"Oh, that reminds you, does it?" she mocked. "Just incidentally, like that."
Boom! Boom! Boom! The mission clock kept patiently at it until its suggestion struck in.
"Of course!" he cried. "Mr. Lake, the missionary, will marry us. And we"ll have Stark and Wisner for witnesses. How long does it take a bride to get ready? Would half an hour be enough?"
"It"s rather a short engagement," she remarked demurely. "But if it"s all the time we"ve got--"
"It is. But, darling, we"ll have to ride for it afterward, and get across to the mainland. I"ve no right to let you in for such a risk," he cried remorsefully.
"You couldn"t help yourself," she teased saucily. "I ran you down like one of your own beetles. Besides, what does that permit for the Dutch ship say?"
"That"s for myself and a woman--the leper woman. Not for myself and my wife."
"Well, I"m a woman, aren"t I? And it doesn"t say that the woman MUSTN"T be your wife." She blushed distractingly.
"Caesar! Of course it doesn"t! What luck! We"ll be in Curacao to-morrow.
I must see Wisner about getting us off. But, Polly, dearest one, you"re sure? You haven"t let yourself be carried away by that foolishness of mine yesterday?"
"Sure? Oh, beetle man!" She put her hands on his shoulders and bent to his ear.
The sulphur-colored winged Paul Pry stuck an impertinent head out from behind a palm leaf.
"Qu"est-ce qu"elle dit? Qu"est-ce qu"elle dit?"
For the second and last time in his adult life the beetle man threw a stone at a bird.
Four hours later six powerful black oarsmen rowed a boat containing two pa.s.sengers and practically no luggage out across the huge lazy swells of the Caribbean toward a smudge of black smoke.
"Look!" cried that one of the pa.s.sengers who wore huge goggles. "There goes the flag!"
A square of yellow bunting slid slowly up the pierhead staff of the dock corporation, and spread in the light sh.o.r.e breeze.
"That"s the modern flaming sword," he continued. "The color stirs something inside me. Ugly, isn"t it?"
"It is ugly," she confessed thoughtfully. "Yet it"s the flag we fight under, too, isn"t it? And we"d fight for it if we had to, just as we fought for the other--our own."
"I love your "we,"" he laughed happily.
She nestled closer to him.
"Are you still hating the Caribbean?"
"I? I"m loving it the second-best thing in the world."
"But I loved it first," she reminded him jealously. "Dearest," she added, with one of her swift swoops of thought, "what was that funny t.i.tle the British Secretary of Legation had?"
"What? Oh, Captain the Honorable Carey Knowles?"
"Yes. Well, I shall have a much nicer, more picturesque t.i.tle than that when we come back to Caracuna--dear, dirty, dangerous, queer, riotous, plague-stricken old Caracuna!"
"Then my liege ladylove intends to come back?" he asked.
"Of course. Some time. And in Caracuna I shall insist on being Mrs. the Unspeakable Perk."
THE END