Her voice seemed to rouse him as from troubled sleep.
"I was hit," he muttered. "What is it? What is wrong?"
"Oh, come, come!" she screamed, for some unseen agency tore a transverse gash in the planking not a foot in front of them.
He yielded with broken expostulations. She dragged him to the top of the stairs. Clinging to him, she half walked, half fell down the few steps. But she did not quite fall; Hozier's weight was almost more than she could manage, but she clung to him desperately, saved him from a headlong plunge to the deck, and literally carried him into the forecastle, where she found some of the crew who had scurried there like rabbits to their burrow when the first shell crashed into the engine-room.
Iris's fine eyes darted lightning at them.
"You call yourselves men," she cried shrilly, "yet you leave one of your officers lying on deck to be shot at by those fiends!"
"We didn't know he was there, miss," said one. "We'd ha' fetched him right enough if we did."
Even in her present stress of mixed emotions, the sailor's words sounded reasonable. Every other person on board was just as greatly stunned by this monstrous attack as she herself, and the firing now appeared to increase in volume and accuracy. Several bullets clanged against the funnel or broke huge splinters off the boats.
"Gord A'mighty, listen to that," growled a voice. "An' we cooped up here, blazed at by a lot of rotten Dagos, with not a gun to our name!"
Iris was still supporting Hozier, whose head and shoulders were pillowed against her breast as she knelt behind him.