The politic 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 Lady Tozer.  Here it was impossible, and the older woman fastened upon her asp-like.  Miss Iris Deane was a toothsome morsel for gossip.  Not yet twenty-one, the only daughter of a wealthy baronet who owned a fleet of stately ships—­the Sirdar amongst them—­a girl who had been mistress of her father’s house since her return from Dresden three years ago—­young, beautiful, rich—­here was a combination for which men thanked a judicious Heaven, whilst women sniffed enviously.