"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?