"Come," he cried again. "Let us make a fishing party!" "The trouble with fishing parties is," Tommy drawled, "that there's always some damn fool along who wants to fish."--Which was, I think, not only the best thing Tommy ever said but, in the circumstances, the best that could have been said. The professor sat down again rather suddenly and blinked at us. "So! Then we do not fish," he murmured, and after another thoughtful pause went below. "I don't suppose we ought to insult him," I suggested, not intending any one to think I meant it. "I don't care what we do to him," Tommy savagely retorted. "All the good you've got out of this cruise will go to the bow-wows. I won't have it, I tell you! Let's chuck him overboard!" "Chuck over your grouch," I laughed, although his proposition interested me. "Oh, I haven't any grouch," he turned away; but swung back, asking: "Are you going to give up?" "Most certainly not!" "Then why don't you get busy?" "Get busy! D'you expect me to go downstairs and drag her out of her room?" "Yes--do anything! She isn't staying there from choice!" (But I knew better than that.) "If I slug the gezabo you might ask her up. Shall I?" "Show an idea, man! You know she wouldn't see me!" "What if she wouldn't! Bring her out, anyhow! Good Lord, Jack, if you're an example of lovers up North, then I say God pity Yankee girls!" "Well, what would you do, Mr. Know-so-much?" I asked, my temper blowing up. "If she told you she'd stayed awake nights fighting it out and reached the conclusion, absolutely and without peradventure of changing her mind, that her destiny's in Azuria, what would you do then--you who know such a hell of a lot about women?" I just had to say that; it kept irritating me. "I don't claim any knowledge of the genus," he said, looking mildly at the horizon--and wanting to laugh, I thought. "But a modicum of brain would show you she hasn't thought it out, at all. How could she in forty-eight hours, being confronted for the first time in her life with the two most glowing things in a girl's fancy--love or a throne? She's dazzled, not decided." "She's worse," I growled. "She's hurt--that's one reason she won't come up! And allow me to say that what you know about women wouldn't fill a gnat's eye!" I seemed to be hypped on this, and couldn't get away from it. "Well, if you've spilled the beans you'll have to pick 'em up pretty quick, for we'll be home in three days. Just be sure you don't intimate that Azuria can be less than a perfect hell to her, for that would ruin your chances forever!" And with this parting injunction, that drove terror to my heart, he walked aft to join Gates.