to
our entreaties.

"Well," he exclaimed at last, with a superior smile as he struck the
table smartly, "I will tell you this: I have nothing more to say!"

It was a lot of preparation for a mighty small result, I thought, and
Tommy smiled at the childish gentleman, murmuring sweetly:

"If you really mean that, and stick to it, pray accept my
congratulations upon having reached the height of conversational charm.
Now, Jack, let's plan!"

But Monsieur, while unwilling to talk, was also unwilling to be
ignored. I think he wanted to be coaxed. People get that way, sometimes.
So he petulantly exclaimed:

"You think I am what you call an old crank!"

"No I don't, honest!" Tommy gave me a wink. "Even if I did, it's a
compliment in America to be called a crank, because cranks make things
move. Now help us out, like a good sport. By this time tomorrow you'll
be shot to pieces, for all we know."

He said it solemnly, but his humorous mouth showed how much he wanted to
laugh. I believe Tommy would have walked to the gallows joking with his
executioner. That infectious smile, sometimes the flash of his teeth,
but always a snap in his honest gray eyes, were invariably quickened by
the imminence of danger. I knew Tommy; therefore I also knew that
beneath his jocose raillery were nerves stretched to concert pitch that
meant music for whoever stood in his way tomorrow.

The professor sat up straighter and blinked at him.

"Why do you say I get shot to pieces?"

"Why not? The fellow'd be a fool to sit by and let us go aboard--and
we've got to go aboard!"

"It is nonsense! You want my advice? Then leave him alone!"

I think that Tommy's eyes narrowed slightly. I know that my teeth
clenched at this evidence of quitting; yet what could we expect from a
chap who did nothing but teach in a University?

"You won't be in any danger," I said, arising. "We'll manage all right.
Come on, Tommy!"

"You will not manage--that is just it," he angrily retorted. "You two
boys will strut about like roosters showing what good fighters you are,
and get blown up through the insides! Have I not seen it often? Bah!"
He ran his hands through his hair. "Why is it, when brains are as easily
cultivated as biceps, that young bloods think only of a strong arm! You
stay in the cabin and leave the man to me; then I will take him before
your eyes, and nobody get hurt!"

"I don't think we quite understand!"

"Of course! But there are no ladies on the _Orchid_ whom I desire to
charm, therefore I will be rational. Your _Capitaine_ Gates will lower a
boat, we row to the scoundrel's yacht, I present my authority, he
surrenders, and we bring him back. There is no bloodshed, and my two
young friends who are disposed to ridicule me will not get hurt!"

Tommy flushed, and I felt uncommonly like a pup.

"But suppose he won't come?--suppose he begins to fight?"--we asked
these questions simultaneously. They were quite unnecessary, for the man
would not come and, moreover, he would fight; but Monsieur's earnestness
and visionary assumption had completely disarmed us.

"In that case, your Gates and I will shoot him," he answered, as a
matter of course. "Such grizzly alternatives must sometimes be the means
of peace and harmony."

Some might at times have called him an idiot, and on occasions I have
found myself wondering if he possessed a scintilla of common sense, but
no one after this could call him a coward. He would have gone
single-handed to the _Orchid_ with the same beautiful faith that a wee
child would crawl into the kennel of a vicious dog. It was not in
Monsieur to consider that anyone would dare disobey his Azurian
authority.

"Gezabo," Tommy said tenderly, "I'm going to lock you up tomorrow, for
if anyone so much as rumples your noble topknot I'll cut him to
ribbons--so'll Jack. Now kick us, and go to bed. We've been a pair of
braying asses, and you're a sure-nuff Prince!"

And, although I thought that Tommy had done most of the braying, I was
willing to let it go at that. A lack of discriminating accuracy on his
part might have been pardoned when we were faced by issues of so much
greater portent. The dawn was but six hours off, and with it would
come--what?




CHAPTER X

A SILENT ENEMY


Bilkins rushed into my room at daylight announcing perfect weather and
the _Orchid_ sailing some twelve miles astern of us. While dressing I
wondered how she could have fallen so far behind, but assumed that our
men on watch must finally have lost her. As this seemed to be a
reasonable explanation, since the later the night the more probability
of her company having settled down and become quiet, I dismissed these
speculations of no consequence for a feeling of thankfulness that she
had not escaped us.

Gates was on his way to call me when I came out, and one look at his
broad smile required no further augury of good news.

"We're arfter her hard, sir," he said, "and have been drawing up farst
this hour gone. We'll be in hailing distance in another two hours, or
less."

