t was just this phrase that roused the northerner in the
purser. He rose and looked towards the captain's table. But the
captain was not dining in the saloon that evening. Then he strode to
the centre of the saloon, beneath the renowned dome which has been so
often photographed for the illustrated papers, and sought to destroy
Isabel Joy with a single marine glance. Having failed, he called out
loudly:

"Be quiet, madam. Resume your seat."

Isabel Joy stopped for a second, gave him a glance far more homicidal
than his own, and resumed her discourse.

"Steward," cried the purser, "take that woman out of the saloon."

The whole complement of first-class passengers was now standing
up, and many of them saw a plate descend from on high and graze
the purser's shoulder. With the celebrity of a sprinter the man
of authority from Durham disappeared from the ground-floor and was
immediately seen in the gallery. Accounts differed, afterwards, as to
the exact order of events; but it is certain that the leader of the
band lost his fiddle, which was broken by the lusty Isabel on the
purser's head. It was known later that Isabel, though not exactly in
irons, was under arrest in her state-room.

"She really ought to have thought of that for herself, if she's as
smart as she thinks she is," said Edward Henry, privately.

VI

Though he was on the way to high success his anxieties and solicitudes
seemed to increase every hour. Immediately after Isabel Joy's arrest
he became more than ever a crony of the Marconi operator, and began
to dispatch vivid and urgent telegrams to London, without counting the
cost. On the next day he began to receive replies. (It was the most
interesting voyage that the Marconi operator had had since the sinking
of the _Catherine of Siena_, in which episode his promptness through
the air had certainly saved two hundred lives.) Edward Henry could
scarcely sleep, so intense was his longing for Sunday night--his
desire to be safe in London with Isabel Joy! Nay, he could not
properly eat! And then the doubt entered his mind whether after all he
would get to London on Sunday night. For the _Lithuania_ was lagging.
She might have been doing it on purpose to ruin him. Every day, in the
auction-pool on the ship's run, it was the holder of the lower field
that pocketed the money of his fellow-men. The _Lithuania_ actually
descended below five hundred and forty knots in the twenty-four hours.
And no authorit