"Well, Orde, can you stow this thing some place out of our way?" Orde eyed the bandbox doubtfully. "I dessay I can find a plice for it," he said at length. "Do, please." "Very good, sir. Then-Q." Possessing himself of the bandbox, Orde retired. "And now," suggested Iff with much vivacity, "s'pose we unpack and get settled." And they proceeded to distribute their belongings, sharing the meagre conveniences of their quarters with the impartiality of courteous and experienced travellers.... It was rather late in the afternoon before Staff found an opportunity to get on deck for the first time. The hour was golden with the glory of a westering sun. The air was bland, the sea quiet. The Autocratic had settled into her stride, bearing swiftly down St. George's Channel for Queenstown, where she was scheduled to touch at midnight. Her decks presented scenes of animation familiar to the eyes of a weathered voyager. There was the customary confusion of petticoats and sporadic displays of steamer-rugs along the ranks of deck-chairs. Deck-stewards darted hither and yon, wearing the harassed expressions appropriate to persons of their calling--doubtless to a man praying for that bright day when some public benefactor should invent a steamship having at least two leeward sides. A clatter of tongues assailed the ear, the high, sweet accents of American women predominating. The masculine element of the passenger-list with singular unanimity--like birds of prey wheeling in ever diminishing circles above their quarry--drifted imperceptibly but steadily aft, toward the smoking-room. The two indispensable adjuncts to a successful voyage had already put in their appearance: _item_, the Pest, an overdressed, overgrown, shrill-voiced female-child, blundering into everybody's way and shrieking impertinences; _item_, a short, stout, sedulously hilarious gentleman who oozed public-spirited geniality at every pore and insisted on buttonholing inoffensive strangers and demanding that they enter an embryonic deck-quoit tournament--in short, discovering every known symptom of being the Life and Soul of the Ship. Staff dodged both by grace of discretion and good fortune, and having found his deck-chair, dropped into it with a sigh of content, composing himself for rest and thought. His world seemed very bright with promise, just then; he felt that, if he had acted on impetuous impulse, he had not acted unwisely: only a few more hours--then the pause at Queenstown--then the brief, seven-day stretch across the Atlantic to home and Alison Landis! It seemed almost too good to be true. He all but purred with his content in the prospect. Of course, he had a little work to do, but he didn't mind that; it would help immensely to beguile the tedium of the voyage; and all he required in order to do it well was the moral courage to shut himself up for a few hours each day and to avoid as far as possible social entanglements....