"Of course I am safe, but I dread that ship. Why did I ever come on board? Captain Coke said he would sink her. I told you——"
"Steady! Keep a little nearer the rocks on your left. The passage is narrow here."
Hozier raised his voice somewhat, and purposely hurried her. But she was not to be repressed.
"Poor ship! What had she done that she should be battered on the rocks?" she wailed.
"You must not talk," he said firmly, well knowing that if the sailors and firemen lumbering close behind had not heard her earlier comment it was due solely to the blustering wind. They were skirting the seaward face of the rocky islet on which they had found salvation. The sun was blazing at them sideways from a wide expanse of blue sky. The rear guard clouds of the gale were scurrying away over the horizon in front of their upward path. Somehow, Philip's sailor's brain was befogged. Those clouds must have blown to the northeast. If that were so, what was the sun doing in the southeast at this time of the day? It had hardly budged a point from the quarter in which some fitful gleams shone when that mad thing happened near the windlass. Thinking he was still dizzy from the effects of the blow, which the girl had ascribed to the bursting of a shell, Philip glanced at his watch. It was twenty-five minutes past eight! Yet he distinctly remembered eight bells being struck while Coke was telling him from the bridge to give the anchor thirty-five fathoms of cable. Was it possible that they had gone through so much during those few minutes? If he were really light-headed, then sun and clouds and watch were conspiring to keep him so.
Iris, chilled by his stern tone, nevertheless noted his action. Still unable to concentrate her thoughts on more than one topic, and that to the exclusion of all else, she asked the time. He told her. He awaited some expression of surprise on her part, provided it were, indeed, true that only twenty-five minutes had sped since the Andromeda was quietly preparing to drop anchor off South Point. But she received his news without comment. She would have been equally undisturbed if told it was midnight, and that the vessel had gone ashore on the coast of China.
Just then the track turned sharply away from the sea. A dry water-course cut deeply into the cliff where torrential rains had found an upright layer of soft scoria imbedded in the mass of basalt. Their guide was standing on the sky-line of the cleft, some forty feet above them.
"Tell the others to make haste," he said. "This is the end of your journey."
It did not strike either Hozier or the girl as being specially remarkable that a man should meet them in this extraordinary place and address them in good English. Iris, at any rate, gave no heed to this most amazing fact. She merely observed for the first time that the elderly stranger, while dressed in a beggar's rags, assumed an air of command that was almost ludicrous.
"Who is he?" she asked, being rather breathless now after a steep climb.