le woman, and two children coming to meet him last
homeward trip. They will be there again. Good God! That Lascar who was
saved has some one to await him in a Bombay village, I suppose."

The gale sang a mad requiem to its victims. The very surface was torn
from the sea. The ship drove relentlessly through sheets of spray that
caused the officers high up on the bridge to gasp for breath. They held
on by main force, though protected by strong canvas sheets bound to the
rails. The main deck was quite impassable. The promenade deck, even the
lofty spar deck, was scourged with the broken crests of waves that
tried with demoniac energy to smash in the starboard bow, for the
_Sirdar_ was cutting into the heart of the cyclone.

The captain fought his way to the charthouse. He wiped the salt water
from his eyes and looked anxiously at the barometer.

"Still falling!" he muttered. "I will keep on until seven o'clock and
then bear three points to the southward. By midnight we should be
behind it."

He struggled back into the outside fury. By comparison the sturdy
citadel he quitted was Paradise on the edge of an inferno.

Down in the saloon the hardier passengers were striving to subdue the
ennui of an interval before they sought their cabins. Some talked. One
hardened reprobate strummed the piano. Others played cards, chess,
draughts, anything that would distract attention.

The stately apartment offered strange contrast to the warring elements
without. Bright lights, costly upholstery, soft carpets, carved panels
and gilded cornices, with uniformed attendants passing to and fro
carrying coffee and glasses--these surroundings suggested a floating
palace in which the raging seas were defied. Yet forty miles away,
somewhere in the furious depths, four corpses swirled about with
horrible uncertainty, lurching through battling currents, and perchance
convoyed by fighting sharks.

The surgeon had been called away. Iris was the only lady left in the
saloon. She watched a set of whist players for a time and then essayed
the perilous passage to her stateroom. She found her maid and a
stewardess there. Both women were weeping.

"What is the matter?" she inquired.

The stewardess tried to speak. She choked with grief and hastily went
out. The maid blubbered an explanation.

"A friend of hers was married, miss, to the man who is drowned."

"Drowned! What man?"

"Haven't you heard, miss? I suppose they are keeping it quiet. An