"I don't know," said Hozier.
"How absurd!" she gasped. "I—I think I'm dreaming. Why—have we—come here?"
She heard a coarse chuckle from Coke, not far below.
"Let 'im cough it up," the skipper was saying. "It'll do 'im good. I've seen 'im blind many a time, but 'ow any man could dope 'isself in that shape in less'n two minutes!—— Well, it fair gives me the go-by!"
Two minutes! Hozier listened, and he was recovering his wits far more rapidly than Iris. Was the skipper, then, in league with nature herself to perplex him? And Watts, too? Why did Coke hint so coarsely that he was drunk? He was on the bridge while he, Philip, was attending to the lead, and at that time the chief officer was perfectly sober.
Iris, once again, was deeply incensed by Coke's brutality.
"Horrid man!" she murmured, but she had no breath left for louder protest. It was hot as a furnace in this narrow ravine; each upward step demanded an effort. She would have slipped and hurt herself many times were it not for Hozier's firm grasp, nor did she realize the sheer exhaustion that forced him to seek support from the neighboring wall with his disengaged hand. The man in front, however, was alive to their dangerous plight. He said something in his own language—for his English had the precise staccato accent of the well-educated foreigner—and another man appeared. The sight of the newcomer startled Iris more than any other event that had happened since the Andromeda reached the end of her last voyage. He wore the uniform of those dreadful beings whom she had seen on the island.
She shrieked; Hozier fancied she had sprained an ankle; but before she could utter any sort of explanation the apparition in uniform was by her side, and murmuring words that were evidently meant to be reassuring. Seeing that he was not understood, he broke into halting French.
"Courage, madame!" he said. "Il faut monter—encore un peu—et donc—vous êtes arrivé … Ça y est! Voilá! Comptez sur moi. Juste ciel, mais c'est affreux l'escalier."
But he worked while he poured out this medley, and Iris was standing on level ground ere he made an end. He was a handsome youngster, evidently an officer, and his eyes dwelt on the girl's face with no lack of animation as he led her into a cave which seemed to have been excavated from the inner side of a small crater.