Let's drink like gentlemen.«

»Let it be a real drinking,« Whiskers approved.

»Let's get petrified,« Slim agreed. »Many a distillery's flowed under the bridge since we were gentlemen; but let's forget the long road we've traveled since, and hit our doss in the good old fashion in which every gentleman went to bed when we were young.«

»My father done it – did it,« Fatty concurred and corrected, as old recollections exploded long-sealed brain-cells of connotation and correct usage.

The other two nodded a descent from similar fathers and elevated their tin cans of alcohol.

 

By the time each had finished his own bottle and from his rags fished forth a second one, their brains were well-mellowed and a-glow, although they had not got around to telling their real names. But their English had improved. They spoke it correctly, while the argo of tramp-land ceased from their lips.

»It's my constitution,« Whiskers was explaining. »Very few men could go through what I have and live to tell the tale. And I never took any care of myself. If what the moralists and the physiologists say were true, I'd have been dead long ago. And it's the same with you two. Look at us, at our advanced years, carousing as the young ones don't dare, sleeping out in the open on the ground, never sheltered from frost nor rain nor storm, never afraid of pneumonia or rheumatism that would put half the young ones on their backs in hospital.«

He broke off to mix another drink, and Fatty took up the tale.

»And we've had our fun,« he boasted. »And speaking of sweethearts and all,« he cribbed from Kipling, »›We've rouged and we've ranged –‹«

»›In our time,‹« Slim completed the crib for him.

»I should say so, I should say so,« Fatty confirmed. »And been loved by princesses – at least I have.«

»Go on and tell us about it,« Whiskers urged. »The night's young, and why shouldn't we remember back to the roofs of kings?«

Nothing loath, Fatty cleared his throat for the recital and cast about in his mind for the best way to begin.

»It must be known that I came of good family. Percival Delaney, let us say, yes, let us say Percival Delaney, was not unknown at Oxford once upon a time – not for scholarship, I am frank to admit; but the gay young dogs of that day, if any be yet alive, would remember him –«

»My people came over with the Conqueror,« Whiskers interrupted, extending his hand to Fatty's in acknowledgment of the introduction.

»What name?« Fatty queried. »I did not seem quite to catch it.«

»Delarouse, Chauncey Delarouse. The name will serve as well as any.«

Both completed the handshake and glanced to Slim.

»Oh, well, while we're about it ...« Fatty urged.

»Bruce Cadogan Cavendish,« Slim growled morosely. »Go on, Percival, with your princesses and the roofs of kings.«

»Oh, I was a rare young devil,« Percival obliged, »after I played ducks and drakes at home and sported out over the world. And I was some figure of a man before I lost my shape – polo, steeple-chasing, boxing, wrestling, swimming. I won medals at buckjumping in Australia, and I held more than several swimming records from the quarter of a mile up. Women turned their heads to look when I went by. The women! God bless them!«

And Fatty, alias Percival Delaney, a grotesque of manhood, put his bulgy hand to his puffed lips and kissed audibly into the starry vault of the sky.

»And the Princess!« he resumed, with another kiss to the stars. »She was as fine a figure of a woman as I was a man, as high-spirited and courageous, as reckless and dare-devilish. Lord, Lord, in the water she was a mermaid, a sea-goddess. And when it came to blood, beside her I was parvenu. Her royal line traced back into the mists of antiquity.

She was not a daughter of a fair-skinned folk. Tawny golden was she, with golden-brown eyes, and her hair that fell to her knees was blue-black and straight, with just the curly tendrilly tendency that gives to woman's hair its charm. Oh, there were no kinks in it, any more than were there kinks in the hair of her entire genealogy. For she was Polynesian, glowing, golden, lovely and lovable, royal Polynesian.«

Again he paused to kiss his hand to the memory of her, and Slim, alias Bruce Cadogan Cavendish took advantage to interject:

»Huh! Maybe you didn't shine in scholarship, but at least you gleaned a vocabulary out of Oxford.«

»And in the South Seas garnered a better vocabulary from the lexicon of Love,« Percival was quick on the uptake.

»It was the island of Talofa,« he went on, »meaning love, the Isle of Love, and it was her island. Her father, the king, an old man, sat on his mats with paralyzed knees and drank square-face gin all day and most of the night, out of grief, sheer grief. She, my princess, was the only issue, her brothers having been lost in their double canoe in a hurricane while coming up from a voyage to Samoa. And among the Polynesians the royal women have equal right with the men to rule.