Oddly enough, the only professional soldier present condemned her project roundly when it was mooted.
"In leaving the island to-night you are acting on an assumption," protested Captain San Benavides to his chief. "You cannot be sure that the Andros-y-Mela will not appear. The arrangement is that she is to send a boat here soon after midnight, yet, if this mad scheme of an attack on armed troops by unarmed men is persisted in, we must begin to ferry to the island long before that hour. In all probability, we shall be discovered at once. At the very moment that our friends are eagerly awaiting us on board the ship we may be lying dead on the island. The notion is preposterous. Be guided by me, Dom Corria, and decline to have anything to do with it. Better still, let these English boors promise to forget that we are alive; then Marcel can guide them to the landing-place, where they will be shot speedily and comfortably. There is no sense in sacrificing the girl. She must be kept here on some pretext."
The ex-President took thought before he answered. He did not deny himself that the confident air of these hard-bitten sailors made strong appeal to his judgment. He had his own reasons for distrusting some among his professed supporters, and he did not share his military aide's opinion as to the coming of the promised vessel.
"There is a good deal in what you say, senhor adjudante," he announced after his bright eyes had dwelt on San Benavides' expressive face in thoughtful scrutiny. "In England they have a proverb that a man cannot both run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, but such maxims are not framed for would-be Presidents. I fear we must fall in with our allies' views, faute de mieux. You and I have to lead a headstrong army. That little Hercules of a commander is stubborn as a mule—a mule that has the strength and courage of a wild boar. The younger man thinks only of the girl's safety. He, at least, will not consent to leave her. Both, backed by their crew, will not scruple to sacrifice us if their interests point that way. Trust me to twist them into the course that shall best serve our own needs. I am now going to tell them that you approve of their plan."
Forthwith he launched out into an English version of the excellent captain's comments. His precise, well-turned periods were admirable. Their marked defect was that he said the exact contrary to San Benavides.
Iris, having a born aptitude for languages, spoke French and German with some proficiency. She had also devoted many hours to the study of Spanish during the past winter, and it happens that the Portuguese of Brazil is less unlike Spanish than the Portuguese of Lisbon. In Europe, national antipathies serve to accentuate existing differences between the two tongues, but the peoples of the South American seaboard feel the need of a common speech, and local conditions have standardized many words. Hence, the Spanish language will serve all ordinary purposes among the Latin races who have made their own the vast continent that stretches from Panama to Tierra del Fuego.
So the girl's super-active brain was puzzled by De Sylva's rendering of his military friend's remarks. With the vaguest knowledge of what was actually said, she suspected that San Benavides had opposed the very project which, according to the President, he favored. She had caught the name of the relief vessel, the words bote, "boat," las doce, "twelve o'clock," à bordo de buque, "on board the ship," and others which did not figure in the translation. She wondered why.
The long day wore slowly. The heat was intense. Even the hardened sailors soon found that if the atmosphere of the cavern were to remain endurable they might not smoke. So pipes were extinguished, and they tried to better their condition. Water-soaked coats and boots placed in the sun were dry in a few minutes. Iris was persuaded to allow her dress to be treated in this manner. She was still wearing the heavy ulster of the early morning—when the aftermath of the gale was chill and searching—and the possession of this outer wrap made easy the temporary discarding of a skirt and blouse.
Unhappily, she answered in French some simple query of the dapper officer's. Thenceforth, to her great bewilderment and Hozier's manifest annoyance, he pestered her with compliments and inquiries. To avoid both, she expressed a longing for sleep. It seemed to her excited imagination that she would never be able to sleep again, yet her limbs were scarcely composed in comfort on a litter of coarse grass and parched seaweed than her eyes closed in the drowsiness of sheer exhaustion. This respite was altogether helpful. She had slept but little during the gale, and its tremendous climax had surprised her vitality at a low ebb.
When she awoke, the ravine was in shadow and the interior of the cave was dark. Her first conscious sensation was that of almost intolerable thirst. Her lips were blistered, her tongue and palate sore, and she asked herself in alarm what new evil was afflicting her, until she remembered the drenching she had received and the amount of salt-laden air that had passed into her lungs. Nevertheless, she cried involuntarily for water, and again she was offered wine. She managed to smile in a strained fashion at this malicious humor of fortune. By a freak of memory she called to mind the somewhat similar predicament of the crew of a storm-tossed ship that she had once read about. They ran short of water, but the vessel carried hundreds of cases of bottled stout. During three long weeks of boating against the wind those wretched men were compelled to drink stout morning, noon, and night, and never did temperance argument apply with greater force to the seafaring community than toward the end of that enforced regimen of malt liquor.