"There's a good wind?"

"Fair, sir. The mate, who's aloft, says that for some reason she's
hauled down everything but mains'l and jib, and carn't be making any
speed to speak of. Still, she's going along. We've quite some canvas
set. He says there was noise enough to follow till about five bells of
the morning watch; then she grew so still he wondered if she'd sunk.
You'd better have breakfast, sir, for we'll be on her, as I say, in two
hours or less."

This was Tommy's idea when I met him with Monsieur in the cabin, but
Tommy was always ready for breakfast. They had become reconciled--or,
perhaps, I ought to say the professor seemed to have forgiven both of us
handsomely. Gates sat down with us for there was much to talk about. In
fact, the professor, in his uncontrollable and passionate appetite for
grapefruit, had scarcely extruded a spray of its juice in our
direction--the usual evidence with us that breakfast had seriously
begun--when the question of how we should board the _Orchid_ was raised.
The old skipper listened to my plan, then to Tommy's, and after these he
turned to our little scientist, who waved a hand with no small degree of
impatience, saying:

"One is visionary, the other is crazy. One wants to blow her out of the
water--with what? The other wants to do something no one can
understand--and why? But they both agree upon killing everyone on board
except a privileged lady. It is school-boy tomfoolery!"

"Tomfoolery your grandmother," Tommy flared up. "What do you suggest
that's any better--the utopian scheme you sprung on us last night?"

"How do you know we have to board her?" Monsieur thrust half a biscuit
in his mouth and took a long drink of coffee. "I have been thinking
since; I have been on deck, and observed. There is wind, and we are
catching up. Off there," he pointed toward something the cabin walls
prevented us from seeing, "is land; low, gray-blue land. Now it can be
done with cattle, but can it be done with yachts?"

"Can what be done?" we asked.

"We shall sail out, head her back, and drive her into the land until she
sticks!"

Never having heard of such a silly idea I looked at Gates, who was
chuckling.

"Oh, it might be done, sir," he laughed, "if she stood close enough to
the islands. We might jockey her that way, foul her a bit, and make her
go aground--or fight. But, Lor' bless you, she's sailing straight west
across the Gulf, with nothing but a thousand miles of good water between
her and the mouth of the Rio Grande!"

"Get in front--butt her around," Monsieur cried. "If she does not like
it, then let her, as you suggest, fight!"

"Well, you've said something at last," Tommy grinned. "How about it,
Gates? And, by the way, what are those islands you spoke of? We're
looking for a certain

    '----one of many, many islands
    Set like emerald jewels in an ever changing sea.'"

Though with his sincerity there was also the bantering tone of the
unbeliever here.

"It's the Ponce de Leon Bay, sir, with the Ten Thousand Islands--and I'd
say there're all of ten thousand, or quite harf, anyway."

With his fork he quickly drew on the tablecloth a sketch of southwestern
Florida, outlining the waters northeast of Cape Sable and with little
jabs indicating the island area which extends up and down the coast, as
well as into Whitewater Bay. Gates was used to doing this kind of thing
and he did it well, with the result that we got a very clear idea of
what he meant. No one knew the exact number of islands, he said, because
they had never been charted. Government surveys had been considered
useless, in all probability; and, of private interests, there were none.
No boat, except perhaps at rare intervals a very small craft of
adventurous spirit, ever tried to enter--but, as to that, twenty small
boats might spend a month's playing in that maze and never meet. The
mainland, for many miles in all directions, was without habitation, and
these conditions had isolated this entire section as completely as
though it were in the heart of a South American jungle.

Difficult as it was to believe that on the "Playground Peninsula" of
eastern United States an unsurveyed primeval wilderness of perhaps three
thousand square miles had remained absolutely detached from inquisitive
civilization, I was soon to learn that Gates had not in any way
exaggerated. It was there; it is there today in the same unbroken
solitude, for any to see who will.

"Why didn't she duck in there and hide last night?" I asked, coming out
of the charmed spell his description had cast over me.

"She daren't, sir. Nothing but a dinghy, or the like of that, has ever
gone in very far. Leastwise, I don't think so. The islands are just a
lot of oyster-shell bars covered with sand and overgrown with red
mangrove trees. I've been told the channel between 'em sometimes isn't
more'n a foot deep; but in other places there may be good water. What I
mean to say is that they're not charted, and I doubt if any man living
could find his way through 'em the same way twice. They lay in a bunch
stretching about forty miles north and south, and maybe fifteen or
twenty through. Some are good sized--we'll say a mile long--but others
run down to the size of the _Whim_. Oh, he wouldn't dare to run in
there, sir! Now we might try to tease him close to 'em and crowd him
some way, as the professor says--or let him do the other thing!"

