s."

"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 breake