[Frontispiece: Hosier tightened a protecting arm around her waist]

THE STOWAWAY GIRL

By

LOUIS TRACY

AUTHOR OF
THE WINGS OF THE MORNING, SON OF THE IMMORTALS,
CYNTHIA'S CHAUFFEUR, THE MESSAGE, THE SILENT BARRIER, ETC.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY
NESBIT BENSON

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1909, 1912,
By EDWARD J. CLODE

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

[ Hosier tightened a protective arm around her waist . . . Frontispiece ]

[ "Is that the Southern Cross?" ]

[ "How did I come here?" ]

[ "Well, gimme your 'and on it" ]

[ A withering volley crashed through the window ]

THE STOWAWAY

CHAPTER I

THE "ANDROMEDA"

"Marry Mr. Bulmer! That horrid old man! Uncle, what are you saying?"

The girl sprang to her feet as if she were some timid creature of the wild aroused from sylvan broodings by knowledge of imminent danger. In her terror, she upset the three wineglasses that formed part of the display beside each couvert on the luncheon table. One, rose-tinted and ornate, crashed to the floor, and the noise seemed to irritate the owner of Linden House more than his niece's shrill terror.

"No need to bust up our best set of 'ock glasses just because I 'appen to mention owd Dickey Bulmer," he growled.

The color startled so suddenly out of the girl's face began to return. Her eyes lost their dilation of fear. Somehow, the comment on the broken glass seemed to deprive "owd Dickey Bulmer's" personality of its real menace.

"I'm sorry," she said, and stooped to pick up the fragments scattered over the carpet.

"Leave that alone," came the sharp order. "So long as I've the brass to pay for 'em, there's plenty more where that kem from, an' in any case, it's the 'ousemaid's job. Leave it alone, I tell you! An' sit down. It's 'igh time you an' me 'ad a straight talk, an' I can't do wi' folk bouncin' about like an injia-rubber ball when I've got things to say to 'em."

He stretched a fat hand toward a mahogany cigar-box, affected to choose a cigar with deliberative crackling, hacked at the selection with a fruit knife, and dropped the severed end into an unused finger-bowl; then he struck a match, and puffed furiously until a rim of white ash tipped the brown. This achieved, he helped himself to the port. Though he carefully avoided glancing at his companion, he knew quite well that she had drawn a chair to the opposite end of the table, and was looking at him intently; her chin was propped on her clenched hands; the skin on her white forehead was puckered into nervous lines; her lips, pressed close, had lost their Cupid's bow that seemed ever ready to bend into a smile. Meanwhile, the man who had caused these signs of distress gulped down some of the wine, held the glass up to the light as a tribute to the excellence of its contents, darted his tongue several times in and out between his teeth, smacked his lips, replaced the cigar in his mouth, and leaned back in his chair until it creaked.

Iris Yorke was accustomed to this ritual; she gave it the unobservant tolerance good breeding extends to the commonplace. But to-day, for the first time during the two years that had sped so happily since she came back to Linden House from a Brussels pension, she found herself, even in her present trouble, wondering how it was possible that David Verity could be her mother's brother. This coarse-mannered hog of a man, brother to the sweet-voiced, tender-hearted gentlewoman whose gracious wraith was left undimmed in the girl's memory by the lapse of years—it would be unbelievable if it were not true! He was so gross, so tubby, so manifestly over-fed, whereas her mother had ever been elegant and bien soignée. But he had shown kindness to her in his domineering way. He was not quite so illiterate as his accent and his general air of uncouthness seemed to imply. In his speech, the broad vowels of the Lancashire dialect were grafted on to the clipped staccato of a Cockney. He would scoff at anyone who told him that knives and forks had precise uses, or that table-napkins were not meant to be tucked under the chin. In England, especially in the provinces, some men of affairs cultivate these minor defects, deeming them tokens of bluff honesty, the hall-marks of the self-made; and David Verity thought, perhaps, that his pretty, well-spoken niece might be trusted to maintain the social level of his household without any special effort on his part.

Shocked, almost, at the disloyalty of her thoughts, Iris tried to close the rift that had opened so unexpectedly.

"It was stupid of me to take you seriously," she said. "You cannot really mean that Mr. Bulmer wishes to marry me?"

Verity screwed up his features into an amiable grin. He pressed the tips of his fingers together until the joints bent backward. When he spoke, the cigar waggled with each syllable.

"I meant it right enough, my lass," he said.

"But, uncle dear——"

"Stop a bit. Listen to me first, an' say your say when I've finished. Like everybody else, you think I'm a rich man. David Verity, Esquire, ship-owner, of Linden House an' Exchange Buildings—it looks all right, don't it—like one of them furrin apples with rosy peel an' a maggot inside. You're the first I've told about the maggot. Fact is, I'm broke. Ship-ownin' is rotten nowadays, unless you've lots of capital. I've lost mine. Unless I get help, an' a thumpin' big slice of it, my name figures in the Gazette. I want fifty thousand pounds, an' oo's goin' to give it to me? Not the public. They're fed up on shippin'. They're not so silly as they used to be. I put it to owd Dickey yesterday, an' 'e said you couldn't raise money in Liverpool to-day to build a ferry-boat. But 'e said summat else. If you wed 'im, 'e makes you a partner in the firm of Verity, Bulmer an' Co. See? Wot's wrong with that? I've done everything for you up to date; now it's your turn. Simple, isn't it? P'raps I ought to have explained things differently, but it didn't occur to me you'd hobject to bein' the wife of a millionaire, even if 'e is a doddrin' owd idiot to talk of marryin' agin."

"Oh, uncle!"

With a wail of despair, the girl sank back and covered her face with her hands. Now that she believed the incredible, she could utter no protest. The sacrifice demanded was too great. In that bitter moment she would have welcomed poverty, prayed even for death, as the alternative to marriage with the man to whom she was being sold.

Verity leaned over the table again and finished the glass of port. This time there was no lip-smacking, or other aping of the connoisseur. He was angry, almost alarmed. Resistance, even of this passive sort, raised the savage in him. Hitherto, Iris had been ready to obey his slightest whim.

"There's no use cryin' 'Oh, uncle,' an' kicking up a fuss," he snapped viciously. "Where would you 'ave bin, I'd like to know, if it wasn't for me? In the gutter—that's where your precious fool of a father left your mother an' you. You're the best dressed, an' best lookin', an' best eddicated girl i' Bootle to-day—thanks to me. When your mother kem 'ere ten year ago, an' said her lit'rary gent of a 'usband was dead, neither of you 'ad 'ad a square meal for weeks—remember that, will you? It isn't my fault you've got to marry Bulmer. It's just a bit of infernal bad luck—the same for both of us, if it comes to that. An' why shouldn't you 'ave some of the sours after I've given you all the sweets? You'll 'ave money to burn; I'm not axin' you to give up some nice young feller for 'im. If you play your cards well, you can 'ave all the fun you want——"

The girl staggered to her feet. She could endure the man's coarseness but not his innuendoes.

"I will do what you ask," she murmured, though there was a pitiful quivering at the corners of her mouth that bespoke an agony beyond the relief of tears. "But please don't say any more, and never again allude to my dear father in that way, or I may—I may forget what I owe you."

She was unconscious of the contempt in her eyes, the scornful ring in her voice, and Verity had the good sense to restrain the wrath that bubbled up in him until the door closed, and he was alone. He grabbed the decanter and refilled his glass.

"Nice thing!" he growled. "I offer 'er a fortune an' a bald-'eaded owd devil for a 'usband, 'oo ought to die in a year or two an' leave 'er everything; yet she ain't satisfied. D—n 'er eyes, if I'd keep 'er as scullery-maid she'd 'ave different notions."

With the taste of the wine, however, came the consoling reflection that Iris as a scullery-maid might not tickle the fancy of the dotard who had undertaken to provide fifty thousand pounds for the new partnership. And she had promised—that was everything. His lack of diplomacy was obvious even to himself, but he had won where a man of finer temperament might have failed. Now, he must rush the wedding. Dickey Bulmer's Lancashire canniness might stipulate for cash on delivery as the essence of the marriage contract. Not a penny would the old miser part with until he was sure of the girl.

So David Verity, having much to occupy his mind, lingered over the second glass of port, for this was a Sunday dinner, served at mid-day. At last he closed his eyes for his customary nap; but sleep was not to be wooed just then; instead of dozing, he felt exceedingly wide awake. Indeed, certain disquieting calculations were running through his brain, and he yielded forthwith to their insistence. Taking a small notebook from his pocket, he jotted down an array of figures. He was so absorbed in their analysis that he did not see Iris walk listlessly across the lawn that spread its summer greenery in front of the dining-room windows. And that was an ill thing for David. The sight of the girl at that instant meant a great deal to him.

He did happen to look out, a second too late.

Even then, he might have caught a glimpse of Iris's pink muslin skirt disappearing behind a clump of rhododendrons, were not his shifty eyes screwed up in calculation—or perchance, the gods blinded him in behalf of one who was named after Juno's bright messenger.

"Yes, that's it," he was thinking. "I must wheedle Dickey into the bank to-morrow. A word from 'im, an' they'll all grovel, d—n 'em!"

The door opened.

"Captain Coke to see you, sir," said a servant.

"Send 'im in; bring 'im in 'ere."

The memorandum book disappeared; Verity's hearty greeting was that of a man who had not a care in the world. His visitor's description was writ large on him by the sea. No one could possibly mistake Captain Coke for any other species of captain than that of master mariner. He was built on the lines of a capstan, short and squat and powerful. Though the weather was hot, he wore a suit of thick navy-blue serge that would have served his needs within the Arctic Circle. It clung tightly to his rounded contours; there was a purple line on his red brows that marked the exceeding tightness of the bowler hat he was carrying; and the shining protuberances on his black boots showed that they were tight, too. It was manifestly out of the question that he should be able to walk any distance. Though he had driven in a cab to the shipowner's house, he was already breathless with exertion, and he rolled so heavily in his gait that his shoulders hit both sides of the doorway while entering the room. Yet he was nimble withal, a man capable of swift and sure movement within a limited area, therein resembling a bull, or a hippopotamus.

The hospitable Verity pushed forward the mahogany box and the decanter.

"Glad to see you, Jimmie, my boy. Sit yourself down. 'Ave a cigar an' a glass o' port. I didn't expect you quite so soon, but you're just as welcome now as later."

Captain Coke placed his hat on top of a malacca cane, and balanced both against the back of a chair.

"I'll take a smoke but no wine, thankee, Mr. Verity," said he. "I kem along now' 'coss I want to be aboard afore it's dark. We're moored in an awkward place."

"Poor owd Andromeeda! Just 'er usual luck, eh, Jimmie?"

"Well, she ain't wot you might call one of fortune's fav'rits, but she's afloat, an' that's more'n you can say for a good many daisy-cutters I've known."

Verity chuckled.

"Some ships are worth less afloat than ashore, an' she's one of 'em," he grinned. "You want a match. 'Ere you are!"

Whether Coke was wishful to deny or admit the Andromeda's shortcomings—even the ship herself might have protested against the horror of a long "e" in the penultimate syllable of her name—the other man's rapid proffer of a light stopped him. He puffed away in silence; there was an awkward pause; for once in his career, Verity regretted his cultivated trick of covering up a significant phrase by quickly adding some comment on a totally different subject. But the sailor smoked on, stolidly heedless of a sudden lapse in the conversation, and the shipowner was compelled to start afresh. He was far too shrewd to go straight back to the topic burked by his own error. His sledge-hammer methods might be crude to the verge of brutality where Iris was concerned, but they were capable of nice adjustment in the case of wary old sea-dogs of the Coke type.

"It's stuffy in 'ere with the two of us smokin'—let's stroll into the garden," he said.

Coke was agreeable. He liked gardens; they were a change from the purple sea.

"It's the on'y bit of green stuff you seem to be fond of, Mr. Verity," he went on. "You keep us crool short of vegetables."

David's little eyes twinkled. Here was another opening; it would not be his fault if it led again up a cul-de-sac. He threw wide the window, and they crossed the lawn.

"Vegetables!" he cried. "Wish I could stock you from my place, an' I'd stuff you with 'em. I can grow 'em 'ere for next to nothing, but they cost a heap o' money in furrin ports, an' your crimson wave-catcher doesn't earn money—she eats it."

"Even that's one better'n her skipper, 'oo doesn't do neether," commented Coke gloomily.

His employer seemed to find much humor in the remark.

"Gad, we both look starved!" he guffawed. "To 'ear us, you'd think we was booked for the workhus or till you ran a tape round the contoor, eh?"

But Coke was not to be cheered.

"I can see as far into a stone wall as 'ere a one an' there a one," he said, "an' there's no use blinkin' the fax. The Andromeda was a good ship in 'er day, but that day is gone. You ought to 'ave sold 'er to the Dutchmen five years ago, Mr. Verity. Times were better then, an' now you'd 'ave a fine steel ship instead of a box of scrap iron."

They were passing the rhododendrons, and Verity's quick eyes noted that a summer-house beneath the shade of two venerable elms was unoccupied. The structure consisted of a rustic roof carried on half a dozen uprights; it had a wooden floor, and held a table and some basket chairs. The roof and supports were laden with climbing roses, a Virginian creeper, and a passion flower. The day being Sunday, there were no gardeners in the adjoining shrubbery or rose garden, and anyone seated in the summer-house could see on all sides.

