When the captain ascertained that no water was being shipped, the damage being wholly external, the collision doors were opened and the passengers admitted to the saloon, a brilliant palace, superbly indifferent to the wreck and ruin without.

Captain Ross himself came down and addressed a few comforting words to the quiet men and pallid women gathered there.  He told them exactly what had happened.

Sir John Tozer, self-possessed and critical, asked a question.

“The junk is destroyed, I assume?” he said.

“It is.”

“Would it not have been better to have struck her end on?”

“Much better, but that is not the view we should take if we encountered a vessel relatively as big as the Sirdar was to the unfortunate junk.”

“But,” persisted the lawyer, “what would have been the result?”

“You would never have known that the incident had happened, Sir John.”

“In other words, the poor despairing Chinamen, clinging to their little craft with some chance of escape, would be quietly murdered to suit our convenience.”

It was Iris’s clear voice that rang out this downright exposition of the facts.  Sir John shook his head; he carried the discussion no further.

The hours passed in tedious misery after Captain Ross’s visit.  Every one was eager to get a glimpse of the unknown terrors without from the deck.  This was out of the question, so people sat around the tables to listen eagerly to Experience and his wise saws on drifting ships and their prospects.

Some cautious persons visited their cabins to secure valuables in case of further disaster.  A few hardy spirits returned to bed.

Meanwhile, in the charthouse, the captain and chief officer were gravely pondering over an open chart, and discussing a fresh risk that loomed ominously before them.  The ship was a long way out of her usual course when the accident happened.  She was drifting now, they estimated, eleven knots an hour, with wind, sea, and current all forcing her in the same direction, drifting into one of the most dangerous places in the known world, the south China Sea, with its numberless reefs, shoals, and isolated rocks, and the great island of Borneo stretching right across the path of the cyclone.

Still, there was nothing to be done save to make a few unobtrusive preparations and trust to idle chance.  To attempt to anchor and ride out the gale in their present position was out of the question.

Two, three, four o’clock came, and went.  Another half-hour would witness the dawn and a further clearing of the weather.  The barometer was rapidly rising.  The center of the cyclone had swept far ahead.  There was only left the aftermath of heavy seas and furious but steadier wind.

Captain Ross entered the charthouse for the twentieth time.

He had aged many years in appearance.  The smiling, confident, debonair officer was changed into a stricken, mournful man.  He had altered with his ship.  The Sirdar and her master could hardly be recognized, so cruel were the blows they had received.