"If you interfere with me again," said the Tyro, "I'll throw you overboard." And it was said in such evident good faith that his opponent deemed it best to forget that matter, vaguely suspecting that he had encountered a "professional." A more fearsome opponent bore down upon the depressed scion of all the Smiths, late that afternoon. Mrs. Charlton Denyse maneuvered him into a curve of the rail, and there held him with her glittering eye. "I beg your pardon." This, pitched on a flat and haughty level of vocality, was her method of opening the conversation. The Tyro sought refuge in the example of classic lore. "You haven't offended me," he said, patterning his response upon the White Queen. "Perhaps you're going to," he added apprehensively. "I am going to talk to you for your own good," was the chill retort. "Oh, Lord! That's worse." "Do you see that ship?" The Denyse hand pointed, rigid as a bar, to the south, where the Tyro discerned a thin smudge of smoke. "I see something." "That is the Nantasket." "At this distance I can't deny it," murmured the Tyro. "Which left New York two days behind us, and is now overhauling us, owing to our accident." He received this news with a bow. "On board her is Henry Clay Wayne," she continued weightily. "Congratulations on your remarkable keenness of vision!" exclaimed the Tyro. "Don't be an imbecile," said the lady, "I didn't see him. I learned by wireless." "Rather a specialty of yours, wireless, isn't it?" he queried. She shot an edged look at him, but his expression was innocence itself. "He will reach England before us." "Then you don't think he'll board us and make us all walk the plank?" asked the Tyro in an apparent agony of relief. "Don't get flip--" cried the exasperated lady--"pant," she added barely in time--"with me. Mr. Wayne will be in England waiting for you." "Anyway, he can't eat me," the Tyro comforted himself. "Shall I hide in the stoke-hole? Shall I disguise myself as a rat and go ashore in the cargo? What do you advise?" "I advise you to keep away from Miss Wayne." "Yes. You did that before. At present I'm doing so." "Then continue." "I shall, until we reach solid earth." "There my responsibility will cease. Mr. Wayne will know how to protect his daughter from upstart fortune-hunters." The Tyro regarded her with an unruffled brow. "Never hunted a fortune in my life. A modest competence is the extent of my ambition, and I've attained that, thanking you for your kind interest." "In the necktie and suspender business, I suppose," she snapped, enraged at her failure to pierce the foe's armor. "It's a crying scandal that you should thrust yourself on your betters." This annoyed the Tyro. Not that he allowed Mrs. Denyse to perceive it. With a bland, reminiscent smile he remarked:-- "Speaking of scandals, I observed a young man, rather informally clad, entering Stateroom 144 D at a late hour last night, in some haste."