"Drop anchor in 'ere, Coke," said Verity. "It's cool an' breezy, an' we can 'ave a quiet confab without bein' bothered. Now, I reelly sent for you to-day to tell you I mean to better the supplies this trip—Yes, honest Injun!"—for the Andromeda's skipper had clutched the cigar out of his mouth with the expression of a man who vows to heaven that he cannot believe his ears—"I'm goin' to bung in an extry 'undred to-morrow in the way of stores. Funny, isn't it?"

"Funny! It's a meracle!"

Though not altogether gratified by this whole-hearted agreement with his own views, Verity was too anxious to keep his hearer on the present tack to resent any implied slur on his earlier efforts as a caterer.

"It's nothing to wot I'd do if I could afford it," he added graciously. "But, as you said, let's look at the fax. Wot chance 'as an iron ship, built twenty years ago, at a cost of sixteen pound a ton, ag'in a steel ship of to-day, at seven pound a ton, with twiced the cargo space, an' three feet less draught? W'y no earthly. We're dished every way. We cost more to run; we can't jump 'arf the bars; we can't carry 'arf the stuff; we pay double insurance; an' we're axed to find interest on more'n double the capital. As you say, Jimmie, wot bloomin' chanst 'ave we?"

Coke smoked silently; he had said none of these things, but when the shipowner's glance suddenly dwelt on him, he nodded. Silent acquiescence on his part, however, was not what Verity wanted. He, too, knew when to hold his tongue. After a long interval, during which a robin piped a merry roundelay from the depths of a neighboring pink hawthorn, Coke dug out a question.

"Premium gone up, then?" he inquired.

"She's on a twelve-month rate. It runs out in September. If you're lucky, an' fill up with nitrate soon, you may be 'ome again. If not, I'll 'ave to whack up a special quotation. After that, there'll be no insurance. The Andromeeda goes for wot she'll fetch."

Another pause; then Coke broached a new phase.

"Meanin' that I lose the two thousand pounds I put in 'er to get my berth?" he said huskily.

"An' wot about me? I lose eight times as much. Just think of it! Sixteen thousand pounds would give me a fair balance to go on wi' i' these hard times, an' your two thou' would make the skipper's job in my new ship a certainty."

Coke's brick-red face darkened. He breathed hard.

"Wot new ship?" he demanded.

Verity smiled knowingly.

"It's a secret, Jimmie, but I must stretch a point for a pal's sake. Dickey Bulmer's goin' to marry my niece, an' 'e 'as pledged himself to double the capital of the firm. Now I've let the cat out of the bag. I'm sorry, ole man—pon me soul, I am—but w'en Dickey's name crops up on 'Change you know as well as me 'ow many captain's tickets will be backed wi' t' brass."

This time, if so minded, the robin might have trilled his song adagio con sostenuto without fear of interruption by those harsh voices. Neither man spoke during so long a time that the break seemed to impose a test of endurance; in such a crisis, he who has all at stake will yield rather than he who only stakes a part.

"S'pose we talk plainly as man to man?" said Coke thickly, at last.

"I can't talk much plainer," said Verity.

"Yes, you can. Promise me the command of your next ship, an' the Andromeda goes on the rocks this side o' Monte Video."

Verity jumped as though he had been stung by an infuriated wasp.

"Coke, I'm surprised at you," he grunted, not without a sharp glance around to make sure no other was near.

"No, you ain't, not a bit surprised, on'y you don't like to 'ear it in cold English. That's wot you're drivin' at—the insurance."

"Shut up, you ijjit. Never 'eard such d—d rot in all me born days."

"Listen to it now, then. It's good to 'ave the truth tole you some times. Wot are you afraid of? I take all the risk an' precious little of the money. Write me a letter——"

"Write! Me! Coke, you're loony."

"Not me. Wait till I'm through. Write a letter sayin' you're sorry the Andromeda must be laid up this fall, but promisin' me the next vacancy. 'Ow does that 'urt you?"

Verity's cigar had gone out. He relighted it with due deliberation; it could not be denied that his nerve, at least, was superb.

"I'm willin' to do anything in reason," he said slowly. "I don't see where I can lay 'ands on a better man than you, Jimmie, even if you do talk nonsense at times. You know the South American trade, an' you know me. By gad, I'll do that. Anyhow, it's wot you deserve, but none the less, I'm actin' as a reel friend, now ain't I? Many a man would just lay you up alongside the Andromeeda."

"I'll call at your office in the mornin' for the letter," said Coke, whose red face shone like the setting sun seen through a haze.

"Yes, yes. I'll 'ave it ready."

"An' you won't back out of them extry stores? I must sweeten the crew on this run."

"I'll supply the best of stuff—enough to last for the round trip. But don't make any mistake. You must be back afore September 30th. That's the date of the policy. Now let's trot inside, an' my gal—Mrs. Dickey Bulmer that is to be—will give you some tea."

"Tea!" snorted Coke.

"Well, there's whisky an' soda on tap if you prefer it. It is rather 'ot for tea. Whew! you're boilin'? W'y don't you wear looser clo'es? Look at me—cool as a cucumber. By the way, 'oo's the new man you've shipped as second? Watts is the chief, I know, but 'oo is Mr. Philip Hozier?"

"Youngster fillin' in sea-service to get a ticket an' qualify for the Cunard."

"Thoroughly reliable sort of chap, eh?"

"The best."

It was odd how these men left unsaid the really vital things. Again it was Coke who tried to fill in some part of the blank space.

"Just the right kind of second for the Andromeda's last cruise," he muttered. "Smart as a new pin. You could trust 'im on the bridge of a battleship. Now, Watts is a good man, but a tot of rum makes 'im fair daft."

"Ah!" purred Verity, "you must keep a tight 'and on Watts. I like an appetizer meself w'en I'm off dooty, so to speak, but it's no joke to 'ave a boozer in charge of a fine ship an' vallyble freight. Of course, you're responsible as master, but you can't be on deck mornin', noon, an' night. Choke Watts off the drink, an' you'll 'ave no trouble. So that's settled. My, but you're fair meltin'—wot is it they say—losin' adipose tisher. Well, come along. Let's lubricate."

The Andromeda sailed on the Tuesday afternoon's tide. She would drop the pilot off Holyhead, and, with fair weather, such as cheered her departure from the Mersey, daybreak on Thursday would find her pounding through the cross seas where St. George's Channel merges into the wide Atlantic. If she followed the beaten track on her long run to the River Plate—as sailors will persist in miscalling that wondrous Rio de la Plata—she might be signaled from Madeira or the Cape Verde Islands. But shipmasters often prefer to set a course clear of the land till they pick up the coast of South America. If she were not spoken by some passing steamer, there was every possibility that the sturdy old vessel would not be heard of again before reaching her destination.

But David Verity heard of her much sooner, and no thunderbolt that ever rent the heavens could have startled him more than the manner of that hearing.

Resolving to clinch matters with regard to Iris and her elderly suitor, he invited "Owd Dickey" to supper on Sunday evening. The girl endured the man's presence with a placid dignity that amazed her uncle. On the plea of a headache, she retired at an early hour, leaving Bulmer to gloat over his prospective happiness, and primed to the point of dementia.

He was quite willing to accompany Verity to the bank next morning; a pleasant-spoken manager sighed his relief when the visitors were gone, and he was free to look at the item "bills discounted" on Verity's page in the ledger. More than that, a lawyer was instructed to draw up a partnership deed, and the representatives of various ship-building firms were asked to supply estimates for two new vessels.

Altogether Dickey was complaisant, and David enjoyed a busy and successful day. He dined in town, came home at a late hour, and merely grinned when a servant told him that Mr. Bulmer had called twice but Miss Iris happened to be out on both occasions.

Nevertheless, at breakfast on Tuesday, he warned his niece not to keep her admirer dangling at arm's length.

"E's a queer owd codger," explained the philosopher. "Play up to 'im a bit, an' you'll be able to twist 'im round your little finger. I b'lieve he's goin' dotty, an' you can trust me to see that the marriage settlement is O. K."

"Will you be home to dinner?" was her response.

"No. Now that the firm is in smooth water again I must show myself a bit. It's all thanks to you, lass, an' I'll not forget it. Good-by!"

Iris smiled, and Verity was vastly pleased.

"I am sure you will not forget," she said. "Good-by."

"There's no understandin' wimmin," mused David, as his victoria swept through the gates of Linden House. "Sunday afternoon Dickey might ha' bin a dose of rat poison; now she's ready to swaller 'im as if 'e was a chocolate drop."

Again he returned some few minutes after midnight; again the servant announced Mr. Bulmer's visits, three of them; and again Miss Iris had been absent—in fact, she had not yet come home.

"Not 'ome!" cried David furiously. "W'y it's gone twelve. W'ere the—w'ere is she?"

No one knew. She had quitted the house soon after Verity himself, and had not been seen since. Storm and rage as he might, and did, David could not discover his niece's whereabouts. He spent a wearying and tortured night, a harassed and miserable day, devoted to frantic inquiries in every possible direction with interludes of specious lying to the infatuated Bulmer. But enlightment came on Thursday morning. A letter arrived by the first post. It was from Iris.

"MY DEAR UNCLE," she wrote: "Neither you nor Mr. Bulmer should have any objection to my passing the few remaining weeks of my liberty in the manner best pleasing to myself. On Sunday evening, in your presence, Mr. Bulmer urged me to fix an early date for our marriage. Tell him that I shall marry him when the Andromeda returns to England from South America. You will remember that you promised last year to take me to Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Ayres this summer; I have been learning Spanish so as to help our sight-seeing. Unfortunately, business prevents you from keeping that promise, but there is no reason why I should not go. I am on board the Andromeda, and will probably be able to explain matters satisfactorily to Captain Coke. The vessel is due back at the end of September, I believe, so Mr. Bulmer will not have long to wait. It is more than likely that Captain Coke will not know I am aboard until Thursday, and I have arranged with a friend that this letter shall reach you about the same time. Please convey my apologies to Mr. Bulmer, and accept my regret for any anxiety you may have felt owing to my unaccountable absence.

"Your affectionate niece,
"IRIS YORKE."

David narrowly escaped an apoplectic seizure. When he recovered his senses he looked ten years older. The instinct of self-preservation alone saved him in his frenzy from blurting forth the tidings of the girl's flight. Incoherent with fear and passion, he contrived to give orders for his carriage, and was driven to his office. Thence he dispatched telegrams to every signaling station in England, Ireland, and Spain, at which by the remotest possibility the Andromeda might be intercepted. He cabled to Madeira and Cape Verde, even to Fernando Noronha and Pernambuco; he sent urgent instructions to the pilotage authorities of the Bristol Channel, the southwest ports, and Lisbon; and the text of every message was: "Andromeda must return to Liverpool instantly."

But the wretched man realized that he was doomed. Fate had struck at him mercilessly. He could only wait in dumb despair, and mutter prayers too long forgotten, and concoct bogus letters from a cousin's address in the south of England for the benefit of Dickey Bulmer.

Never was ship more eagerly sought than the Andromeda, yet never was ship more completely engulfed in the mysterious silence of the great sea. The days passed, and the weeks, yet nothing was heard of her. She figured in the "overdue" list at Lloyd's; sharp-eyed underwriters did "specs" in her; woe-begone women began to haunt the Liverpool office for news of husbands and sons; the love-lorn Dickey wore Verity to a shadow of his former self by alternate pleadings and threats; but the Andromeda remained mute, and the fanciful letters from Iris became fewer and more fragmentary as David's imagination failed, and his excuses grew thinner.

And the odd thing was that if David had only known it, he could have saved himself all this heart-burning and misery by looking through the dining-room window on that Sunday afternoon when his prospects seemed to be so rosy. He never thought of that. He cursed every circumstance and person impartially and fluently, but he omitted from the Satanic litany the one girlish prank of tree-climbing that led Iris to spring out of sight amid the sheltering arms of an elm when her uncle and Captain Coke deemed the summer-house a suitable place for "a plain talk as man to man."

So David learnt what it meant to wait, and listen, and start expectantly when postman's knock or telegraph messenger's imperative summons sounded on door of house or office.

But he waited long in vain. The Andromeda, like her namesake of old, might have been chained to a rock on some mythical island guarded by the father of all sea serpents. As for a new Perseus, well—David knew him not.

CHAPTER II

WHEREIN THE "ANDROMEDA" BEGINS HER VOYAGE

The second officer of the Andromeda was pacing the bridge with the slow alertness of responsibility. He would walk from port to starboard, glance forrard and aft, peer at the wide crescent of the starlit sea, stroll back to port, and again scan ship and horizon. Sometimes he halted in front of the binnacle lamp to make certain that the man at the wheel was keeping the course, South 15 West, set by Captain Coke shortly before midnight. His ears listened mechanically to the steady pulse-beats of the propeller; his eyes swept the vague plain of the ocean for the sparkling white diamond that would betoken a mast-head light; he was watchful and prepared for any unforeseen emergency that might beset the vessel intrusted to his care. But his mind dwelt on something far removed from his duties, though, to be sure, every poet who ever scribbled four lines of verse has found rhyme and reason in comparing women with stars, and ships, and the sea.

