The Wings of the Morning.

by Louis Tracy.

CHAPTER I

THE WRECK OF THE _SIRDAR_

Lady Tozer adjusted her gold-rimmed eye-gla.s.ses with an air of dignified aggressiveness. She had lived too many years in the Far East.

In Hong Kong she was known as the "Mandarin." Her powers of merciless inquisition suggested torments long drawn out. The commander of the _Sirdar_, homeward bound from Shanghai, knew that he was about to be stretched on the rack when he took his seat at the saloon table.

"Is it true, captain, that we are running into a typhoon?" demanded her ladyship.

"From whom did you learn that, Lady Tozer?" Captain Ross was wary, though somewhat surprised.

"From Miss Deane. I understood her a moment ago to say that you had told her."

"I?"

"Didn't you? Some one told me this morning. I couldn't have guessed it, could I?" Miss Iris Deane's large blue eyes surveyed him with innocent indifference to strict accuracy. Incidentally, she had obtained the information from her maid, a nose-tilted coquette who extracted ship's secrets from a youthful quartermaster.

"Well--er--I had forgotten," explained the tactful sailor.

"Is it true?"

Lady Tozer _was_ unusually abrupt today. But she was annoyed by the a.s.sumption that the captain took a mere girl into his confidence and pa.s.sed over the wife of the ex-Chief Justice of Hong Kong.

"Yes, it is," said Captain Ross, equally curt, and silently thanking the fates that her ladyship was going home for the last time.

"How horrible!" she gasped, in unaffected alarm. This return to femininity soothed the sailor's ruffled temper.

Sir John, her husband, frowned judicially. That frown const.i.tuted his legal stock-in-trade, yet it pa.s.sed current for wisdom with the Hong Kong bar.

"What evidence have you?" he asked.

"Do tell us," chimed in Iris, delightfully unconscious of interrupting the court. "Did you find out when you squinted at the sun?"

The captain smiled. "You are nearer the mark than possibly you imagine, Miss Deane," he said. "When we took our observations yesterday there was a very weird-looking halo around the sun. This morning you may have noticed several light squalls and a smooth sea marked occasionally by strong ripples. The barometer is falling rapidly, and I expect that, as the day wears, we will encounter a heavy swell. If the sky looks wild tonight, and especially if we observe a heavy bank of cloud approaching from the north-west, you see the crockery dancing about the table at dinner. I am afraid you are not a good sailor, Lady Tozer. Are you, Miss Deane?"

"Capital! I should just love to see a real storm. Now promise me 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 circ.u.mferences, 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 pa.s.sengers 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 rea.s.sured Lady Tozer. To the non-nautical mind it is the unknown that is fearful.

A storm cla.s.sed 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-gla.s.ses.

"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.

Business detained Sir Arthur. A war-cloud over-shadowed the two great divisions of the yellow race. He must wait to see how matters developed, but he would not expose Iris to the insidious treachery of a Chinese spring. So, with tears, they separated. She was confided to the personal charge of Captain Ross. At each point of call the company's agents would be solicitous for her welfare. The cable's telegraphic eye would watch her progress as that of some princely maiden sailing in royal caravel. This fair, slender, well-formed girl--delightfully English in face and figure--with her fresh, clear complexion, limpid blue eyes, and shining brown hair, was a personage of some importance.

Lady Tozer knew these things and sighed complacently.

"Ah, well," she resumed. "Parents had different views when I was a girl. But I a.s.sume Sir Arthur thinks you should become used to being your own mistress in view of your approaching marriage."

"My--approaching--marriage!" cried Iris, now genuinely amazed.

"Yes. Is it not true that you are going to marry Lord Ventnor?"

A pa.s.sing steward heard the point-blank question.

It had a curious effect upon him. He gazed with fiercely eager eyes at Miss Deane, and so far forgot himself as to permit a dish of water ice to rest against Sir John Tozer's bald head.

Iris could not help noting his strange behavior. A flash of humor chased away her first angry resentment at Lady Tozer's interrogatory.

"That may be my happy fate," she answered gaily, "but Lord Ventnor has not asked me."

"Every one says in Hong Kong--" began her ladyship.

"Confound you, you stupid rascal! what are you doing?" shouted Sir John. His feeble nerves at last conveyed the information that something more p.r.o.nounced than a sudden draught affected his scalp; the ice was melting.

The incident amused those pa.s.sengers who sat near enough to observe it.

But the chief steward, hovering watchful near the captain's table, darted forward. Pale with anger he hissed--

"Report yourself for duty in the second saloon tonight," and he hustled his subordinate away from the judge's chair.

Miss Deane, mirthfully radiant, rose.