"That sounds like some plan," Tommy sprang to his feet. "We'll tease
him, all right, if we shoot fast enough!"

"But they must be let to begin that shooting first," Monsieur insisted.

"I'd like to know why?" Tommy turned to him.

"Why? What right have we to come and start such a business?"

"What right have we to crowd her out of the ocean?" Tommy answered with
another question. "What right have they to blow us up?--or steal a
girl?--or counterfeit our money?--or darn near shoot my finger off and
then laugh at me? To hell with rights! We've got more than that
scoundrel has, if we haven't any!"

Gates got up with an oath.

"Yes," he said, "and shoot out my searchlight! No, Professor, I'd say
the shooting's already begun. But they won't stand for too much fooling,
not if I know anything!"

"Oh, well," Monsieur sighed, "give me the gun."

"Give him Miss Nancy," Tommy laughed. "Now, fellows, suppose a couple of
us entrench on top of the cabin, to get the advantage of altitude--the
superiority of position, as it were--and command their decks!"

"You'll need a fair protection, sir, as they'll be shooting from the
portholes," Gates said. "And we carn't fire back at the portholes
because of the lady!"

"Righto! But the man at their wheel's our meat, and anyone else who
comes to take his place. Minus a steersman they're helpless; and then,
Gates, if we can run alongside and batten down (is that what you call
it?) their hatches, they're ours."

"Suppose they send the Princess out, herself, to steer?" Monsieur asked.

The suggestion gave me a turn.

"Still, they may not think of that," he continued, "and our two shooters
may command their decks quite easily. It is good. If a man comes out to
steer you will shoot him till he runs downstairs again, then we go
aboard and sail home. Yes, it is a good plan."

"Shoot him till he runs downstairs!" Tommy gasped. "What d'you think
we're going to do--just spank him with lead?"

"I'll say that professor is in a clarss by himself, sir," Gates turned
to me, chuckling.

The next half hour was a busy one. Our sailors, singing with happiness,
brought up from the cuddy rolls of extra sails that were lowered
overboard for a good wetting, then mauled into a neat rifle pit on the
cabin roof--as snug as I'd want anywhere, and quite able to stop
high-power bullets. Gates then showed another bit of generalship that
called anew for Monsieur's nods of approval. Since our own helmsman
would be as much exposed as the man on the _Orchid_--whom we intended to
"shoot until he ran downstairs"--the mate brought up some line, bent it
several times around the wheel drum, passed it through newly fastened
blocks, and let it run into the cockpit. By this arrangement he could
lie on the floor, as safe as you please, and steer according to orders
sung up by the old skipper who, stationed below with a shaving
mirror--suggesting a trench periscope--would take his bearings without
showing any portion of his face. It was a nice piece of work.

"One carn't be too cautious, sir," he explained. "Harf our chance of
coming out ahead is being ready beforehand, and harf our satisfaction is
to keep from having any burials at sea--which are gruesome things, any
way you take 'em, sir."

Bilkins had acted as armorer and laid out rifles, bandoliers bulging
with filled clips, and a few automatic revolvers; then in a low tone he
said to me:

"I'll never go back, sir, if anything happens to you today."

"Yes, you will," I replied, touched by his show of devotion. "You'll
have to tell them why it happened. But don't be a raincrow. We'll come
through."

Gates now sent the men to stations for we were within a half a mile of
the _Orchid_. Then Tommy stepped into our rifle pit and laid down. I
followed. Quietly each of us beat a crease in the soaked canvas through
which we could fire without showing too much head.

The mate, crouched below, tried his new steering device as Gates sang up
an order, and swore a jovial oath at the ease with which the _Whim_
responded. Within his reach was an automatic, and he looked the very
picture of contentment.

Along the side of my rifle barrel now resting in the crease I took a
good look at the _Orchid_ sailing with apparent unconcern but a short
way out from us, but I could picture the activity and hatred seething
below her deck. I wondered what Sylvia might be thinking about all this;
if she associated our pursuit by the slightest imaginative thread with a
fellow who impolitely stared at her in a Havana café, yet to whom she
had been willing to cry: "I am in danger!" Presumptuous fallacy! Then
other thoughts began to race through my brain. Now that we were face to
face with action, how were we going to come out? Had I a right to
imperil those who were sailing with me? Was it not my duty, even at this
eleventh hour, to order the _Whim_ back?