If Philip Hozier was no poet, he was a sailor, and sailors are notoriously susceptible to the charms of the softer sex. But the only woman he loved was his mother, the only bride he could look for during many a year was a mermaid, though these sprites of the deep waters seem to be frequenting undiscovered haunts since mariners ceased to woo the wind. For all that, if perforce he was heart-whole, there was no just cause or impediment why he should not admire a pretty girl when he saw one, and an exceedingly pretty girl had honored him with her company during a brief minute of the previous day.

He was superintending the safe disposal of the last batch of cotton goods in the forward hold—and had just found it necessary to explain the correct principles of stowage with sailor-like fluency—when a young lady, accompanied by a dock laborer carrying a leather portmanteau, spoke to him from the quay.

"Is Captain Coke on board?" said she.

"No, madam," said he, lifting his cap with one hand, and restraining the clanking of a steam windlass with the other.

"I am Mr. Verity's niece, and I wish to send this parcel to Monte Video—may I put it in some place where it will be safe?" said she.

Hoping that the rattling winch had drowned his earlier remarks—which were couched in an lingua franca of the high seas—he began to tell her that it would give him the utmost pleasure to take charge of it on her account, but she nodded, bade the porter follow, ran along a somewhat precarious gangway, and was on deck before he could offer any assistance.

"You are Mr. Hozier, I suppose?" said Iris, gazing with frank brown eyes into his frank blue ones. She, of course, was severely self-possessed; he, as is the way of mere man, grew more confused each instant.

"Well, I will just pop the bag into Captain Coke's stateroom, and leave this note with it. I have explained everything fully. I wrote a line in case he might be absent."

All of which was so strictly accurate that it served its purpose admirably, though the said purpose, it is regrettable to state, was the misleading and utter bamboozling of Philip Hozier. Miss Iris Yorke knew quite well that Captain Coke was then closeted with David Verity in Exchange Buildings; she knew, because she had watched him pass through the big swing doors of her uncle's office. She also knew, having made it her business to find out, that in fifteen minutes, or less, the crew would muster in the fo'c'sle for their mid-day meal. Not having heard a word of Hozier's free speech to the gentlemen of various nationalities at the bottom of the hold, she wondered why he was blushing.

"Shall I show you the way?" asked Philip, finding his tongue.

"No, thank you. I have been on board the Andromeda many times. Ah, Peter, I see you. What is it to-day, scouse or lobscouse?"

"Scouse, miss," said the ship's cook, grinning widely at her recollection of the line drawn by both his patrons and himself between ship's biscuit stewed with fresh meat and the same article flavored with salt junk.

Peter's recognition placed Iris's identity beyond doubt. She said nothing more to Hozier, but tripped up the companionway. Soon he saw her paying the man who had carried the portmanteau. She herself seemed to be in no hurry. She walked to the rails beneath the bridge, and found interest in watching the loading operations, which were resumed as soon as the second officer saw that his services were not wanted. Time was pressing, and a good deal yet remained to be done.

Mr. Watts, the chief officer, who was called ashore by urgent business five minutes after the "old man" left the vessel, chose this awkward moment to appear from behind a bonded warehouse. He was walking with unnatural steadiness, so Hozier made some excuse to meet him and whisper that the owner's niece was on board.

"Sun's zhot," remarked Mr. Watts cheerfully.

"Go and lie down for a spell," suggested Hozier, and Mr. Watts thought it was a "shpiffin' idee." When Hozier was free to glance a second time at the cross rail, Iris had vanished. He was annoyed. Evidently she did not wish to encounter any more of the ship's officers that morning.

The hatches were on, and everything was orderly before Coke's squat figure climbed the gangway. Hozier reported the young lady's visit, and the skipper was obviously surprised. As he hoisted himself up the steep ladder to the hurricane deck, the younger man heard him condemning someone under his breath as "a leery old beggar." The phrase was hardly applicable to Iris, but Coke came out of his cabin with an open letter in his hand, and bade a steward stow the portmeanteau in some other more hallowed and less inconvenient place.

And there the incident ended. The Andromeda hauled down the Blue Peter for her long run of over 6,000 miles to Monte Video, and Hozier had routine work in plenty to occupy his mind during the first twenty-four hours at sea without perplexing it with memories of a pretty face. Soon after Holyhead was passed, it is true, a sailor reported to the second officer that he had seen a ghost between decks, in the region of the lazarette. It was then near midnight, a quiet hour on board ship, and Hozier told the man sharply to go to his bunk and endeavor to sleep off the effects of the bad beer imbibed earlier in the day.

Now, on this second night of the voyage, while the ship was plodding steadily southward with that fifteen point inclination to the west that would bring her far into the Atlantic soon after daybreak, Philip remembered Mr. Verity's niece, and felt sorry that when she paid those former visits to the Andromeda, fate had decreed that he should be serving his time on another vessel. For there was an expression in her eyes that haunted him. Though she addressed him with that absence of restraint which is a heaven-sent attribute of every young woman when circumstances compel her to speak to a strange young man—though her tone to the more favored cook was kindly, and even sprightly—though Philip himself was red and inclined to stammer—despite all these hindrances to clear judgment, he felt that she was troubled in spirit. His acquaintance with women was of the slightest, since a youth who is taught his business on the Conway, and means to attach himself to one of the great Trans-Atlantic shipping lines, has no time to spare for dalliance in boudoirs. But it gave him a thrill when he heard that this charming girl knew his name, and it seemed to him, for an instant, that she was looking into his very soul, analyzing him, searching for some sign that he was not as others, which meant that there were some whom she had bitter cause to distrust. Of course, that was mere day-dreaming, a nebulous fantasy brought by her gracious presence into a medley of hurrying windlasses, strenuous orders, and sulky, panting men.

At any rate, she had left a memento of her too brief appearance on board in the shape of the bag. He would contrive to take on his own shoulders its mission in Monte Video; then, on returning to Liverpool, he would have an excuse for calling on her. He did not know her name yet. Possibly, Captain Coke would mention that interesting fact when his temper lost its raw edge. As a last resource, the cook might enlighten him.

It was strange that he should be thinking of Iris—far stranger than he could guess—but his thoughts were sub-conscious, and he was in no wise neglecting the safety of the ship. The night was clear but dark, the stars blinked with the subdued radiance that betokens fine weather, and ever and anon their reflection glimmered from the long slope of a wave like the glint of spangles on a dress. But it was a garment of far-flung amplitude, woven on the shadowy loom of night and the sea, and from such mysterious warp and weft is often produced the sable robe of tragedy and death. It was so now, within an ace. At one instance, the restless plain of the ocean seemed to bear no other argosy than the Andromeda; in the next, Hozier's quick-moving glance had caught the pallid sheen of some small craft's starboard light. No need to tell him what might happen. A sailing vessel, probably a fishing smack, was crossing the steamer's course. He sprang to the telegraph, and signaled "Slow" to the engine-room. Simultaneously he shouted to the steersman to starboard the helm, and the siren trumpeted a single raucous blast into the silence. With the rattle of the chains and steering-rods in the gear-boxes came a yell from the lookout forward:

"Light on the port bow!"

Hozier repeated the hail, but promised the blear-eyed sentinels in the bows of the ship a lively five minutes when the watch was relieved. Slowly the Andromeda swung to the west. Even more slowly, or so it appeared to the anxious man on the bridge, a red eye peeped into being alongside the green one. A blacker smear showed up on the black sea, and a hoarse voice, presumably situated beneath the smear, expressed a desire for information.

"Arr ye all aslape on board that crimson collier?" it asked in a Waterford brogue.

"Got the hooker's wheel tied, I suppose?" retorted Hozier, for the now visible schooner had not attempted to change her course by half a point. She was now bowling along with every stitch set before a five-knot breeze from the east; the tilt of her sails was such that she practically presented only the outline of her spars when first sighted from the steamer; and her side lights probably had tallow candles in them.

"Bedad, it's aisier in moind we'd be if you were tied to it," shouted the voice, and Hozier felt, like many another Saxon, that an Irishman's last word is often the best one.

The engines resumed their cadence, and the Andromeda crept round again to South 15 West. She was back on her proper line when a heavy step sounded on the iron rungs of the bridge ladder.

"Wot's up?" demanded Coke, who was fully dressed, though Hozier thought he had retired two hours earlier. "Oh, the beer is frothin' up to their eyes, is it?" went on the skipper, after listening to a brief summary of events. "I thought, mebbe, the wheel had jammed. But those lazy swabs want talkin' to. I'll just give 'em a bit of me mind," and he went forward.

Hozier heard him reading the Riot Act to the shell-backs who were supposed to keep a sharp lookout ahead. But the captain did not monopolize the conversation. His deep notes rumbled only at intervals. The men had something to say. He returned to the bridge.

"One of them scallywags sez 'e 'as seen a ghost," he announced, with the calm air of a man who states that the moon will rise during the next hour.

"I wish he could see less remarkable things, such as schooners, sir," said Hozier.

"But 'e swears 'e sawr it twiced."

"Oh, is he the man who reported a ghost outside the lazarette last night?"

"I s'pose so. Did 'e tell you about it? That's where she walks."

"She!"

"That's his yarn—a female ghost, a black 'un, black clo'es anyhow. He's a dashed fool, but he's no boozer, though his mate's tongue is a bit thick yet. I'll take the forenoon watch, an' you might overhaul the ship for stowaways after breakfast. Never heard of one on this journey—I've routed out as many as twenty at a time w'en I was runnin' between Wellington an' Sydney—but you never can tell, so 'ave a squint round."

"Yes, sir," said Hozier, and that is how it fell to his lot to discover Iris Yorke, looking very white and miserable, when the hatch of the lazarette was broken open at half-past eight o'clock on Thursday morning!

A tramp steamer is not a complex organism. She is made up of holds, bunkers, boilers and engines, with scanty accommodation for officers and crew grouped round the funnel or stuck in the bows. When the boats were stripped of their tarpaulins, and a few lockers and store-rooms examined, the only available hiding-places were the shaft tunnel, the holds, and the lazarette, a small space between decks, situated directly above the propeller, where a reserve supply of provisions is generally carried.

But the door of the lazarette was locked, and the key missing, though it ought to be hanging with others, all duly labeled, on a hook in the steward's cabin. A duplicate set of keys in the captain's possession was far from complete. As the steward was certain he had fastened the lazarette himself early on Tuesday morning, there was nothing for it but to force the lock.

Even that would not have been necessary had the carpenter slackened his efforts after the first assault. Iris cried loudly enough that she would open the door, but the noise of the shaft and the flapping of the screw drowned her voice, and she was compelled to stand clear when the stout planking began to yield.

It was dark in there, and Hozier was undeniably startled by the spectacle of a slim figure, wrapped in a long ulster, standing among the cases and packages. "Now, out you come!" he cried, with a gruffness that was intended only to cover his own amazement; but Iris, despite the horrors of sea-sickness and confinement in the dark, was not minded to suffer what she considered to be impertinence on the part of a second officer.

"I am Miss Yorke," she said, coming forward into the half light of the lower deck. "Any explanation of my presence here will be given to the captain, and to no other person."

That innocent word "person" is capable of many meanings. Hozier felt that its application to himself was distinctly unfavorable. And Iris was quite dignified and self-possessed. She had given a few deft touches to her hair. Her hat was set at the right angle. Her dark gray coat and brown boots looked neat and serviceable.

"Of course I did not know to whom I was speaking," he managed to say, for he now recognized the "ghost," and was more surprised than he had ever been in his life before.

"That is matterless," said Iris frigidly. "Where is Captain Coke?"

"On the bridge," said Philip.

"I will go to him. Please don't come with me. I tried to tell you that I would unlock the door, but you refused to listen. Will you let me pass?"

He obeyed in silence.

"Well, s'help me!" muttered a sailor, "talk about suffrigettes! Wot price 'er?"

Iris hurried to the deck. The light seemed to dazzle her, and her steps were so uncertain that Hozier sprang forward and caught her arm.

"Won't you sit down a moment, Miss Yorke?" he said. "If you searched the whole ship, you could not have chosen a worse place to travel in than the lazarette."

"I was driven out twice at night by the rats," she gasped, though she strove desperately to regain control of her trembling limbs.

"Too bad!" he whispered. "But it was your own fault. Why did you do it? At any rate, wait here a few minutes before you meet the captain."

"I am not afraid of meeting him. Why should I be? He knows me."

"I meant only that you are hardly able to walk, but I seem to say the wrong thing every time. There is nothing really to worry about. We are not far from Queenstown. We can put you ashore there by losing half a day."

The girl had been ill, wracked in body and distraught in mind, with the added horror of knowing that rats were scampering over the deck close to her in the noisy darkness, but she summoned a half laugh at his words.

"You are still saying the wrong thing, Mr. Hozier," she murmured. "The Andromeda will not put into Queenstown. From this hour I become a passenger, not a stowaway. My uncle knows now that I am here. Thank you, you need not hold me any longer. I have quite recovered. Captain Coke is on the bridge, you said? I can find my way; this ship is no stranger to me."

