"Oh, please be more positive than that. You send a cold shiver down my back."
"Several members of the Andromeda's crew also indulged in a prolonged siesta," he said. "I assure you it was almost out of the question to divide the sleepers into snorers and non-snorers."
A man will talk harmless nonsense of that sort when he is at his wit's end to wriggle out of a perplexing situation. Hozier was deputed to obtain the girl's consent to the proposal he had already put before her. He feared that she would refuse compliance, for he understood her fine temper better than the others. He was a young man—one but little versed in the ways of women—yet some instinct warned him that there was a nobility in Iris Yorke's nature that might set self at naught and urge her to share her companions' lot, even though certain death were the outcome.
They passed together through the cavern. Watts, sound asleep, was lying there. The majority of the men were seated on the rocks without, or lounging near the entrance. They were smoking now freely, the only stipulation being that matches were not to be struck in the open. Their whispered talk ceased when they saw the girl. Absorbed in the prospect of a fight for life, for the moment they had forgotten her, but a murmured tribute of sympathy and recognition greeted her appearance.
The Irishman found his tongue first.
"Begorrah, miss," he said, "but it's the proud man I'll be the next time I see you smilin' from the kay side at Liverpool, no matter whether I'm there meself or not."
No one laughed at the absurd phrase which so clearly expressed its meaning. But the ship's cook, Peter, noting the strips of dried meat in her hands, raised a grin by saying:
"Sorry the galley fire is out, miss, or I'd 'ave stewed 'em a bit."
This kindly badinage was gratifying, though it helped to reveal the interrupted topic of their conversation. There was no hiding the desperate character of the coming adventure. The Andromeda's crew did not attempt to minimize it. The choice offered lay only in the manner of their death. As to the prospect of ultimate escape, they hardly gave it a thought. Some among them had served in the armies of Europe, and they, at least, were under no delusion concerning the issue of an attack on a fort by less than a score of unarmed men—seventeen to be exact, since two of the ship's company were so maimed by the bursting of the shell on the forecastle as to be practically helpless; it was by the rarest good fortune that they were able to walk.
Iris smiled at them in her frank way.