Indeed, he grew so interested in Swain’s exposition of deviation and variation and magnetic attraction and the various devices employed to counteract these influences, the Flinders bars, the soft-iron spheres, and the system of adjustable magnets located in the pedestal of the binnacle, that he had to be reminded by a mild exhibition of sisterly temper that she hadn’t summoned him to the bridge for his private edification.

“So then!” he said after due show of contrition—­“it is like this:  the magnetic needle is susceptible to many attractions aside from that of the pole; it is influenced by juxtaposition to other pieces or masses of magnetized metal.  The iron ship itself, for example, is one great magnet.  Then there are dissociated masses of iron within the ship, each possessing an individual power of magnetism sufficient to drag the needle far from its normal fidelity to the pole.  So the scientific mariner, when he installs a compass on board his ship, measures these several forces, their influence upon the needle, and installs others to correct them—­on the principle of like cures like.

“Let us put it in a figure:  The compass is the husband, the pole the wife.  Now it is well known that husbands are for all that human beings, able to perceive attractions in persons other than those to whom they are married.  The wise wife, then, studies the charms of mind or person which in others appeal to her husband, and makes them her own; or if that is impossible cultivates other qualities quite as potent to distract him.  It results from this, that the wise wife becomes, as they say ‘all women to one man.’  Now here the binnacle represents the arts by which that wise wife, the pole, keeps her husband true by surrounding him with charms and qualities—­these magnets—­sufficiently powerful to counteract the attractions of others.  Do I make myself clear?”

“But perfectly!” Liane nodded emphatically.  “What a mind to have in the family!” she appealed to Mr. Swain.  “Do you know, monsieur, it happens often to me to wonder how I should have so clever a brother?”

“It is like that with me, too,” Lanyard insisted warmly.

He made an early excuse to get away, having something new to think about.

Mr. Mussey put up a stiffer fight than Mr. Swain, since an avowed cynic is necessarily a Man Who Knows About Women.  He gave Liane flatly to understand that he saw through her and couldn’t be taken in by all her blandishments.  At the end of twenty-four hours, however, the conviction seemed somehow to have insidiously penetrated that only a man of his ripe wisdom and disillusionment could possibly have any appeal to a woman like Liane Delorme.  It wasn’t long after that the engine room was illuminated by Liane’s pretty ankles and Mr. Mussey was beginning to comprehend that there was in this world one woman at least who could take an intelligent interest in machinery.

Mr. Collison succumbed without a struggle.  True to the tradition of Southern chivalry, he ambled up to the block, laid his head upon it, and asked for the axe.  Nor was he kept long waiting...