Added to these there were raucous Australians, clumsily built guttural Germans, in fact the usual omnium gatherum, unavoidable, alas! on a sea voyage, clothed in short skirts, shirt waists, squash hats, and thick boots as "they were going tramping about the sands," and each, of _course_, loaded with the inevitable camera which gives dire offence to many an eastern of higher rank, who hates being photographed willy-nilly along with all the other "only a native" habits of the westerner, who with the one word "nigger" describes the Rajah of India, the Sheik of Arabia, the Hottentot and the Christy Minstrel. Free for one day from the restraining manners of those others who at that very moment were doubtless returning thanks on deck to Allah for his manifold blessings in the shape of some few hours of perfect peace, a few men of different nationalities were either boisterously chaffing the less plain of their companions, or ogling the shrinking Eastern women, crouching on the edge of the platform. Mr. Billings in fact, in unclean canvas shoes and a frantic endeavour to find favour in the bistre enlarged eyes of a certain slim black figure, was executing the very double shuffle which had "brought down" the second class dining saloon honoured for the nonce by the presence of the first class, on the occasion of one of the purgatorial concerts habitual to sea life as known on board a liner. CHAPTER II Jill stood by herself! Personally I consider as infinitely boring those descriptions written at length anent the past lives of the characters, male and female, which go to the building of a novel, so in as few words as possible will try to outline the years which had brought Jill Carden to the dreary task of waiting hand and foot upon the whimsies of a neurotic German woman of great wealth, and still greater disinclination to part with the smallest coin of any realm she might be travelling through. Jill, an only child and motherless, had led a glorious care-free existence. Adored by her father and her two friends, Moll, otherwise the Honourable Mary Bingham pronounced Beam, of the neighbouring estate, and Jack, otherwise Sir John Wetherbourne, Baronet, of the next county, big brother to Jill and worshipper at the shrine of Moll. Jill was also loved by all who waited on her, and sought after by not a few on account of her great wealth, and had laughed her way through seventeen years of life, to find herself suddenly minus father and money, with nothing left in fact but an estate mortgaged to the smallest pebble, and a heart-whole proposition from her chum Moll to "just come over the wall" and restart laughing her way as her adopted sister through the bit of life which might stretch from the moment of disaster to such time that she should find a life companion with whom she could settle down and live happily ever after!