Two thousand five hundred years ago the prophet Jeremiah expressed incredulity as to the power of an Ethiopian to change his skin or a leopard his spots. The march of the centuries has fully justified the seer's historic doubt, so it makes but slight demand on the critical faculties to assume that two years' residence in Europe had not cooled the hot southern blood flowing in Carmela's veins.
She had hated Iris before she set eyes on her; she hated her now that she had seen her rare beauty; she gloated on the suffering inflicted by the presence of the faded old man who claimed her as his bride. Though it was of the utmost importance that she should hasten to her father, she returned to Las Flores in her rival's company, their arms linked in seeming friendship, and the Brazilian girl's ears alert to treasure every word that told of Bulmer's wooing.
Therein she greatly miscalculated the true gentility of one whom his cronies described as "a rough diamond." Bulmer realized that Iris was overwrought. Vague but sensational items in newspapers had prepared him in some measure for the story of her wanderings since last they met in quiet, old-fashioned Bootle. He felt that she was altered, that their ways in life had deviated with a sharpness that was not to be brought back into parallel grooves simply because he had traveled many thousands of miles to find her.
So Dickey contented himself by listening to Coke's Homeric account of the Andromeda's wrecking, and if he interposed an occasional question, and thus drew the girl's sweet voice into the talk, it was invariably germane to the strange history of the ship and her human freight.
Coke's narrative was picturesque and lurid. At times, he called himself to order; at times, both Iris and Carmela affected not to have heard him. But Carmela's interest never flagged. Nor did Bulmer's. As the yarn progressed—for Watts and Schmidt and Norrie had joined them, and the whole party was seated in an inner room where an impromptu meal was provided—both the woman of Brazil and the man of Lancashire seized on the same unspoken motif. Every incident centered in the striking personality of Philip Hozier. From the instant the second shell struck the winch, and laid him apparently dead on the forecastle, to the very hour of this coming together at Las Flores, Hozier held the stage. It was he who took Iris on his shoulders and brought her to safety through the spume of the wrathful sea, he who carried her to the hut, he who crossed Fernando Noronha alone to protect her.
Coke was impartial. He would have minimized his own singular bravery in running up the ship's signals had not Iris given him a breathing-space while she enthralled the others with her description. Otherwise, Coke skipped no line of his epic.
"You'll rec'lect," he wheezed, in a voice that rasped like a file, "you'll rec'lect, Mr. Verity, as I said to you that Hozier was good enough to take charge of the bridge of a battleship. By—well, any 'ow, if I'd said the Channel Fleet I shouldn't 'ave bin talkin' through me 'at. Look at 'im now. 'E's the on'y reel live man Dom Wot's-'is-name 'as got. Sink me! if it wasn't for the folks at 'ome, an' the fac' that the Andromeeda's skipper ought to keep clear of politics in this crimson country, I'd 'ave a cut in at the game meself."
It might be hoped that Carmela's mood would soften when she discovered her rival's hapless love, but that would be expecting something which her bursting southern heart could not give. A volcano pours forth lava, not water. It scorches, not heals. Iris, willing or not, had sapped her Salvador's allegiance. Carmela wanted to see those curved lips writhing in pain, those brown eyes dimmed, that smooth brow wrung with the grief that knows no remedy.
A fierce joy leaped up in her when Verity spoke of an early departure.
"You see, Iris," he explained, "these Brazilian bucks may be months in settlin' their differences. Dickey an' me, 'elped a lot by our Consul, squeezed a pass out of the President—beg pardon, miss, but 'e is President, in Pernambuco, at all events," he said in an apologetic "aside" to Carmela—"an' the sooner we make tracks for ole England the better it'll be for all of us. Wot do you say to an early start to-morrow? We'd be off to-night, on'y I'm feared my rheumaticky bones wouldn't stand the racket."