I turned to Tommy, saying:

"You didn't ship for this kind of thing, old man. If anything happens to
you I'll feel like the devil."

"So'll I," he grinned. "Don't bother about how you'll feel if anything
happens to _me_; keep those regrets for the moment a hot pill
investigates your own honorable insides, Mr. Jackass! I wouldn't miss
this party for a million dollar bill. Settle down, now. Gates is
pointing closer." Then, peeping along his rifle, he crooned one of our
regimental paraphrases: "Stick your head up, Fritzy-Fritz, while I plug
you in the gizzard," adding: "I don't see anyone at their wheel!"

I took another squint and, just as he had said, their deck was
deserted--not a man in sight.

"What d'you make of it?" I asked.

"Get down," he warned. "Don't forget that anyone who could center our
searchlight, as some crafty boy did last night, won't have much trouble
peeling a scalp at three hundred yards! They've probably made a steering
rig like ours, that's all. The first thing we know bally hell will spit
out of those portholes, if my guess counts! Beats a trench raid, doesn't
it, old man?"

"All hollow," I agreed. "We've got 'em this trip!"

"We have unless they carry a ten-pounder--in which case we'll take a
bath. Freeze close, buddie!"

Nearer and nearer we drew, but no bally hell came from her. She showed
absolutely no sign of anyone, not even a pile of canvas or a box that
might hide a sharp-shooter. That, then, was the old counterfeiter's
ruse: to tempt us into taking the initiative when, more than likely, he
was ready with the probable ten-pounder to sink us. Still, it felt
rather snug to be lying there elbow to elbow with Tommy.

Gates had steered so close by this time that any skipper on the other
yacht, not endowed with stupendous nerve, would certainly have gone
about; for we had maneuvered to get the right of way, and a collision
would have been entirely the _Orchid's_ fault. But no one ran out, nor
did her course change, and at the very last minute Gates called an order
that brought us off a few points.

We were now sailing parallel, not more than ten fathoms apart, and could
have thrown a biscuit on her deck. I glanced out the corner of my eye at
Tommy. His cheek rested snugly against the stock of his rifle and his
finger stroked the trigger, I thought affectionately.

Had either of us been more conversant with nautical matters we would
have noticed something that Gates now came crawling up to tell us. He
did this without being much exposed, by creeping along until abreast of
us and then projecting himself, headfirst or any other way, into our
midst. It was an active accomplishment for one of Gates's years.

"D'you see what they've done?" he excitedly asked. "That wheel, there,
is lashed over; they've paid out the mains'l enough to starboard, and
set the jib properly to port. That's why the fores'l isn't up!"

"What of it?"

"Why, sir, she'll sail that way all day in a wind like this, and nobody
have to touch her! They knew we'd be popping at their helmsman, and they
fixed it so we carn't! Now it's our turn to start something!"

"Then start it," Tommy said. "Run alongside and we'll climb over!"

"Mr. Thomas," he demurred, "that's rank piracy, unless we're the law. I
wouldn't say no, understand, if there warn't some other way. But if we
try it they'll have every right to shoot us down--which they can easy
do, being hid and ready!"

"You forget, Gates, they haven't a right on earth. They don't want to
face the law with the best justification ever known--they'd be mortally
afraid to!"

"Then they wouldn't be any less particular about shooting us," the old
skipper replied.

There was no denying that Tommy had impaled himself upon his own point;
not that he cared a hang whether they began shooting or not, but the
anxiety of Gates caused him to temporize, and he said:

"Bluff it! Sing across that we're the U. S. A. ordering 'em to stop. Say
it strong enough to make us believe it, too, Gates--so we'll feel
self-righteous when the scrap comes!"

Gates grinned and, cupping his hands, shouted:

"_Orchid_, ahoy! This yacht's chartered by the U. S. Secret Service, and
you're ordered to come about! Delay one minute and we blow you out of
the water!"

"Accomplished old liar," Tommy chuckled. "See anything?"

Gates, so earnest was he in this rôle of Uncle Sam, had his watch out,
marking off the seconds. When the sixtieth had ticked he called again,
in a more ferocious tone:

"Time's up, but I'll give you harf a minute longer! This is the larst
word!"

