"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.