olitic skipper for once preferred to answer Lady Tozer. "There is
no cause for uneasiness," he said. "Of course, typhoons in the China
Sea are nasty things while they last, but a ship like the _Sirdar_
is not troubled by them. She will drive through the worst gale she is
likely to meet here in less than twelve hours. Besides, I alter the
course somewhat as soon as I discover our position with regard to its
center. You see, Miss Deane--"

And Captain Ross forthwith illustrated on the back of a menu card the
spiral shape and progress of a cyclone. He so thoroughly mystified the
girl by his technical references to northern and southern hemispheres,
polar directions, revolving air-currents, external circumferences, and
diminished atmospheric pressures, that she was too bewildered to
reiterate a desire to visit the bridge.

Then the commander hurriedly excused himself, and the passengers saw no
more of him that day.

But his short scientific lecture achieved a double result. It rescued
him from a request which he could not possibly grant, and reassured
Lady Tozer. To the non-nautical mind it is the unknown that is fearful.
A storm classed as "periodic," whose velocity can be measured, whose
duration and direction can be determined beforehand by hours and
distances, ceases to be terrifying. It becomes an accepted fact, akin
to the steam-engine and the electric telegraph, marvelous yet
commonplace.

So her ladyship dismissed the topic as of no present interest, and
focused Miss Deane through her eye-glasses.

"Sir Arthur proposes to come home in June, I understand?" she inquired.

Iris was a remarkably healthy young woman. A large banana momentarily
engaged her attention. She nodded affably.

"You will stay with relatives until he arrives?" pursued Lady Tozer.

The banana is a fruit of simple characteristics. The girl was able to
reply, with a touch of careless hauteur in her voice:

"Relatives! We have none--none whom we specially cultivate, that is. I
will stop in town a day or two to interview my dressmaker, and then go
straight to Helmdale, our place in Yorkshire."

"Surely you have a chaperon!"

"A chaperon! My dear Lady Tozer, did my father impress you as one who
would permit a fussy and stout old person to make my life miserable?"

The acidity of the retort lay in the word "stout." But Iris was not
accustomed to cross-examination. During a three months' residence on
the island she had learnt how to avoid L