The captain of the _Rufus Smith_ shook two large red fists above
his head.

"Another lunatic!" he shouted. "I'd as soon have a white horse and
a minister aboard as to go to sea in a floating bedlam!"

As the captain's angry thunder died away came the small anxious
voice of Aunt Jane.

"What's the matter? Oh, please tell me what's the matter!" she was
saying as she edged her way into the group. In her severely cut
khaki suit she looked like a plump little dumpling that had got
into a sausage wrapping by mistake. Her eyes, round, pale,
blinking a little in the tropical glare, roved over the circle
until they lit on me. Right where she stood Aunt Jane petrified.
She endeavored to shriek, but achieved instead only a strangled
wheeze. Her poor little chin dropped until it disappeared
altogether in the folds of her plump neck, and she remained
speechless, stricken, immobile as a wax figure in an exhibition.

"Aunt Jane," I said, "you must come right back to shore with me."
I spoke calmly, for unless you are perfectly calm with Aunt Jane
you fluster her.

She replied only by a slight gobbling in her throat, but the other
woman spoke in a loud voice, addressed not to me but to the
universe in general.

"The Young Person is mad!" It was an unmistakably British
intonation.