"Now," said Tommy, having waited the thirty seconds which brought no
response, "let's see you make good! Will you fire a torpedo, or one of
the fifteen-inch guns?"

But Gates was seeing no humor in the situation; neither was I; neither
was Tommy, if the truth were known. Our position was in a sense
desperate. We had bluffed and the bluff had been called. Five minutes
ago we might have turned back, but such a course now would make us
laughing-stocks even to ourselves. And there was Sylvia. What sort of a
quitter would she think me!

I saw that someone had to board that yacht, even though such a course,
almost to a certainty, meant a test of the professor's surgical skill--a
skill we knew he possessed along with his other attainments. But I could
not--I simply would not--risk any of our fellows on an undertaking so
hazardous. Conscious, however, of Tommy's utter pig-headedness I saw the
futility of merely asking him to stay behind; so my mind became
instantly made up and, turning to Gates, I sharply asked:

"Who commands here?"

"Why, I'm the captain, sir," he answered, surprised at my tone.

"But whose orders are absolute?"

"Yours, Mr. Jack, sir."

"Then take this man below and keep him there while you run your rail
alongside the _Orchid_. Nobody follows me until I call, or shoot. Be
lively, Captain!"

He looked his horror, but stiffly saluted, saying "Come" to Tommy who
had turned white with anger and murderously glared at me.

"Do you mean this dirty trick?" he asked, and I did not meet his eyes
when admitting it.

In a few minutes he and Gates were safely in the cabin--Gates having
dived nimbly out of our canvas fort; while Tommy, oozing rage, had
walked erect, shaking his fist at the _Orchid_ and calling me pretty
much every kind of a lizard that crawls the earth.

Perhaps the mad that this aroused was good for me. I had charged into an
enemy's face once or twice under a certain amount of unpleasant fire and
most uncomfortable sensations. A fellow's _savoir faire_ is far from
being faultless on such occasions, but if he's mad--damn mad--he gets
along rather well, and Tommy's insulting words turned the trick for me.

We had luffed a bit to let the _Orchid_ draw out ahead, and now all I
seemed to see was her slowly nearing rail; twenty feet away, fifteen,
ten. My rifle had been laid aside, and I felt to see that my automatic
was snugly nested in its holster. Five feet, four, three--we were about
to touch! With a bound I cleared my shelter just as the rails were
within spanning distance, and vaulted over.




CHAPTER XI

A STRANGE FIND


My feet had no more than touched the new deck when I became electrified
with a glorious feeling of possession, of mastery. Immediately I seemed
to know just what to do, where to go; and my first move was another
headlong rush at the companionway door, bursting it in with a kick and
springing quickly aside--ready, listening; being for the time shielded
from a fusillade of expected shots. And, because these were not
forthcoming, I felt momentarily confused.

Yet in times of white hot action it is impulse that succeeds. This door
ahead of me was the only way below, except perhaps a hatch, offering
greater danger, somewhere forward; it was the only way, therefore,
through which Sylvia might be brought up to safety. She was now below,
and I would reach her if it were my last journey! Three bounds down the
stairs took me into the cabin, my pistol forward, my nerves on
hair-trigger, ready for anything that moved.

Silence!--that sickish silence which permeates places of death! No human
sound could be detected--no sound of any kind, except an uncanny
creaking beneath the floor where the old masts rested in their steps,
and a gentle swish of water outside the hull.

There were two doors from the cabin, each opening into a separate,
though parallel, passageway that doubtless led forward to about the same
general arrangements we had on the _Whim_--one past three staterooms,
through a galley and into the sailors' quarters; the other, also past a
stateroom or two, but opening to the ice-box room and galley. Both of
these doors now swung slightly ajar, at a suspicious angle that almost
without doubt told me where the men were crouched, and this rendered my
position so inexcusably exposed that swift and vigorous action was the
only choice. With finger tightening on the trigger I dashed at the
nearer of these, giving it a kick that sent it banging against the wall.
The passageway was empty, and thus encouraged I rushed the other door.
Here, again, no foe had lain in ambush.

I was crouched now, sheltered by a strip of paneled wall between the two
doorways. The staterooms on one side must come next, and after them the
galley, with the forecastle beyond, and even beyond this, perhaps, some
kind of a cuddy.

Where the men were hiding God only knew, but hiding they were with
cocked weapons, firmly gripped knives at some point of vantage that had
been carefully chosen--as they expected nothing less than half our crew.
I could almost feel their nearness; so alert were my senses that I
fancied I could smell their sweaty clothes.

