Leonia Fox

As a passenger aboard the Thelassa, the affable Miss Leonia Fox keeps mostly to her cabin, emerging when the dinner gong is struck to eat as hearty a breakfast, luncheon or dinner as the ship’s rations can muster, often contriving with bullish good humour to wrangle a second helping if one’s to be had. A slight but cheerfully flamboyant lady of middle years, she claims a career upon the London stage, in variety, and it is certain her make-up is perhaps more suited to floodlights than sunlight, and her dancing not quite the thing for the gentler of the company. Then too there was the attempt to train the ubiquitous ships rats to perform upon their hind legs, with the aid of a small flute and a pocket of breadcrumbs secured from that morning’s breakfast; unhappy mutterings from some of the more superstitious of the crew put paid to the rodent circus, but nonetheless a diminishing number sometimes follow her in her occasional explorations about the ship. Never without her stout crocodile handbag and vertiginously heeled boots that seem to bear the lurching of the ship with remarkable good balance, she dresses with a passing nod to the fashion of the day, provided always that fashion favours feathers or sequins.