And away she went, justifying her statements by tripping rapidly forward. The mere sight of her created boundless excitement among such members of the crew as were on deck, but the shock administered to Mr. Watts was of that intense variety often described as electric. In the matter of disposing of large quantities of ardent spirits he was a seasoned vessel, and, as a general rule, the first day at sea sufficed to clear his brain from the fumes of the last orgy on shore. But, to be effective, the cure must not be too drastic. This morning, after leaving the bridge, he had fortified his system with a liberal allowance of rum and milk. Breakfast ended, he took another dose of the same mixture as a "steadier," and he was just leaving the messroom when he set eyes on Iris. Of course, he refused to believe his eyes. Had they not deceived him many times?

"Ha!" said he, "a bit liverish," and he pressed a rough hand firmly downward from forehead to cheek-bones. When he looked again, the girl was much nearer.

"Lord luv' a duck, this time I've got 'em for sure!" he groaned.

His lower jaw dropped, he stared unblinkingly, and purple veins bulged crookedly on his seamed forehead. He was bereft of the power of movement. He stood stock-still, blocking the narrow gangway.

"Good morning, Mr. Watts. You remember me, don't you?" said Iris, showing by her manner that she wished to pass him.

A slight roll of the ship assisted in the disintegration of Watts. He collapsed sideways into the cook's galley, the door of which was hospitably open. Somewhat frightened by the wildness of his looks, Iris ran on, and dashed at the foot of the companion rather breathlessly. The keen air was already tingeing her cheeks with color. When she reached the bridge, where Captain Coke was propped against the chart-house, with a thick, black cigar sticking in his mouth and apparently trying to touch his nose, she had lost a good deal of the pallor and woe-begone semblance that had demoralized Hozier.

Coke heard the rapid, light footsteps, and turned his head. At all times slow of thought and slower of speech, he was galvanized into a sudden rigidity that differed only in degree from the symptoms displayed by his chief officer. Certainly he could not have been more stupefied had he seen the ghost reported overnight.

"They told me I should find you here, Captain," said she. "I must apologize for thrusting my company on you for a long voyage, but—circumstances—were—too much for me—and——"

Face to face with the commander of the ship, and startled anew by his expression of blank incredulity, the glib flow of words conned so often during the steadfast but dreadful hours spent in the lazarette failed her.

"You know me," she faltered. "I am Iris Yorke."

Not a syllable came from the irate and astonished man gazing at her with such a bovine stolidity. His shoulders had not abated a fraction of their stubborn thrust against the frame of the chart-house. His hands were immovable in the pockets of his reefer coat. The cigar still stuck out between his lips like a miniature jib-boom. Had he wished to terrify her by a hostile reception, he could not have succeeded more completely, though, to be just, he meant nothing of the sort; his wits being jumbled into chaos by the apparition of the last person then alive whom he expected or desired to see on board the Andromeda.

But Iris could not interpret his mood, and she strove vainly to conquer the fear welling up in her breast because of the grim anger that seemed to blaze at her from every line of Coke's brick-red countenance. In the struggle to pour forth the excuses and protestations that sounded so plausible in her own ears, while secured from observation behind the locked door of her retreat, she blundered unhappily on to the very topic that she had resolved to keep secret.

"Why are you so unwilling to acknowledge me?" she cried, with a nervous indignation that lent a tremor to her voice. "You have met me often enough. You saw me on Sunday at my uncle's house?"

"Did I?" said Coke, speaking at last, but really as much at a loss for something to say as the girl herself. He had recognized her instantly, just as he would recognize the moon if the luminary fell from the sky, and with as little comprehension of the cause of its falling.

Of course, she took the question as a forerunner of blank denial. This was not to be borne. She fired into a direct attack.

"If your memory is hazy concerning the events of Sunday afternoon, it may be helpful if I recall the conversation between my uncle and you in the summer-house," she snapped.

Some of the glow fled from Coke's face. He straightened himself and glanced at the sailor inside the wheel-house, whose attention was given instantly to the fact that the vessel's head had fallen away a full point or more from South 15 West owing to the easterly set of a strong tide. Vessels' heads are apt to turn when steersmen do not attend to their business.

"Wot's that you're sayin'?" demanded Coke, coming nearer, and looking her straight in the eyes.

"I heard every word of that interesting talk," she continued valiantly, though she was sensible of a numbness that seemed to envelop her in an ice-cold mist. "I know what you arranged to do—so I have promised—to marry Mr. Bulmer—when the Andromeda—comes back——"

A light broke on Coke's intelligence that irradiated his prominent eyes. His heavy lips relaxed into a cunning grin, and he flicked the ash off the end of the cigar with a confidential nod.

"Oh, is that it?" he said. "Artful old dog, Verity! But why in—why didn't 'e tell me you was comin' aboard this trip? We 'aven't the right fixin's for a lady, so you must put up with the best we can do for you, Miss Yorke. Nat'rally, we're tickled to death to 'ave your company, an' if on'y that blessed uncle of your's 'ad told me wot to expect, I'd 'ave made things ship-shape at Liverpool. But, my god-father, wot sort of ijjit axed you to stow yourself away in the lazareet? Steady now; you ain't a-goin' to faint, are you?"

Coke's amiability came too late. His squat figure and red face suddenly loomed into a gigantic indistinctness in the girl's eyes. She would have fallen to the deck had not the captain's strong hands clutched her by the shoulders.

"Hi! Below there!" he yelled. "Tumble up, some of you!"

Hozier was the first to gain the bridge. He had followed the progress of events with sufficient accuracy to realize that Miss Iris Yorke had met with a distinct rebuff by the skipper, and, judging from his own experience of her physical weakness when she emerged into daylight, he was not surprised to hear that she had fainted.

"'Ere, take 'old," gurgled Coke, who had nearly swallowed the cigar in his surprise at Iris's unforeseen collapse. "This kind of thing is more in your line than mine, young feller. Just lay 'er out in the saloon, an' ax Watts to 'elp. His missus goes orf regular w'en they bring 'im 'ome paralytic."

Philip took the girl into his arms. To carry her safely down the steep stairway he was compelled to place her head on his left shoulder and clasp her tightly round the waist with his left arm. Some loosened strands of her hair touched his face; he could feel the laboring of her breast, the wild beating of her heart, and he was exceeding wroth with that unknown man or woman who had driven this insensible girl to such straits that she was ready to dare the discomforts and deprivations of a voyage as a stowaway, rather than be persecuted further.

Iris was laid on a couch in the messroom, and the steward summoned Mr. Watts. The chief officer came, looking sheepish. It was manifestly a great relief when he found that the "ghost" was unconscious.

"Oh, that's nothing," he cried, in response to his junior's eager demand for information as to the treatment best fitted for such emergencies. "They all drop in a heap like that w'en they're worried. Fust you takes orf their gloves an' boots, then you undoes their stays an' rips open their dresses at the necks. One of you rubs their 'ands an' another their feet, an' you dabs cold water on their foreheads, an' burn brown paper under their noses. In between whiles you give 'em a drink, stiff as you can make it. It's dead easy. Them stays are a bit troublesome if they run to size, but she's thin enough as it is. Anyhow, I can show you a fine trick for that. Just turn her over till I cast a lashin' loose with my knife."

Watts was elbowed aside so unceremoniously that his temper gave way. Hozier lifted Iris's head gently and unfastened the neck-hooks of her blouse. He began to chafe her cold hands tenderly, and pressed back the hair from her damp forehead. The "chief," not flattered by his own reflections, thought fit to sneer at these half measures.

"She's on'y a woman like the rest of 'em," he growled, "even if she is the owner's niece, an' a good-lookin' gal at that. I s'pose now you think——"

"I think she will want some fresh air soon, so you had better clear out," said Philip.

His words were quiet, but he flashed a warning glance at the other man that sufficed. Watts retired, muttering sarcasms under his breath.

Iris revived, to find Philip supporting her with a degree of skill that was remarkable in one who had enjoyed so little experience in those matters. She heard his voice, coming, as it seemed, rapidly nearer, urging her to sip something very fiery and spirituous. Instantly she protested.

"What are you giving me?" she sobbed. "What has happened?"

Then the whole of her world opened up before her. Her hands flew to her throat, her hair. She flushed into vivid life as the marble Galatea incardinated under Pygmalion's kiss.

"Did I faint?" she asked confusedly.

"Yes, but you are all right now. You did not fall. Captain Coke caught you and handed you over to me. I wish you would drink the remainder of this brandy, and rest for a little while."

Iris pushed away the glass and sat up.

"You carried me?" she said.

"Well, I couldn't do anything else."

"I suppose you don't realize what it means to a woman to feel that she has been out of her senses under such conditions?"

"No, but in your case it only meant that you sighed deeply a few times and tried to bite my fingers when I wished to open your mouth."

"What for? Why did you want to open my mouth?"

"To give you a drink—you needed a stimulant."

"Oh!"

By this time a few dexterous twists and turns had restrained those wandering tresses within bounds. She held a hair-pin between her lips, and a woman can always say exactly what she means when a hairpin prevents discursiveness.

"I am all right now," she announced. "Will you please leave me, and tell the steward to bring me a cup of tea? If there is a cabin at liberty, he might put that portmanteau in it which I brought on board at Liverpool."

Hozier fulfilled her requests, and rejoined Coke on the bridge.

"Miss Yorke is quite well again, sir," he reported. "She wants a cabin—to change her clothes, I imagine. That bag you saw——"

"Pretty foxy, wasn't it?" broke in Coke, with a glee that was puzzling to his hearer.

"The whole affair seems to have been carefully planned," agreed Philip. "But, as I was saying, she asked for the use of a cabin, so I told the steward to give her mine until we put into Queenstown."

Coke, who had lighted another black and stumpy cigar, removed it in order to speak with due emphasis.

"Put into h—l!" he said.

"But surely you will not take this young lady to the River Plate?" cried the astounded second officer.

"She knew where she was bound w'en she kem aboard the Andromeda," said the skipper, frowning now like a man who argues with himself. "There's her portmanter to prove it, with a label, an' all, in her own 'and-writin'. It's some game played on me by 'er an' 'er uncle. Any'ow, the fust time she sees land again it'll be the lovely 'arbor of Pernambuco—an' that's straight. 'Ere she is, an' 'ere she'll stop, an' the best thing you can do is spread the notion among the crew that she's runnin' away to avoid marryin' a man she doesn't like. That sounds reasonable, an' it 'appens to be true. Verity an' me talked it over last Sunday, p.m."

"To avoid a marriage?" repeated Hozier, who discovered a bluff honesty, not to say candor, in the statement, not perceptible hitherto in his commander's utterances.

"Yes, that's it," said Coke, waving the cigar across an arc of the horizon as he warmed to the subject. "But look 'ere, me boy, this gal sails under my flag. I'm, wot d'ye call it, in locomotive parentibus, or something of the sort, while she's on the ship's books. You keep your mouth shut, an' wink the other eye, an' leave it to me to give you the chanst of your life—eh, wot?"

Philip Hozier did not strive to extract the precise meaning of the skipper's words. The process would have been difficult, since Coke himself could not have supplied any reasonable analysis. Somehow, to the commander's thinking, the presence of the girl seemed to make easier the casting away of the ship—exactly how, or what bearing her strangely-begun voyage might have on subsequent events, he was not yet in a position to say. But when the second officer left him, and he was steeped once more in the fresh breeze and the sunshine, with his shoulders braced against the chart-house, he looked at a smoke trail on the horizon far away to the west.

"Queenstown!" he chuckled. "Not this journey—not if my name's Jimmie Coke, the man 'oo is stannin' on all that is left of 'is 'ard-earned savin's. No, sir, I've got me orders an' I've got me letter, an' the pore old Andromeda gets ripped to pieces in the Recife, or I'll know the reason why. Wot a card to play at the inquiry! Owner's niece on board—bound to South America for the good of 'er health. 'Oo even 'eard of a man sendin' 'is pretty niece on a ship 'e meant to throw away? It's Providential, that's wot it is, reel Providential! I do believe ole Verity 'ad a 'and in it."

Which shows that Captain Coke confused Providence with David Verity, and goes far to prove how ill-fitted he was to theorize on the ways of Providence.

CHAPTER III

WHEREIN THE "ANDROMEDA" NEARS THE END OF HER VOYAGE

"Five bells, miss! It'll soon be daylight. If you wants to see the Cross, now's your time!"

Iris had been called from dreamless sleep by a thundering rat-tat on her cabin door. In reply to her half-awaked cry of "All right," the hoarse voice of a sailor told her that the Southern Cross had just risen above the horizon. She had a drowsy recollection of someone saying that the famous constellation would make its appearance at seven bells, not at five, and the difference of an hour, when the time happens to be 2:30 instead of 8:30 a.m. is a matter of some importance. But, perhaps that was a mistake; at any rate, here was the messenger, and she resolutely screwed her knuckles into her eyes and began to dress. In a few minutes she was on deck. A long coat, a Tam o' Shanter, and a pair of list slippers will go far in the way of costume at night in the tropics, and the Andromeda's seventeenth day at sea had brought the equator very near. At dinner on the previous evening—in honor of the owner's niece fashionable hours were observed for meals—Mr. Watts mentioned, by chance, that the Cross had been very distinct during the middle watch, or, in other words, between midnight and 4 a.m. Iris at once expressed a wish to see it, and Captain Coke offered a suggestion.

