eager look a prophesied mine of
half-crowns.

Whiffitts simply loved telling me. It _is_ nice knowing something
somebody else doesn't know and is dying to! The name of the Ship's
Mystery is supposed to be Storm, Peter Storm. I say "supposed,"
advisedly. Because it may be _anything_. They don't worry with passenger
lists for third-class people; they're just a seething, nameless mass,
apparently. But anything remarkable bubbles up to the top, as in the
case of the alleged Peter Storm. Naturally, his fellow-passengers have
nicknamed him "The Stormy Petrel."

What is he really? we wonder. A jewel shines more brightly at night, and
perhaps it's the contrast between the Stormy Petrel and those
"fellow-passengers" of his which makes him look so very great a
gentleman, despite the fact that his clothes might have been bought at a
second hand--no, a fourth or fifth hand--shop. The creature wears
flannel shirts (he seems, thank heaven, to have several to change with,
of different colours) and they have low, turn-over collars. Apparently
all his neckties were torpedoed with his money, for he never sports one.
Instead, he ties himself up in red or black silk handkerchiefs, very
ancient and faded; and if you will believe me, my dear girl, the effect
is most _distinguished_!

I told you that he looks as an Italian prince ought to look and seldom
does; but he claims American citizenship. He sailed from New York in the
_Lusitania_, and was among those saved. Far from advertising this
adventure, the hero of it would apparently have kept silence if he
could; but it leaked out somehow in Ireland, Whiffits doesn't quite know
how. In any case, at the time of taking passage on the _Arabic_ back to
America, months later, paragraphs about the man's _Lusitania_ experience
appeared in the papers. He was catechized at the consulate when trying
to get a passport for the United States, and it came out then that there
was no Peter Storm on board the _Lusitania_. Our Mystery explained,
however, that in the third class there was a passenger registered as
"Peter Sturm." The name, according to him, was spelled wrongly at the
time. Nobody has since contradicted this statement, so it has been given
the benefit of the doubt. Once more the man's luck bobbed up on board
the _Arabic_, where he was saved again, and behaved well, rescuing a lot
of people. What he did in that way on the _Lusitania_ isn't known; but
the searchlight of fame was turned full upo