Again action spelled success and, marking the first stateroom, I bounded
into it covering the interior with a quick sweep of my automatic.
Nothing! From this I sprang to the second room, showing myself in the
passageway only long enough to cover the space. This, also, was empty.

A third was on this side before the galley should be reached. By my
tactics of quick rushes I had doubtless made too fleeting a target to
draw their fire, so I dashed at this third door. It was closed but
yielded to my shoulder. As I entered, and became instantaneously aware
that it contained no foe, my nerves were fired by the sound of rushing
feet behind me.

Trapped! At such a time a man will ask an awful price for his life--when
he is trapped by merciless villains to whom quarter is an unknown
tongue! Springing behind the door, keeping only my pistol hand and eye
beyond its thin partition, I waited with leveled weapon, ready to drop
the first man who came in sight. He did not keep me long in suspense. It
was Gates, while behind him pressed several anxious faces.

"Thank God, sir, you're not killed," he shouted.

I was glad to see him, there's no denying it!

"Mr. Thomas said he heard you call, so we came a-biling, sir!"

My mind was working rather fast; indeed, it seemed to be thinking at the
rate of a thousand miles a minute--clear thinking, too--so even before
Gates spoke the second time I had seen through Tommy's ruse. Bless his
old scalp, I was a dog not to have taken him in the first place, now
that things were nearer equal. But I said hastily:

"Look sharp, Gates, I haven't been farther than here! They're in the
galley!--I'm rushing it!"

So I splintered the door and charged through, with the others tripping
over my heels. Then my revolver swung across and covered a crouching
form.

"Hands up," I commanded.

Although darker here, we could see a huge, partially clothed figure on
the floor, reclining very much as The Wounded Gladiator. Leaning above
him, with an arm passed beneath his shoulders, was another man.

"Hands up, you fool," I called again, ready to fire at the first
suspicious move. The man lowered his burden and turned. It was Tommy.

"You'll forgive me, Jack," he grinned. "We thought I heard you call--and
that was to be the signal, you know!"

We thought I heard you call!

"I know about that, you prince of liars. Who's this? But hold
him!--we're going on through!"

"You needn't," he said. "I took a speedy trip down the other passageway
while Gates went to you. There isn't a soul on board, except this poor
devil who's got a crack on the bean."

"It isn't possible," I cried. For, indeed, it was not possible, and we
hurried forward, leaving him as he was.

But a two-minute search revealed the truth of Tommy's words. There was
not a sign of anyone. The yacht was as absolutely deserted as if it had
been sailed by spirits--except, of course, the wretch in Tommy's charge.

"You're sure we've looked everywhere, Gates?" I asked, stunned at the
disappearance of Sylvia and mystified by the whole affair.

"Everywhere, sir. To tell the truth, Mr. Jack, a minute ago it was as
complete a mystery as I ever saw. But I understand it now. They've taken
to the small boats and escaped, sir. They've just sailed in close to
shore and done that during the night, sir; and all morning we've been
chasing a boat with nobody on it. I should have noticed the small boats
gone, if I hadn't been so sure the people were here."

I leaned against the wall too utterly disappointed to move, vaguely
wondering if this were another dream from which I should awake and find
the _Orchid_ sailing out ahead of us. But it was no dream. In dreams
one can not always know that one is dreaming, but there is never a
doubt of knowing when one is awake.

"They couldn't be under the floor?" I asked, absurdly clinging to a
straw of hope that Sylvia might be there.

"Lor' bless you, no, sir! I tell you, Mr. Jack, they just sailed as
close as they dared to those islands, and skipped--the hull pack of 'em;
first having headed the _Orchid_ out as we found her. That's why
everything was so quiet the larst part of the night--there warn't anyone
here to _make_ a noise!"

Passing back to the galley we saw half our crew, in a circle, looking
down at the wounded man.

"Who is it, Tommy?" I asked. "Not the old scoundrel himself, by any good
luck?"

"Stranger yet," he said, waving the others back and standing up, "It's
your black giant of the Key West docks!"

"How the devil did he get here?" I cried, pushing between the men and
also looking down at him. "How did he get here?" I asked again, but
Tommy had gone.

Someone had put a cushion under his head. His eyes were open, gazing up
with their former gentle expression; more sad now, I fancied, since the
great human machine he had controlled was wounded.

"How did he get here?" I repeated my general question, this time
straight at him.