"Mr. Hozier takes the middle watch to-night," said he. "We can ax 'im to send a man to pound on your door as soon as it rises. Then you must run up to the bridge, an' 'e'll tell you all about it."

If Iris was conscious of a slight feeling of surprise, she did not show it. Hitherto, the burly skipper of the Andromeda had made it so clearly understood that none of the ship's company save himself was to enjoy the society of Miss Iris Yorke, that she had exchanged very few words with the one man whose manners and education obviously entitled him to meet her on an equal plane. Even at meals, he was often absent, for the captain and chief officer of a tramp steamer are not altruists where eating is concerned. She often visited the bridge, her favorite perch being the shady side of the wheel-house, but talking to the officer of the watch was strictly forbidden. In everything appertaining to the vessel's navigation the discipline of a man-of-war was observed on board the Andromeda. So Coke's complacency came now quite unexpectedly, but Iris was learning to school her tongue.

"Thank you very much," she said. "When shall I see him?"

"Oh, you needn't bother. I'll tell 'im meself."

She was somewhat disappointed at this. Hozier would be free for an hour before he turned in, and they might have enjoyed a nice chat while he smoked on the poop. In her heart of hearts, she was beginning to acknowledge that a voyage through summer seas on a cargo vessel, with no other society than that of unimaginative sailormen, savored of tedium, indeed, almost of deadly monotony. Her rare meetings with Hozier marked bright spots in a dull round of hours. During their small intercourse she had discovered that he was well informed. They had hit upon a few kindred tastes in books and music; they even differed sharply in their appreciation of favorite authors, and what could be more conducive to complete understanding than the attack and defense of the shrine of some tin god of literature?

While, therefore, it was strange that Captain Coke should actually propose a visit to the bridge at an unusual time—at a time, too, when Hozier would be on duty—it struck her as far more curious that he should endeavor to prevent an earlier meeting. But she had never lost her intuitive fear of Coke. His many faults certainly did not include a weak will. He meant what he said—also a good deal that he left unsaid—and his word was law to everyone on board the Andromeda. So Iris contented herself with meek agreement.

"I shall be delighted to come at any time. I have often read about the Southern Cross, yet three short weeks ago I little thought——"

"You reely didn't think about it at all," broke in Coke. "If you 'ad, you'd 'ave known you couldn't cross the line without seein' it."

Here was another perplexing element in the skipper's conduct. That Iris was a stowaway was forgotten. She was treated with the attention and ceremony due to the owner's niece. Coke never lost an opportunity of dinning into the ears of Watts, or Hozier, or the steward, or any members of the crew who were listening, that Miss Yorke's presence in their midst was a preordained circumstance, a thing fully discussed and agreed on as between her uncle and himself, but carried out in an irregular manner, owing to some girlish freak on her part. The portmanteau, with its change of raiment, brought convincing testimony, and Iris's own words when discovered in the lazaretto supplied further proof, if that were needed. Her name figured in the ship's papers, and the time of her appearance on board was recorded in the log. Coke might be a man of one idea, but he held to it as though it were written in the Admiralty Sailing Directions; not his would be the fault if David Verity failed to appreciate the logic of his reasoning long before an official investigation became inevitable.

A keen, invigorating breeze swept the last mirage of sleep from the girl's brain as she flitted silently along the deck. A wondrous galaxy of stars blazed in the heavens. In that pellucid air the sky was a vivid ultramarine. The ship's track was marked by a trail of phosphorescent fire. Each revolution of the propeller drew from the ocean treasure-house opulent globes of golden light that danced and sparkled in the tumbling waters. It was a night that pulsated with the romance and abandon of the south, a night when the heart might throb with unutterable longings, and the blood tingle in the veins under the stress of an emotion at once passionate and mystic.

Iris, spurred on by no stronger impulse than that of the sight-seer, though not wholly unaware of an element of adventurous shyness in her expectation of a tête-à-tête with a good-looking young man of her own status, climbed to the bridge so speedily and noiselessly that Hozier did not know of her presence until he heard her dismayed cry:

"Is that the Southern Cross?"

[Illustration: "Is that the Southern Cross?">[

He turned quickly.

"You, Miss Yorke?" he exclaimed, and not even her wonder at the insignificance of the stellar display of which she had heard so much could cloak the fact that Hozier was unprepared for her appearance.

"Of course, it is I—who else?" she asked. "Did not Captain Coke tell you to expect me?"

"No."

"How odd! That is what he arranged. A man came and rapped at my door."

"Pardon me one moment."

He leaned over the bridge and hailed the watch. The same hoarse voice that had roused Iris answered his questions, and, in the faint light that came from the binnacle, she caught a flicker of amusement on his face.

"Our excellent skipper's intentions have been defeated," he said. "He told one of the men to call him at seven bells, but not to wake you until the Cross was visible. His orders have been obeyed quite literally. He will be summoned in another hour, and you have been dragged from bed to gaze at the False Cross, which every foremast hand persists in regarding as the real article. The true Cross, of which Alpha Crucis is the Southern Pole star, comes up over the horizon an hour after the false one."

"But Captain Coke said he would see you and warn you of my visit."

"I can only assure you that he did not. Perhaps he thought it unnecessary—meaning to be on deck himself."

"Must I wait here a whole hour, then?"

Hozier laughed. It was amusing to find how Coke's marked effort to keep the girl and him apart had been defeated by a sailor's blunder.

"I hope the waiting will not weary you," he said. "It is a beautiful night. You will not catch cold if you are well wrapped up, and, no matter what you may think of the real Cross when you see it, you will never have a better chance of star-gazing. Look at Sirius up there, brighter than the moon; and Orion, too, incomparably grander than any star in southern latitudes. Our dear old Bear of the north ranks far beyond the Southern Cross in magnificence; but mist and smoke and dust contrive to rob our home atmosphere of the clearness which adds such luster to the firmament nearer the equator."

Under other circumstances, Iris would have reveled in just such an opportunity of acquiring knowledge easily. Astronomy, despite its limitations, is one of the exact sciences; it has the charm of wonderland; it makes to awe-stricken humanity the mysterious appeal of the infinite; but to-night, when the heart fluttered, and the soul pined for sympathy, she was in a mood to regard with indifference the instant extinction of the Milky Way.

"I am glad of the accident that brought me on deck somewhat earlier than was necessary," she said. "You and I have not said much to each other since you routed me out of the lazaretto, Mr. Hozier."

"Our friends at table are somewhat—difficult. If only you knew how I regretted——"

"Oh, what of that? When I became a stowaway I fully expected to be treated as one. I suppose, though, that you have often asked yourself why I was guilty of such a mad trick?"

"Not exactly mad, Miss Yorke, but needless, since Captain Coke partly expected to have your company."

"That is absurd. He had not the remotest notion——"

"Forgive me, but there you are wrong. He says that your uncle and he discussed the matter on the Sunday before we left Liverpool. His theory is rather borne out by the present state of the ship's larder. I assure you that few tramp steamers spread a table like the Andromeda's mess during this voyage."

Iris laughed, with a spontaneous merriment that was rather astonishing in her own ears.

"Being the owner's niece, I am well catered for?" she cried.

"Something of the sort. It is only natural."

"But I think I have read in the newspapers that when some unhappy creature is condemned to death by the law, he is supplied with luxuries that would certainly be denied to any ordinary criminal?"

"Such doubtful clemency can hardly apply to you, Miss Yorke."

"It might apply to the ship, or to that human part of her that thinks, and remembers, and is capable of—of giving evidence."

She paused, fearing lest, perhaps, she might have spoken too plainly. Coke's counter-stroke in alluding to her dread of the proposed marriage was hidden from her ken; Hozier, of course, was thinking of nothing else. For the moment, then, they were at cross purposes.

"Things are not so bad as that," he said gently. "I hope I am not trespassing on forbidden ground, but it is only fair to tell you that the skipper was quite explicit, up to a point. He said you were being forced into some matrimonial arrangement that was distasteful——"

"And to escape from an undesirable suitor I ran away?"

"Well, the story sounded all right."

"Hid myself on my uncle's ship when I wished to avoid marrying the man of his choice?"

Hozier was not neglecting his work, but he did then take his eyes off the starlit sea for a few amazed seconds. There was no mistaking the scornful ring in the girl's words. He could see the deep color that flooded her cheeks; the glance that met his sparkled with an intensity of feeling that thrilled while it perplexed.

"Please pardon me if the question hurts, but if that is not your motive, and there never was any real notion of your coming with us on the this trip, why are you here?" he said.

"Because I am a foolish girl, I suppose; because I thought that my presence might interpose a serious obstacle between a criminal and the crime he had planned to commit. If one wants to avoid hateful people a change of climate is a most effectual means, and I had not the money for ordinary travel. Believe me, Mr. Hozier, I am not on board the Andromeda without good reason. I have often wished to have a talk with you. I think you are a man who would not betray a confidence. If you agree to help me, something may yet be done. At first, I was sure that Captain Coke would abandon his wicked project as soon as he discovered that I knew what was in his mind. But now, I am beginning to doubt. Each day brings us nearer South America, and—and——"

She was breathless with excitement. She drew nearer to the silent, and impassive man at her side; dropping her voice almost to a whisper, she caught his arm with an appealing hand.

"I am afraid that my presence will offer no hindrance to his scheme," she murmured. "I am terrified to say such a thing, but I am certain, quite certain, that the ship will be lost within the next few days."

Hozier, though incredulous, could not but realize that the girl was saying that which she honestly thought to be true.

"Lost! Do you mean that, she will be purposely thrown away?" he asked, and his own voice was not wholly under control, for he was called on to repress a sudden temptation to kiss away the tears that glistened in her brown eyes.

"Yes, that is what he said—on the rocks, this side of Monte Video."

"He said—who?"

"The—the captain."

"To whom did he say it?"

"Oh, Mr. Hozier, do not ask that, but believe me and help me."

"How?"

"I do not know. I am half distracted with thinking. What can we do? Captain Coke simply swept aside my first attempt to speak plainly to him. But, make no mistake—he knows that I heard his very words, and there is something in his manner, a curious sort of quiet confidence, that frightens me."

After that, neither spoke during many minutes. The Andromeda jogged along steadily south by west, and the threshing of the propeller beat time to the placid hum of her engines. The sturdy old ship could seemingly go on in that humdrum way forever, forging ahead through the living waters, marking her track with a golden furrow.

"That is a very serious thing you have told me, Miss Yorke," muttered Hozier at last, not without a backward glance at the sailor in the wheel-house to assure himself that the man could not, by any chance, overhear their conversation.

"But it is true—dreadfully true," said Iris, clasping her hands together and resting them on the high railing of the bridge.

"It is all the more serious inasmuch as we are helpless," he went on. "Don't you see how impossible it is even to hint at it in any discussion with the man principally concerned? I want to say this, though—you are in no danger. There is no ship so safe as one that is picked out for wilful destruction. Men will not sacrifice their own lives even to make good an insurance policy, and I suppose that is what is intended. So you can sleep sound o' nights—at any rate until we near the coast of Brazil. I can only promise you if any watchfulness on my part can stop this piece of villainy—— Hello, there! What's up? Why is the ship falling away from her course?"

The sudden change in his voice startled the girl so greatly that she uttered a slight shriek. It took her an appreciable time to understand that he was speaking to the man at the wheel. But the sailor knew what he meant.

"Something's gone wrong with the wheel, sir," he bawled. "I wasn't certain at first, so I tried to put her over a bit to s'uth'ard. Then she jammed for sure."

Hozier leaped to the telegraph and signaled "slow" to the engine-room. Already the golden pathway behind the Andromeda had changed from a wavering yet generally straight line to a well-defined curve. There was a hiss and snort of escaping steam as the sailor inside the chart-house endeavored to force the machinery into action.

"Steady there!" bellowed Hozier. "Wait until we have examined the gear-boxes. There may be a kink in a chain."

A loud order brought the watch scurrying along the deck. Some of the men ran to examine the bearings of the huge fan-shaped casting that governed the movements of the rudder, while others began to tap the wooden shields which protected the steering rods and chains. In the midst of the hammering and excitement, Captain Coke swung himself up to the bridge.

"Well, I'm blowed! You here?" he said, looking at Iris. "Wot is it now?" he asked, turning sharply to Hozier. "Wheel stuck again?"

"Yes, sir. Has it happened before?"

"Well—er—not this trip. But it 'as 'appened. Just for a minnit I was mixin' it up with the night you nearly ran down that bloomin' hooker off the Irish coast. Ah, there she goes! Everything O.K. now. W'en daylight comes we'll overhaul the fixin's. Nice thing if the wheel jammed just as we was crossin' the Recife!"

Hozier tried to ascertain from the watch if they had found the cause of the disturbance, but the men could only guess that a chance blow with an adze had straightened a kink in one of the casings. Coke treated the incident with nonchalance.

"Thought you was to be called w'en the Cross hove in sight, Miss Yorke?" he said abruptly.

"I am sorry to have to inform you that some people on board cannot distinguish between falsity and truth," she answered. "But please don't be angry with any of the men on my account. Mr. Hozier tells me they often confuse the False Cross with the real one, and the mistake has been enjoyable. Now I know all about it—what were those stars you were telling me the names of, Mr. Hozier?"

Philip took the cue she offered.

