The Honorable Percival

								

"Afraid?" asked Bobby, teasingly, flashing a smile over her shoulder.
"I don't think," said Percival, and, immediately was chagrined at having
indulged in such a vulgar expression.
"I love it!" cried Bobby. "It's more fun than a bucking bronco. Is this
our wave? All right! Let her go!"
The Kanaka in the prow gave the signal, and the boat backed into the
monster wave just as it was about to break. Simultaneously the paddles
were plunged into the water, and a vigorous pull was made for the shore.
There was a merry whiz of rushing waters, a breathless suspension in
midair, then a gigantic upheaval as the boat plunged over the crest of
the wave and shot like an arrow two miles in two minutes to the beach.
Percival, as has been stated, rather prided himself on having exhausted
life's thrills. When one has made a reputation for luging at Caux and
has raced on skis with the professionals at St. Moritz, not to boast of
a daring flight in a French aëroplane, one is apt to be rather superior
to minor sports. But the present thrilling diversion, shared with a girl
as irresistibly pretty and as utterly abandoned to the joy of the moment
as Bobby Boynton, proved quite the most exhilarating pastime in which he
had ever indulged.
Again and again the boat went out, and again and again Mrs. Weston
beckoned frantically and imperatively from the pier. The last time she
looked at her watch, she seemed to give up the hope of getting the
delinquents back to shore. Gathering up scarfs and parasols, she and
Elise hurried back to the steamer.
For the two young people in the boat the steamer had ceased to exist.
Everything had ceased to exist except a narrow shell of wood, three
brown-backed natives, and one towering wave after another that shot
them through delicious realms of space and left them, with every nerve
a-tingle, laughing into each other's eyes.
"Ripping, isn't it?" cried Percival on the third return. "Shall we have
one more go?"
"I expect we ought to be going," said Bobby, shaking the salt spray out
of her hair. "I don't see anything of Mrs. Weston and Elise."
"I don't want to see anything of them," cried Percival, recklessly.
"Right ho! once more!"
She was nothing loath, and they went blithely forth to meet the next big
wave.
"Mrs. Weston has gone!" said Bobby when they again touched shore.
"Wouldn't it be a lark if we were left?"
No bullet ever brought a soaring bird to ground more promptly than this
remark brought the Honorable Percival to his senses.
"Gad!" he cried, "but it's impossible! My luggage is all on board!"
He scrambled frantically out of the boat and rushed to his bath-house.
The prospect of being stranded, on even a fairy island, with a
dangerously beguiling maiden of the middle class was even more appalling
than being divorced from his luggage. He struggled frantically into his
clothes, losing three precious minutes over a broken shoe-lace. When he
came out he found Bobby, very cool and collected, sipping an iced drink