His lips moved with a curious, rather horrible, inarticulate sound, and
his glance swept our crew as though in search of a face. Then he seemed
to give it up, and passed a hand slowly over his forehead. I was about
to order him carried on deck when Tommy called through the galley
portlight:

"Fetch your wounded, Jack! The professor's here with his outfit!"

As our men stooped to obey the big fellow surprised us by quietly
arising; and, when cushions had been arranged in a shaded place above,
he laid on them as obediently as a docile mastiff. Monsieur, very much
in his element, became busy at once.

The _Whim_ and the _Orchid_ were still at grips--or rather were it more
correct to say the _Orchid_ was in the _Whim's_ grip. Lines had been
passed through the chocks of each, sails had been hauled down, and both
yachts rode inertly side by side.

The part of our crew that had stayed behind to attend these matters now
came over the rail like monkeys, grinning broadly and crowding up to
shake hands with me--a wholly uncalled for proceeding which charmed me,
nevertheless.

"Lie on your face," I heard Monsieur saying to the big black. He had
become excessively busy and his fingers were feeling everywhere over the
man's cranium, yet as tenderly as a woman's. "What struck you?" he
asked.

"I've told you he can't talk," Tommy, who was also kneeling by him,
explained.

"And I did not ask you," the professor snapped. "What if he can not! May
I not see him make the effort?"

"But what's the use of having the poor beggar make the effort when you
know he can't put it over? Why not get down to cases and cure him,
instead of monkeying?"

"Down to cases! Cure him!" Monsieur sputtered. "How great a surgeon are
you to direct me in this impertinent manner?"

Really, he was quite a great deal put out.

"You fellows cut it," I interposed. "While you're squabbling the chap
might click it, and then what?"

"I'm not squabbling," Tommy looked up earnestly. "I'm only saying it's a
rotten shame to put a _blessé_ through a lot of unnecessary paces that
hurt him, and I stick to it! But go ahead, professor!"

"I shall go ahead, have no fear of it! You think me cruel--but see: if I
am aware something is wrong with a machine, how better to find out what
than by trying to make it run?"

He turned again to his examination, while Tommy lit a cigarette and sat
nearby, looking on. At last Monsieur gave a sigh, indicating that his
diagnosis was ready. I waited until he, too, had lit a cigarette, then
asked:

"Well, doctor, how serious?"

"Perhaps not serious, as there is no fracture. He has suffered a
concussion over the third frontal convolution, resulting in an
aphasia--aphemia we are sure of, and doubtless also agraphia----"

"Hold on! This isn't the University of Bucharest," Tommy cried. "If you
insist on telling us, instead of putting this man to bed where he ought
to be, tell it nursery-fashion!"

"Already I have said it for children," he witheringly replied.

"Then God help 'em!" This in a whisper from Gates, but with no thought
of levity.

"Go ahead and cure the man," I implored. "We couldn't understand you,
anyhow."

"But, yes, you will understand--I desire it! This blow has produced the
aphemia. If he were not illiterate we could, by asking him to write, say
if agraphia also is present. But he can not write, therefore we do not
know whether he can or not; so, therefore, we only know that he can not
speak."

"You know he can't write, too--you just said so!"

"Exactly, my boy Tommy, you have the correct idea. Yet we do not know it
by the test."

"I begin to see what he's driving at, Jack. He knows he can't write
because it's a known fact, but he doesn't know it by the scientifically
known test known to him--and that's agraphia. If it isn't, it's near
enough. Now, he knows he can talk because we all know he can, but no one
knows it at present because he can't--and that's aphemia. Do I get you,
Professor?"

"Yes, as you say, you get me. The motor area has suffered a concussion;
perhaps a slight hemorrhage, perhaps not. It may pass in a few days, or
longer. We will keep him quiet, with ice bags to the head and blood
pressure low, and see what we shall see. A hundred years ago they would
have bled him and made him well. But we shall see!"

"If he'd got well a hundred years ago by being bled, why not now?" I
asked.

"He'd be too old now," Tommy whispered; but the professor, not hearing
this, looked at me as though I had committed an unpardonable breach of
etiquette, and again witheringly replied:

"We have more advanced methods."

Having thus been put in my place, he ordered his patient taken aboard
the _Whim_ and ran ahead to superintend the construction of a bed.
Scientists are a curious lot, Tommy says, but I doubt if there is
another like the professor. I hope not, for the sake of the sciences.
But let that pass. In half an hour the big black was resting easily in
the midst of paraphernalia especially designed, and Bilkins had been
assigned the place as nurse.