"Sirius, and Orion, and Ursa Major. I shall write the names and particulars for you after breakfast," he said with a smile.

"Reg'lar 'umbug the Southern Cross," grunted Coke; "it ain't a patch on the Bear."

"Mr. Hozier said something like that," put in Iris mischievously.

"Did 'e? Well 'e's right for once. But don't you go an' take as Gospel most things 'e says. Every shipmaster knows that the second officer simply can't speak the truth. It ain't natural. W'y, it 'ud bust a steam pipe if 'e tole you wot 'e really thought of the ole man."

Coke grinned at his own pleasantry. To one of his hearers, at least, it seemed to be passing strange that he was so ready to forget such a vital defect in the steering gear as had manifested its existence a few minutes earlier.

At any rate, he remained on the bridge until long after Iris had seen and admired the cluster of stars which oldtime navigators used to regard with awe. When shafts of white light began to taper, pennon-like, in the eastern sky, the girl went back to her cabin. Contrary to Hozier's expectation, Coke did not attempt to draw from him any account of their conversation prior to the inexplicable mishap to the wheel. He examined a couple of charts, made a slight alteration in the course, and at four o'clock took charge of the bridge.

"Just 'ave a look round now while things is quiet," he said, nodding to Hozier confidentially. "I'll tell you wot I fancy: a rat dragged a bit of bone into a gear-box. If the plankin' is badly worn anywhere, get the carpenter to see to it. I do 'ate to 'ave a feelin' that the wheel can let you down. S'pose we was makin' Bahia on the homeward run, an' that 'appened! It 'ud be the end of the pore ole ship; an' oo'd credit it? Not a soul. They'd all say 'Jimmie threw 'er away!' Oh, I know 'em, the swine—never a good word for a man while 'e keeps straight, but tar an' feathers the minnit 'e 'as a misforchun!"

Hozier found a gnawed piece of ham-bone lying in the exact position anticipated by Coke. An elderly salt who had served with the P. & O. recalled a similar incident as having occurred on board an Indian mail steamer while passing through the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. He drew a lurid picture of the captain's dash across the forms of lady passengers sleeping inside a curtained space on deck, and his location of the area of disturbance with an ax just in time to prevent a disaster.

The carpenter busied himself with sawing and hammering during the whole of the next two days, for the Andromeda revealed many gaps in her woodwork, but the escapade of an errant ham-bone was utterly eclipsed by a new sensation. At daybreak one morning every drop of water in the vessel's tanks suddenly assumed a rich, blood-red tint. This unnerving discovery was made by the cook, who was horrified to see a ruby stream pouring into the earliest kettle. Thinking that an iron pipe had become oxidized with startling rapidity, he tried another tap. Finally, there could be no blinking the fact that, by some uncanny means, the whole of the fresh water on board had acquired the color if not the taste of a thin Burgundy.

Coke was summoned hastily. Noblesse oblige; being captain, he valiantly essayed the task of sampling this strange beverage.

"It ain't p'ison," he announced, gazing suspiciously at the little group of anxious-faced men who awaited his verdict. "It sartinly ain't p'ison, but it's wuss nor any teetotal brew I've tackled in all me born days. 'Ere, Watts, you know the tang of every kind o' likker—'ave a sup?"

"Not me!" said Watts. "I don't like the look of it. First time I've ever seen red ink on tap. For the rest of this trip I stick to bottled beer, or somethink with a label."

"It smells like an infusion of permanganate of potash," volunteered Hozier.

"Does it?" growled Coke, who seemed to be greatly annoyed. "Wot a pity it ain't an infusion of whisky an' potash!" and he glared vindictively at Watts. "Some ijjit 'as bin playin' a trick on us, that's wot it is—some blank soaker 'oo don't give a hooraw in Hades for tea an' corfee an' cocoa, but wants a tonic. Stooard!"

"Yes, sir," said the messroom attendant.

"Portion out all the soda water in the lockers, an' whack it on the table every meal till it gives out. See that nobody puts away more'n 'is proper allowance, too. I'm not goin' to cry hush-baby w'en the Andromeda gets this sort of kid's dodge worked off on 'er."

"If you're alloodin' to me," put in the incensed "chief," whose temper rose on this direct provocation, "I want to tell you now——"

"Does the cap fit?" sneered Coke.

"No, it doesn't. I never 'eard of that kind of potash in me life. D'ye take me for a—chemist's shop?"

"Never 'eard of it!" cried the incensed skipper, who had obviously made up his mind as to the person responsible for the outrage. "There's 'arf a dozen cases of it in the after hold—or there was, w'en we put the hatches on."

"Even if some of the cases were broken, sir, the contents could not reach the tanks," said Hozier, who fancied that Coke's attack on the bibulous Watts was wholly unwarranted. But the commander's wrath could not be appeased.

"Get this stuff pumped out, an' 'ave the tanks scoured. We'll put into Fernando Noronha, an' refill there. It's on'y a day lost, an' I guess the other liquor on board 'll last till we make the island. Sink me, if this ain't the queerest run this crimson ship 'as ever 'ad. I'll be glad w'en it's ended."

Coke lurched away in the direction of the chart-room. Hozier found him there later, poring over a chart of Fernando Noronha. Iris, on hearing the steward's version of the affair, came to the bridge for further enlightenment, but Coke merely told her that the island was a Lloyd's signal station, so she could cable to her uncle.

"Can I go ashore?" she asked.

"I dunno. We'll see. It's a convict settlement for the Brazils, an' they're mighty partic'lar about lettin' people land, but they'll 'ardly object to a nice young lady like you 'avin' a peep at 'em."

As his tone was unusually gruff, not to say jeering, she resolved to find an opportunity of seeking Hozier's advice on the cablegram problem. But the portent of the blood-red water was not to be disregarded. Never was Delphic oracle better served by nature. The Andromeda began to roll ominously; masses of black cloud climbed over the southwest horizon; at midday the ship was driving through a heavy sea. As the day wore, the weather became even more threatening. A sky and ocean that had striven during three weeks to produce in splendid rivalry blends of sapphire blue and emerald green and tenderest pink, were now draped in a shroud of gray mist. With increasing frequency and venom, vaulting seas curled over the bows, and sent stinging showers of spray against the canvas shield of the bridge. Instead of the natty white drill uniform and canvas shoes of the tropics, the ship's officers donned oilskins, sou'westers, and sea-boots. Torrents swept the decks, and an occasional giant among waves smote the hull with a thunderous blow under which every rivet rattled and every plank creaked. Despite these drawbacks, the Andromeda wormed her way south. She behaved like the stanch old sea-prowler that she was, and labored complainingly but with stubborn zeal in the teeth of a stiff gale.

Iris, of course, thought that she was experiencing the storm of a century. Badly scared at first, she regained some stock of courage when Hozier came twice to her cabin, pounded on the door, and shouted to her such news as he thought would take her mind off the outer furies! The first time he announced that they were just "crossing the line," and the girl smiled at the thought that Neptune's chosen lair was uncommonly like the English Channel at its worst. On the second occasion her visitor brought the cheering news that they would be under the lee of Fernando Noronha early next morning. She had sufficient sea lore to understand that this implied shelter from wind and wave, but Hozier omitted to tell her that the only practicable roadstead in the island, being on the weather side, would be rendered unsafe by the present adverse combination of the elements. In fact, Coke had already called both Watts and Hozier into council, and they had agreed with him that the wiser plan would be to bear in towards the island from the east, and anchor in smooth water as close to South Point as the lead would permit.

As for Iris's wild foreboding that the ship was intended to be lost, Philip did not give it other than a passing thought. Coke was navigating the Andromeda with exceeding care and no little skill. He was a first-rate practical sailor, and it was an education to the younger man to watch his handling of the vessel throughout the worst part of the blow. About midnight the weather moderated. It improved steadily until a troubled dawn heralded some fitful gleams of the sun. By that time the magnificent Peak of Fernando Noronha was plainly visible. Coke came to the bridge and set a new course, almost due west. The sun struggled with increasing success against the cloud battalions, and patches of blue appeared in sky and sea. Soon it was possible to distinguish the full extent of the coast line. Houses appeared, and trees, and green oases of cultivation, but these were mere spots of color amid the arid blackness of a land of bleak rock and stone-strewed hills.

There was a strong current setting from the southeast, and the dying gale left its aftermath in a long swell, but the Andromeda rolled on with ever-increasing comfort. Even Iris was tempted forth by the continued sunshine.

Coke was not on the bridge at the moment. Mr. Watts was taking the watch; Hozier was on deck forrard, looking for gravel and shells on the instrument that picks up these valuable indications from the floor of the sea. Suddenly the captain appeared. He greeted Iris with a genial nod.

"Ah, there you are," he cried. "Not seen you since this time yesterday. Sorry, but there'll be no goin' ashore to-day. We're on the wrong side of the island, an' it 'ud toss you a bit if you was to try an' land in eether of the boats. Take 'er in easy now, Mr. Watts. That's our anchorage—over there," and he pointed to the mouth of a narrow channel between South Point and the Ile des Frégates, the latter a tiny islet that almost blocks the entrance to a shallow bay into which runs a rivulet of good but slightly brackish water.

The ship slowed perceptibly, and Hozier busied himself with the lead, which a sailor was swinging on the starboard side from the small platform of the accommodation ladder. Iris did not know what was said, but the queer figures repeated to Coke seemed to be satisfactory. Headlands and hills crept nearer. The rocky arms of the island closed in on them. A faint scent as of sweet grasses reached them from the shore. Iris could see several people, nearly all of them men in uniform, hurrying about with an air of excitement that betokened the unusual. Perhaps a steamer's advent on the south side of the island was a novelty.

Now they were in a fairly smooth roadstead; the remnants of the gale were shouldered away from the ship by the towering cliff that jutted out on the left of the bay. The crew were mostly occupied in clearing blocks and tackle and swinging two life-boats outward on their davits.

"All ready forrard?" roared Coke. Hozier ran to the forecastle. He found the carpenter there, standing by the windlass brake.

"All ready, sir!" he cried.

Coke nodded to him.

"Give her thirty-five," he said, meaning thereby that the anchor should be allowed thirty-five fathoms of chain.

From the bridge, where Iris was standing, she could follow each movement of the commander's hands as he signaled in dumbshow to the steersman or telegraphed instructions to the engine-room. It was interesting to watch the alertness of the men on duty. They were a scratch crew, garnered from the four quarters of the globe at the Liverpool shipping office, but they moved smartly under officers who knew their work, and the Andromeda was well equipped in that respect.

The turbulent current was surging across the bows with the speed of a mill-race, so Coke brought the vessel round until she lay broadside with the land and headed straight against the set of the stream. It was his intent to drop anchor while in that position, and help any undue strain on the cable by an occasional turn of the propeller.

"Keep her there!" he said, half turning to the man at the wheel; he changed the indicator from "Full speed" to "Slow ahead"; in a few seconds the anchor chain would have rattled through the hawse-hole—when something happened that was incomprehensible, stupefying—something utterly remote and strange from the ways of civilized men.

The Andromeda quivered under a tremendous buffet. There was a crash of rending iron and an instant stoppage of the engines. Almost merging into the noise of the blow came a loud report from the land, but that, in its turn, was drowned by the hiss of steam from the exhaust.

Coke appeared to be dumfounded for an instant. Recovering himself, he ran to the starboard side, leaned over, looked down at a torn plate that showed its jagged edges just above the water-line, and then lifted a blazing face toward a point half-way up the neighboring cliff, where a haze lay like a veil of gauze on the weather-scarred rocks.

"You d—d pirates!" he yelled, raising both clenched fists at the hidden battery which had fired a twelve-pound shell into the doomed ship.

The Andromeda herself seemed to recognize that she was stricken unto death. She fell away before the current with the aimless drift of a log.

"Let go!" bellowed Coke with frenzied pantomime of action to Hozier. It was too late. Before the lever controlling the steam windlass that released the anchor could be shoved over, another shell plunged through the thin iron plates in the bows, smashing a steam pipe, and jamming the hawser gear by its impact. The missile burst with a terrific report. A sailor was knocked overboard, the carpenter was killed outright, two other men were seriously wounded, and Hozier received a blow on the forehead from a flying scrap of metal that stretched him on the deck.

The gunners on shore had not allowed for the drifting of the ship. That second shell was meant to demolish the chart-house and clear the bridge of its occupants. Striking high and forward, it had robbed the Andromeda of her last chance. Now she was rolling in the full grip of the tidal stream. It could only be a matter of a minute or less before she struck.

CHAPTER IV

SHOWING WHAT BECAME OF THE "ANDROMEDA"

The island artillery did not succeed in hitting the crippled ship again. Three more shells were fired, but each projectile screamed harmlessly far out to sea. A trained gunner, noting these facts, would reason that the shore battery made good practice in the first instance solely because its ordnance was trained at a known range. Indeed, he might even hazard a guess that the Andromeda's warm reception was arranged long before her masts and funnel rose over the horizon. That the islanders intended nothing less than her complete destruction was self-evident. Without the slightest warning they had tried to sink her; and now that she was escaping the further attentions of the field pieces, a number of troops stationed on South Point and the Isle des Frégates began to pelt her with bullets.

