solemnly that you will take me up into the charthouse when this typhoon
is simply tearing things to pieces."

"Oh dear! I do hope it will not be very bad. Is there no way in which
you can avoid it, captain? Will it last long?"

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