I fancied, when this latter suggestion came up, that our old servant
might not readily take to it. With twenty years of his life spent as
major domo and general valet in my father's household, a sudden
transformation into trained nurse for a dusky African must,
peradventure, have been a shock.

But in this I was mistaken. The last forty hours of common peril, of a
central interest, had lifted Bilkins from that pettiness usually
burdensome in servants of his type. He was, as a matter of fact,
cheerfully alert to take the job, accepting it with the same enthusiasm
that Gates, and later the mate, had straddled the bowsprit. So I
realized that Bilkins had doffed the uniform of servitude to put on one
that fit a man. True, indeed, there is no such potent melting-pot as
common peril! It had been the same in France--banker, lawyer, merchant,
beggar-man, thief, perhaps--all one. Common peril, common necessity!--O
thou molders of men!

When everything had been arranged, and a sailor put at our ice machine
to supply packs for the wounded man's head, Tommy, the professor and I
climbed back aboard the _Orchid_, this time to give her a thorough
search. We held to the hope that there might be a note, or little clue,
from the girl whose extremity had once led her to send the other
message. Monsieur thought this most probable, and our hopes ran high.

Beginning with a writing desk in the cabin, we examined the book shelves
and every nook and corner, then passed to the staterooms. These gave the
same impression of having been swept clean--cupboards, presses, all were
empty. Only in one drawer, delicately scented, was there a single
item--a hairpin. Here, then, must be Sylvia's room, but otherwise it
was devoid of any article. Equally unproductive did we find the galley,
the crew's quarters, and a small cuddy forward.

Monsieur sat down and pursed his lips.

"They have anticipated our intention," he said, thoughtfully. "Doubtless
the things were emptied into sheets, then either weighted and sunk, or
taken in the boats. But she must have exerted her ingenuity. There
absolutely must be some word left for us. Wait!"

Hurrying to the _Whim_ he returned with his lens, while from the mate he
had borrowed a caliper, a two-foot rule and a sail needle.

"Now we shall search scientifically," he cried. "Remember, that as no
personal belonging remains, even the books being gone, we must infer
they made a great effort to destroy everything that would leave a clue.
They suspected the girl, too, and that made them doubly careful. What
would she do then? Exactly as we would do--hide her message so the
others could not discover it! Now, my boy Jack, you take the sail needle
and probe cushions, pillows and mattresses! My boy Tommy, take my lens
and look for places where the glue has been disturbed on furniture
joints; I will measure the desk, piano, panels--everything--for a secret
hiding place!"

"Well, I'll be darned," Tommy grinned. "You're some cop, professor!"

When each of us had finished and reported failure, Monsieur did not seem
at all discouraged.

"Now we go to the second phase," he said. "Keep in mind, whenever you
search for anything, that it may be under your nose. That is the place
to look, not off at the clouds--and nothing is too insignificant to
escape investigation. For see: I can write on a very thin piece of
paper, roll it into a string, thread it into a bodkin, and weave it into
a rug, curtain, quilt, and so forth; or press it lengthwise into a crack
in the floor. A favorite way is to tie it to a real piece of string, and
throw them carelessly into a wastebasket, thus making them appear to
have been cut from a bundle. But there are a thousand ways! Now we
proceed with this. Later we probe down gas jets, water spouts and
outlets, empty lamp reservoirs, unscrew the backs of mirrors, search key
holes, unravel carpets----"

"Heavens," I cried, seeing that in his zeal for doing this
professionally he was making himself absurd; and Tommy burst into a
hearty laugh, saying:

"Gezabo, there isn't a girl in a million who'd think of those places,
and if she did she wouldn't credit us with enough sense to find 'em.
Call off your bloodhounds! There's no message for us, that's a cinch!
Let's get busy at once on something practical!"

"That's what I say," I chipped in. "It's only eleven o'clock, and we
have eight good hours of daylight. Let's go back and call Gates for a
conference, without losing a minute!"

"You may be right," he sighed, "but--well, let us go, as you say. With
eight hours of light we can accomplish everything. Today may bring
success!"




CHAPTER XII

THE HURRICANE


Tommy's spirits were sky high. While treating our situation seriously he
found in every phase of it some new sense of humor, whereas the
professor looked on with grim purpose. Gates occupied rather a neutral
ground, I think, perhaps alternately leaning one way and the other. But
I was gripped by a single idea, a deep and growing love for this
fugitive girl to whom I had never spoken, who I did not know, 

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