“But really, Robert, only since you scraped off the upper crust have I been able to recognize you again.  I remember now that I thought you were a most distinguished looking steward.”

“Well, I am helpless.  I cannot even squeeze you.  By the way, Iris, during the next few days say nothing about our mine.”

“Oh, why not?”

“Just a personal whim.  It will please me.”

“If it pleases you, Robert, I am satisfied.”

He pressed her arm by way of answer.  They were too near to the waiting trio for other comment.

“Captain Fitzroy,” cried Iris, “let me introduce Mr. Anstruther to you.  Lord Ventnor, you have met Mr. Anstruther before.”

The sailor shook hands.  Lord Ventnor smiled affably.

“Your enforced residence on the island seems to have agreed with you,” he said.

“Admirably.  Life here had its drawbacks, but we fought our enemies in the open.  Didn’t we, Iris?”

“Yes, dear.  The poor Dyaks were not sufficiently modernized to attack us with false testimony.”

His lordship’s sallow face wrinkled somewhat.  So Iris knew of the court-martial, nor was she afraid to proclaim to all the world that this man was her lover.  As for Captain Fitzroy, his bushy eyebrows disappeared into his peaked cap when he heard the manner of their speech.

Nevertheless Ventnor smiled again.

“Even the Dyaks respected Miss Deane,” he said.

But Anstruther, sorry for the manifest uneasiness of the shipowner, repressed the retort on his lips, and forthwith suggested that they should walk to the north beach in the first instance, that being the scene of the wreck.

During the next hour he became auditor rather than narrator.  It was Iris who told of his wild fight against wind and waves, Iris who showed them where he fought with the devil-fish, Iris who expatiated on the long days of ceaseless toil, his dauntless courage in the face of every difficulty, the way in which he rescued her from the clutch of the savages, the skill of his preparations against the anticipated attack, and the last great achievement of all, when, time after time, he foiled the Dyaks’ best-laid plans, and flung them off, crippled and disheartened, during the many phases of the thirty hours’ battle.

She had an attentive audience.  Most of the Orient’s officers quietly came up and followed the girl’s glowing recital with breathless interest.  Robert vainly endeavored more than once to laugh away her thrilling eulogy.  But she would have none of it.  Her heart was in her words.  He deserved this tribute of praise, unstinted, unmeasured, abundant in its simple truth, yet sounding like a legend spun by some romantic poet, were not the grim evidences of its accuracy visible on every hand.

She was so volubly clear, so precise in fact, so subtle in her clever delineations of humorous or tragic events, that her father was astounded, and even Anstruther silently admitted that a man might live until he equaled the years of a Biblical patriarch without discovering all the resources of a woman.