d 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?