"Why is it so sultry, professor?" asked Grace wearily.
The professor fanned her gently, taking mental inventory as the gentle breeze he made stirred his companion's veil. Her aristocratic features, her transparent, satinlike skin, her long silky lashes drooping on a velvety cheek, half concealing her dark, soul-disturbing eyes, the slender white neck and full bosom covered with dainty open laces partially concealing hidden charms, and an upturned, wistful mouth, with full red lips that suggested unholy delights—all this the professor noted, and he turned away his head and sighed. For all his science, he was, after all, only a man. And, alas, he had a wife at home. Besides, who knew better than he—the man of science—the futility of lifting one's eyes to the stars. He fanned on in philosophic silence.
"Tell me why is it so hot?" repeated Grace, quite unconscious of the emotions she was stirring in her bespectacled vis-à-vis.
"Really, I don't know," said the professor, startled out of his reveries. Looking around at the sky, he added: "I think we're going to have a change in the weather."
"Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed Mrs. Stuart anxiously. "What makes you think that?"
"Well," replied the professor, scanning with the expert air of a weather prophet the distant horizon, where the fiery sun was sinking behind a great mass of purple cloud, "I don't much like the formation of those clouds over there. In these latitudes they usually portend a storm of considerable violence. The sultriness, the unnatural calm, are all storm warnings to the sailor, and if another proof were wanted, the barometer has been falling rapidly all day. We're sure to get something before long."
"Anything's better than this heat," yawned Grace. "I'd love to see a big storm, with tremendous waves washing all over the ship."
"Really, Grace, I think it's horrid of you to talk that way," protested Mrs. Stuart, half in jest, half in earnest. "If we were wrecked or something, it would serve you right."
"I wouldn't mind being wrecked," laughed Grace. "It would be awfully romantic—so different from our conventional, humdrum life. Just fancy, professor, if the ship were wrecked and you and I were cast away on a desert island, with only monkeys, snakes, and possibly savages for neighbors!"
"You jest, Miss Harmon," replied the professor seriously. "But such things have occurred. Don't you remember what happened to the passengers of the Aeon, when that steamer was wrecked on Christmas Island? The survivors were ten weeks on a barren rock in the South Pacific. One woman's hair, which was brown, without a trace of gray, when she sailed on the Aeon, turned almost white, as a result of the privations and nerve strain endured on the island."