Iris, when the first paralysis of fear had passed, when her stricken senses resumed their sway and her limbs lost their palsy, flinched from this new danger, and sank sobbing to her knees behind the canvas shield of the bridge. Somehow, this flimsy shelter, which sailors call the "dodger," gave some sense of safety. Her throbbing brain was incapable of lucid thought, but it was borne in on her mistily that the world and its occupants had suddenly gone mad. The omen of the blood-red water had justified itself most horribly. The dead carpenter was sprawling over the forecastle windlass. His hand still clutched the brake. The sailor at the wheel had been shot through the throat, and had fallen limply through the open doorway of the chart-room; he lay there, coughing up blood and froth, and gasping his life out. The two men wounded by the second shell were creeping down the forward companion in the effort to avoid the hail of lead that was beating on the ship. Hozier was raising himself on hands and knees, his attitude that of a man who is dazed, almost insensible. Watts had gone from the bridge—he might have been whirled to death over the side like the unfortunate foremast hand she had seen tossed from off the forecastle; but Coke, whose charmed life apparently entitled him to act like a lunatic, was actually balancing himself on top of the starboard rails of the bridge by clinging to a stay, having climbed to that exposed position in order to hurl oaths at the soldiers on shore. He had gone berserk with rage. His cap had either fallen off or been torn from his head by a bullet; his squat, powerful figure was shaking with frenzy; he emphasized each curse with a passionate gesture of the free hand and arm; he said among other things, and with no lack of forceful adjectives, that if he could only come to close quarters with some of the Portygee assassins on the island he would tear their sanguinary livers out. It is an odd thing that men made animal by fury often use that trope. They do really mean it. The liver is the earliest spoil of the successful tiger.

The Andromeda, uncontrollable as destiny, and quite as heedless of her human freight, swung round with the current until her bows pointed to the islet occupied by the marksmen. All at once, Coke suspended his flow of invectives and rushed into the chart-room, where Iris heard him tearing lockers open and throwing their contents on the deck. To enter, he was obliged to leap over the body of the dying man. The action was grotesque, callous, almost inhuman; it jarred the girl's agonized transports back into a species of spiritual calm, a mental state akin to the fatalism often exhibited by Asiatics when death is imminent and not to be denied. The apparent madness of the captain was now more distressing to her than the certain loss of the ship or the invisible missiles that clanged into white patches on the iron plates, cut sudden holes and scars in the woodwork, or whirred through the air with a buzzing whistle of singularly menacing sound. She began to be afraid of remaining on the bridge; her fear was not due to the really vital fact that it was so exposed; it arose from the purely feminine consideration that she was sure Coke had become a raving maniac, and she dreaded meeting him when, if ever, he reappeared.

A bullet struck the front frame of the chart-room, and several panes of glass were shattered with a fearful din. That decided her. Coke, if he were not killed, would surely be driven out. She sprang to her feet, and literally ran down the steep ladder to the saloon deck. Through the open door of the officers' mess she witnessed another bizarre act—an act quite as extraordinary in its way as Coke's jump over the steersman's body. In the midst of this drama of death and destruction, Watts was standing there, with head thrown back and uplifted arm, gulping down a tumblerful of some dark-colored liquid, draining it to the dregs, while he held a black bottle in the other hand. That a man should fly to rum for solace when existence itself might be measured by minutes or seconds, was, to Iris, not the least amazing experience of an episode crammed with all that was new, and strange, and horrible in her life. She raced on, wholly unaware that the drifting ship was now presenting her port bow to the death-dealing fusillade.

Then, from somewhere, she heard a gruff voice:

"Hev' ye shut off steam, Macfarlane?"

"Ou ay. It's a' snug below till the watter reaches the furnaces," came the answer.

So some of the men were doing their duty. Thank God for that! Undeterred by the fact that a live shell had burst among the engines, the oil-stained, grim-looking engineers had not quitted their post until they had taken such precautions as lay in their power to insure the ship's safety. A light broke in on the fog in the girl's mind. Even now, at the very gate of eternity, one might try to help others! The thought brought a ray of comfort. She was about to look for the speakers when a bullet drilled a hole in a panel close to her side. She began to run again, for a terrified glance through the forward gangway showed that the ship was quite close to the land, where men in blue uniforms, wearing curiously shaped hats and white gaiters, were scattered among the rocks, some standing, some kneeling, some prone, but all taking steady aim.

But it showed something more. Hozier was now lying sideways on the raised deck of the forecastle; he partly supported himself on his right arm; his left hand was pressed to his forehead; he was trying to rise. With an intuition that was phenomenal under the circumstances, Iris realized that he was screened from observation for the moment by the windlass and the corpse that lay across it. But the ship's ever increasing speed, and the curving course of her drifting, would soon bring him into sight, and then those merciless riflemen would shoot him down.

"Oh, not that! Not that!" she wailed aloud.

An impulse stronger than the instinct of self-preservation caused the blood to tingle in her veins. She had waited to take that one look, and now, bent double so as to avoid being seen by the soldiers, she sped back through the gangway, gained the open deck, crouched close to the bulwarks on the port side, and thus reached unscathed the foot of the companion down which the wounded men had crawled. The zinc plates on the steps were slippery with their blood, but she did not falter at the sight. Up she went, stooped over Hozier, and placed her strong young arms round his body.

"Quick!" she panted, "let me help you! You will be killed if you remain here!"

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.

"Can nothing be done?" she asked. "I believe Captain Coke has been killed. Mr. Hozier is badly injured, I fear. Bring some water, if possible."

"Yes, yes, water.… Only a knock on the head.… How did it happen? And what is that noise of firing?"

Hozier's scattered wits were returning, though neither he nor Iris remembered that the Andromeda was waterless. He looked up at her, then at the men, and he smiled as his eyes met hers again.

"Funny thing!" he said, with a natural tone that was reassuring. "I thought the windlass smashed itself into smithereens. But it couldn't. What was it that banged?"

"A shell, fired from the island," said the girl.

Hozier straightened himself a little. He was hearing marvels, though far from understanding them, as yet.

"A shell!" he repeated vacantly. Had she said "a comet" it could not have sounded more incredible.

"Yes. It might have killed you. Several of the men are dead. I myself saw three of them killed outright, and two others are badly wounded."

"Here you are, sir—drink this," said a fireman, offering a pannikin of beer. It was unpalatable stuff, but it tasted like the nectar of the gods to one who had sustained a blow that would have felled an ox. Hozier had almost emptied the tin when an exclamation from an Irish stoker drew all eyes to the after part of the ship.

"Holy war! Will ye look at that!" shouted the man. "Sure the skipper isn't dead, at all, at all."

Iris had failed to grasp the meaning of Coke's antics in the chart-room, but they were now fully explained. The bulldog breed of this self-confessed rascal had taken the upper hand of him. Though he had not scrupled to plot the destruction of the ship, and thus rob a marine insurance company of a considerable sum of money—though at that very instant there was actual proof of his scheme in the preparations he had made to jam the steering-gear when the anchor was raised after the tanks were replenished—it was not in the man's nature to skulk into comparative safety because a foreigner, a pirate, a not-to-be-mentioned-in-polite-society Portygee, opened fire on him in this murderous fashion. Moreover, Coke's villainy would have sacrificed no lives. The Andromeda might be converted into scrap iron, and thereby give back, by perverted arithmetic, the money invested in her. But her white decks would not be stained with blood. Whatever risk was incurred would be his, the responsible captain's, his only. It was a vastly different thing that shot and shell should be rained on an unarmed ship by the troops of a civilized power when she was seeking the lowest form of hospitality. No wonder if the bull-necked skipper foamed at the mouth and used words forbidden by the catechism; no wonder if he tried to express his helpless fury in one last act of defiance.

He rummaged the lockers for a Union Jack and the four flags that showed the ship's name in signal letters. The red ensign was already fluttering from a staff at the stern, and the house flag of David Verity & Co. was at the fore, but these emblems did not satisfy Coke's fighting mettle. The Andromeda would probably crack like an eggshell the instant she touched the reef towards which she was hurrying; he determined that she would go down with colors flying if he were not put out of action by a bullet before he could reach the main halyard.

The swerve in the ship's course as she passed the island gave him an opportunity. In justice to Coke it should be said that he recked naught of this, but it would have been humanly impossible otherwise for the soldiers to have missed him. And now, while the vessel lay with straight keel in the set of the current, the national emblem of Britain, with the Andromeda's code flags beneath, fluttered up the mainmast.

There are many imaginable conditions under which Coke's deed would be regarded as sublime; there are none which could deny his splendid audacity. The soldiers, who seemed to be actuated by the utmost malevolence, redoubled their efforts to hit the squat Hercules who had bellowed at them and their fellow artillerists from the bridge. Bullets struck the deck, lodged in the masts, splintered the roof and panels of the upper structure, but not one touched Coke. He coolly made fast each flag in its turn, and hauled away till the Union Jack had reached the truck; then, drawn forrard by a hoarse cheer that came from the forecastle, he turned his back on the enemy and swung himself down to the fore-deck.

He was still wearing the heavy garments demanded by the gale; his recent exertions, joined to the fact that the normal temperature of a sub-tropical island was making itself felt, had induced a violent perspiration. As he lumbered along the deck he mopped his face vigorously with a pocket handkerchief, and this homely action helped to convince Iris that she was mistaken in thinking him mad. His words, too, when he caught sight of her, were not those of a maniac.

"Well, missy," he cried, "wot'll they say in Liverpool now? I s'pose they'll 'ear of this some day," and he jerked a thumb backwards to indicate the unceasing hail of bullets that poured into the after part of the ship.

The girl looked at him with an air of surprise that would have been comical under less grievous conditions. She knew, with a vague definiteness, that death was near, perhaps unavoidable, and it had never occurred to her that she or any other person on board need feel any concern about the view entertained by Liverpool as to their fate. Before she could frame a reply, however, Hozier seemed to recover his faculties. He stood up, walked unaided to the side of the ship, and glanced ahead.

"Shouldn't we try to lower a boat, sir?" he asked instantly.

"Wot's the use?" growled Coke. "Oo's goin' to lower boats while them blighters on the island are pumpin' lead into us? And wot good are the boats w'en they're lowered? They've been drilled full of holes. You might as well try to float a sieve. Look at that," he added sarcastically, as the side of the cutter was ripped open by a ricochetting shot, and splinters were littered on the deck, "they know wot they want an' they mean to get it. Dead men tell no tales. It won't be anybody 'ere now who'll 'ave the job of lettin' the folk at 'ome know 'ow the pore ole Andromeda went under."

"Are none of the boats seaworthy?"

"Not one. They're knocked to pieces. Sorry for you, Miss Yorke. But we're all booked for Kingdom Come. In 'arf a minnit, or less, we'll be on the reef, an' the ship must begin to break up."

Coke was telling the plain truth, but Hozier ran aft to make sure that he was right in assuming the extent of the boats' damages. One of the men, an Italian, climbed to the forecastle deck in order to see more clearly what sort of danger they were running into. He came back instantly, and his swarthy face was green with terror. Though he spoke English well enough, he began to jabber wildly in his mother tongue. None paid heed to him. It was common knowledge that the vessel must be lost, and that those who still lived when she struck would have the alternatives of being drowned, or beaten to pieces against the frowning rocks, or shot from the mainland like so many stranded seals, if some alliance of luck and strength secured a momentary foothold on one of the tiny islets that barred the way. And at such moments, when the mind is driven into a swift-running channel that ends in a cataract, elemental passions are apt to strive with elemental fears. Few among these rough sailors had ever given thought to the future. They had lived from hand to mouth, the demands of a hard and dangerous profession alternating with bouts of foolish revelry. Most of them had looked on death in the tempest, in the swirling seas, in the uplifted knife. But then, there was always a chance of escape, an open door for the stout heart and ready hand; whereas, under present conditions, there was nothing to be done but pray, or curse, or wait in stoic silence until the first ominous quiver ran through the swift-moving ship. So, all unknowingly, they grouped themselves according to their nationalities, for the Latins knelt and supplicated the saints and the Virgin Mother, the Celts roared insensate threats at the islanders who had thrown them into the very jaws of eternity, and the Saxons stood motionless, with grim jaws and frowning brows, disdaining alike both frenzied appeal and useless execration.

Someone threw a cork jacket over the girl's shoulders, and bade her fasten its straps around her waist. She obeyed without a word. Indeed, she seemed to have lost the power of speech. Everything had suddenly assumed such a crystal clear aspect that her eyes were gifted with unnatural vision though her remaining senses were benumbed. The blue and white of the sky, the emerald green of the water, the russet brown and cold gray of the land—these shone now with a beauty vivid beyond any of nature's tints she had ever before seen. She was conscious, too, of an awful aloofness. Her spirit was entrenched in its own citadel. She seemed to be brooding, solitary and remote, yet shrinking ever within herself; quite unknowing, she offered a piteous example of the old Hebrew's dire truism that man came naked into the world and naked shall he depart.

In a curiously detached way she wondered why Hozier did not return. The prayers and curses of the men surrounding her fell unheeded on her ears. Where was Hozier? What was he doing? Why did he not come to her? She felt a strange confidence in him. If he had not been struck down by that calamitous shell he would have saved the ship—assuredly he would have devised some means of saving their lives! Perhaps, even now, he was attempting some desperate expedient!… The thought nerved her for an instant. Then a rending, grinding noise was followed by a sudden swerve and roll of the ship that sent her staggering against a bulkhead. An outburst of cries and shouting rang through her brain, and a shriek was wrung from her parched throat.

