The second officer of the Andromeda was pacing the bridge with the slow alertness of responsibility. He would walk from port to starboard, glance forrard and aft, peer at the wide crescent of the starlit sea, stroll back to port, and again scan ship and horizon. Sometimes he halted in front of the binnacle lamp to make certain that the man at the wheel was keeping the course, South 15 West, set by Captain Coke shortly before midnight. His ears listened mechanically to the steady pulse-beats of the propeller; his eyes swept the vague plain of the ocean for the sparkling white diamond that would betoken a mast-head light; he was watchful and prepared for any unforeseen emergency that might beset the vessel intrusted to his care. But his mind dwelt on something far removed from his duties, though, to be sure, every poet who ever scribbled four lines of verse has found rhyme and reason in comparing women with stars, and ships, and the sea.
If Philip Hozier was no poet, he was a sailor, and sailors are notoriously susceptible to the charms of the softer sex. But the only woman he loved was his mother, the only bride he could look for during many a year was a mermaid, though these sprites of the deep waters seem to be frequenting undiscovered haunts since mariners ceased to woo the wind. For all that, if perforce he was heart-whole, there was no just cause or impediment why he should not admire a pretty girl when he saw one, and an exceedingly pretty girl had honored him with her company during a brief minute of the previous day.
He was superintending the safe disposal of the last batch of cotton goods in the forward hold—and had just found it necessary to explain the correct principles of stowage with sailor-like fluency—when a young lady, accompanied by a dock laborer carrying a leather portmanteau, spoke to him from the quay.
"Is Captain Coke on board?" said she.
"No, madam," said he, lifting his cap with one hand, and restraining the clanking of a steam windlass with the other.
"I am Mr. Verity's niece, and I wish to send this parcel to Monte Video—may I put it in some place where it will be safe?" said she.
Hoping that the rattling winch had drowned his earlier remarks—which were couched in an lingua franca of the high seas—he began to tell her that it would give him the utmost pleasure to take charge of it on her account, but she nodded, bade the porter follow, ran along a somewhat precarious gangway, and was on deck before he could offer any assistance.
"You are Mr. Hozier, I suppose?" said Iris, gazing with frank brown eyes into his frank blue ones. She, of course, was severely self-possessed; he, as is the way of mere man, grew more confused each instant.
"Well, I will just pop the bag into Captain Coke's stateroom, and leave this note with it. I have explained everything fully. I wrote a line in case he might be absent."
All of which was so strictly accurate that it served its purpose admirably, though the said purpose, it is regrettable to state, was the misleading and utter bamboozling of Philip Hozier. Miss Iris Yorke knew quite well that Captain Coke was then closeted with David Verity in Exchange Buildings; she knew, because she had watched him pass through the big swing doors of her uncle's office. She also knew, having made it her business to find out, that in fifteen minutes, or less, the crew would muster in the fo'c'sle for their mid-day meal. Not having heard a word of Hozier's free speech to the gentlemen of various nationalities at the bottom of the hold, she wondered why he was blushing.