But the Andromeda righted herself again, though there was another sound of tearing metal, and the deck heaved perceptibly under a shock.

Ah, kind Heaven! here came Hozier, running, thundering some loud order.

"The port life-boat … seaworthy!"

There was a fierce rush, in which she joined. She was knocked down. A strong hand dragged her to her feet. It was Coke, swearing horribly. She saw Hozier leap against the flood of men.

"D—n you, the woman first!" she heard him say, and he sent the leaders of the mob sprawling over the hatches of the forehold.

Coke, almost carrying her in his left arm, butted in among the crew like an infuriated bull. Some of the men, shamefaced, made way for them. Hosier reached her. She thought he said to the captain:

"There's a chance, if we can swing her clear."

Then the ship struck, and they were all flung to the deck. They rose, somehow, anyhow, but the Andromeda, apparently resenting the check, lifted herself bodily, tilted bow upward, and struck again. A mass of spray dashed down upon the struggling figures who had been driven a second time to their knees. There was a terrific explosion in the after-hold, for the deck had burst under the pressure of air, and another ominous roar announced that the water had reached the furnaces. Steam and smoke and dust mingled with the incessant lashing of sheets of spray, and Iris was torn from Coke's grip.

She fancied she heard Hozier cry, "Too late!" and a lightning glimpse down the sloping deck showed some of the engineers and stokers crawling up toward the quivering forecastle. She felt herself clasped in Hozier's arms, and knew that he was climbing. After a few breathless seconds she realized that they were standing on the forecastle, where the captain and many of the crew were clinging to the windlass, and anchor, and cable, and bulwarks, to maintain their footing. Below, beyond a stretch of unbroken deck, the sea raged against all that was left of the ship. The bridge just showed above the froth and spume of sea level. The funnel still held by its stays, but the mainmast was gone, and with it the string of flags.

The noise was deafening, overpowering. It sounded like the rattle of some immense factory; yet a voice was audible through the din, for Hozier was telling her not to abandon hope, as the fore part of the ship was firmly wedged into a cleft in the rocks: they might still have a chance when the tide dropped.

So that explained why it was so dark where a few moments ago all was light. Iris pressed the salt water out of her burning eyes, and tried to look up. On both sides of the narrow triangle of the forecastle rose smooth overhanging walls, black and dripping. They were festooned with seaweed, and every wave that curled up between the ship's plates and the rocks was thrown back over the deck, while streams of water fell constantly from the masses of weed. She gasped for breath. The mere sight of this dismal cleft with its super-saturated air space made active the choking sensation of which she was just beginning to be aware.

"I—cannot breathe!" she sobbed, and she would have slipped off into the welter of angry foam beneath had not Hozier tightened a protecting arm round her waist.

"Stoop down!" he said.

She had a dim knowledge that he unbuttoned his coat and drew one of its folds over her head. Ah, the blessed relief of it! Freed from the stifling showers of spray, she drew a deep breath or two. How good he was to her! How sure she was now that if he had been spared by that disabling shell he would have saved them all!

Bent and shrouded as she was, she could see quite clearly downward. The ship was breaking up with inconceivable rapidity. Already there was a huge irregular vent between the fore deck and the central block of cabins topped by the bridge. And a new horror was added to all that had gone before. Swarms of rats were skimming up the slippery planks. They were invading the forecastle and the forecastle deck. They came in an irresistible army, though, fortunately for Iris's continued sanity, the greater number scurried into the darkness of the men's quarters.

She was watching them with fascinated eyes, though not daring to withdraw her head from under the coat, when she heard a ghastly yell from beneath, and an erie face appeared above the stairway. It was Watts, mad with fright and drink.

"Save me! save me!" he screamed, and the girl shuddered as she realized that the man did not fear death so much as he loathed the scampering rats. He had no difficulty in climbing the steep companion, though, by reason of the present position of all that was left of the Andromeda, its pitch was thrown back to an unusual angle. He scrambled up, a pitiable object. A couple of rats ran over his body, and as each whisked across his shoulders and past his cheek he uttered a blood-curdling yell. A big wave surged up into the recesses of the cleft and was flung off in a drenching shower on to the forecastle. It nearly swept Watts into the next world, and it drove every rodent in that exposed place back to the dry interior.

To return, they had to use the unhappy chief officer as a causeway, and the poor wretch's despairing cries were heartrending. He was clinging for dear life to a bolt in the deck when Coke joined hands with a sailor and was thus enabled to reach him. Once the skipper's strong fingers had clutched his collar he was rescued—at least from the instant death that might have been the outcome of his abject terror, for there could be little doubt in the minds of those who saw his glistening eyes and drawn lips that it would have needed the passage of but one more rat and he would have relaxed his hold.

Coke pulled him up until he was lodged in safety in front of the windlass. The manner of the welcome given by the captain to his aide need not be recorded here. It was curt and lurid; it would serve as a sorry passport if proffered on his entry to another world; but the tragi-comedy of Watts's appearance among the close-packed gathering on the forecastle was forthwith blotted out of existence by a thing so amazing, so utterly unlooked for that during a couple of spellbound seconds not a man moved nor spoke.

CHAPTER V

THE REFUGEES

Watts was whimpering some broken excuse to his angry skipper when a coil of stout rope fell on top of the windlass and rebounded to the deck. More than that, one end of it stretched into the infinity of dripping rock and flying spray overhead. And it had been thrown by friendly hands. Though it dangled from some unseen ledge, its purpose seemed to be that of help rather than slaughter, whereas every other act of the inhabitants of Fernando Noronha had been suggestive of homicidal mania in its worst form.

Coke and Hozier recovered the use of their faculties simultaneously. The eyes of the two men met, but Coke was the first to find his voice.

"Salvage, by G—d!" he cried. "Up you go, Hozier! I'll sling the girl behind you. She can't manage it alone, an' it needs someone with brains to fix things up there for the rest of us." And he added hoarsely in Philip's ear: "Sharp's the word. We 'aven't many minutes!"

Philip made no demur. The captain's strong common sense had suggested the best step that could be taken in the interests of all. Iris, who was nearer yielding now that there was a prospect of being rescued than when death was clamoring at her feet among the trembling remains of the ship, silently permitted Coke and a sailor to strip off a life-belt and tie her and Hozier back to back. It was wonderful, though hidden from her ken in that supreme moment, to see how they devised a double sling in order to distribute the strain. When each knot was securely fastened, Coke vociferated a mighty "Heave away!"

But his powerful voice was drowned by the incessant roar of the breakers; not even the united clamor of every man present, fifteen all told, including the drunken chief officer, could make itself heard above the din. Then Hozier tugged sharply at the rope three times, and it grew taut. Amid a jubilant cry from the others, he and Iris were lifted clear of the deck. At once they were carried fully twenty feet to seaward. As they swung back, not quite so far, and now well above the level of the windlass from which their perilous journey had started, a ready-witted sailor seized a few coils of a thin rope that lay tucked up in the angle of the bulwarks, and flung them across Hozier's arms.

"Take a whip with you, sir!" he yelled, and Philip showed that he understood by gripping the rope between his teeth. It was obvious that the rescuers were working from a point well overhanging the recess into which the Andromeda had driven her bows, and there might still be the utmost difficulty in throwing a rope accurately from the rock to the wreck. As a matter of fact, no less than six previous attempts had been made, and the success of the seventh was due solely to a favorable gust of wind hurtling into the cleft at the very instant it was needed. The sailor's quick thought solved this problem for the future. By tying the small rope to the heavier one, those who remained below could haul it back when some sort of signal code was established. At present, all they could do was to pay out the whip, and take care that it did not interfere with Hozier's ascent. They soon lost sight of him and the girl, for the spray and froth overhead formed an impenetrable canopy, but they reasoned that the distance to be traveled could not be great; otherwise the throwing of a rope would have been a physical impossibility in the first instance.

Once there was a check. They waited anxiously, but there was no sign given by the frail rope that they were to haul in again. Then the upward movement continued.

"Chunk o' rock in the way," announced Coke, glaring round at the survivors as if to challenge contradiction. No one answered. These men were beginning to measure their lives against the life of the wedge of iron and timber kept in position by the crumbling frame of the ship. It was a fast-diminishing scale. The figures painted on the Andromeda's bows represented minutes rather than feet.

Watts was lying crouched on deck, with his arms thrown round the windlass. Looking ever for a fresh incursion of rats, he seemed to be cheered by the fact that his dreaded assailants preferred the interior of the forecastle to the wave-swept deck. He was the only man there who had no fear of death. Suddenly he began to croon a long-forgotten sailor's chanty. Perhaps, in some dim way, a notion of his true predicament had dawned on him, for there was a sinister purport to the verse.

"Now, me lads, sing a stave of the Dead Man's Mass;
Ye'll never sail 'ome again, O.
We're twelve old salts an' the skipper's lass,
Marooned in the Spanish Main, O.
Sing hay——
Sing ho——
A nikker is Davy Jones,
Just one more plug, an' a swig at the jug,
An' up with the skull an' bones."

After a longer and faster haul than had been noticed previously, the rope stopped a second time. Everyone, except Watts, was watching the whip intently. His eyes peered around, wide-open, lusterless. The pounding of the seas, the grating of iron on rock, left him unmoved.

"Wy don't you jine in the chorus, you swabs?" he cried, and forthwith plunged into the second stanza.

"The Alice brig sailed out of the Pool
For the other side of the world, O,
An' our ole man brought 'is gal from school,
With 'er 'air so brown an' curled, O.
Sing hum——
Sing hum——
Of death no man's a dodger,
An' we squared our rig for a yardarm jig
When we sighted the Jolly Roger."

He grew quite uproarious because the lilting tune evoked neither applause nor vocal efforts from the others.

"Lord luv' a duck!" he shouted. "Can't any of ye lend a hand? Cheer O, maties—'ere's a bit more——

The brig was becalmed in a sea like glass,
An' it gev' us all the creeps, O,
Wen the sun went down like a ball o' brass,
An' the pirate rigged 'is sweeps——"

"There she goes!" yelled the sailor in charge of the line; he began to haul in the slack like a madman; Coke's fist fell heavily on the singer's right ear.

"Wen your turn comes, I'll tie the rope round your bloomin' neck!" he growled vindictively, though his eyes continued to search the dark shroud overhead that inclosed them as in a tomb. A dark form loomed downward through the mist. It was Hozier, alone, coming back to them. A frenzied cheer broke from the lips of those overwrought men. They knew what that meant. Somewhere, high above the black rocks and the flying scud, was hope throned in the blessed sunshine. They drew him in cautiously until Coke was able to grasp his hand. They were quick to see that he brought a second rope and a spare whip.

"Two at a time on both ropes," was his inspiriting message. "They're friendly Portuguese up there, but no one must be seen if a boat is sent from the island to find out what has become of the ship. So step lively! Now, Captain, tell 'em off in pairs."

Coke's method was characteristic. He literally fell on the two nearest men and began to truss them. Hozier followed his example, and tied two others back to back. They vanished, and the ropes returned, much more speedily this time. Four, and four again, were drawn up to safety. There were left the captain, Hozier, and the unhappy Watts, who was now crying because the skipper had "set about" him, just for singin' a reel ole wind-jammer song.

"You must take up this swine," said Coke to Hozier, dragging Watts to his feet with scant ceremony. "If I lay me 'ands on 'im I'll be tempted to throttle 'im."

Watts protested vigorously against being tied. He vowed that it was contrary to articles for a chief officer to be treated in such a fashion. He howled most dolorously during his transit through mid-air, but was happily quieted by another sharp rap on the head resulting from his inability to climb over the obstructing rock.

Before quitting the deck, Hozier helped to adjust the remaining rope around the captain's portly person. They were lifted clear of the trembling forecastle almost simultaneously, and in the very nick of time. Already the skeleton of the ship's hull was beginning to slip off into deep water. The deck was several feet lower than at the moment of the vessel's final impact against the rocks. Even before the three reached the ledge from which their rescuers were working, the bridge and funnel were swept away, the foremast fell, the forehold and forecastle were riotously flooded by the sea, and Watts, were he capable of using his eyes, might have seen his deadly enemies, the rats, swarming in hundreds to the tiny platform that still rose above the destroying waves. Soon, even that frail ark was shattered. When keel and garboard stroke plates snapped, all that was left of the Andromeda toppled over, and the cavern she had invaded rang with a fierce note of triumph as the next wave thundered in without hindrance.

It was, indeed, a new and strange world on which Iris looked when able to breathe and see once more. During that terrible ascent she had retained but slight consciousness of her surroundings. She knew that Hozier and herself were drawn close to a bulging rock, that her companion clutched at it with hands and knees, and thus fended her delicate limbs from off its broken surface; she felt herself half carried, half lifted, up into free air and dazzling light; she heard voices in a musical foreign tongue uttering words that had the ring of sympathy. And that was all for a little while. Friendly hands placed her in a warm and sunlit cleft, and she lay there, unable to think or move. By degrees, the numbness of body and mind gave way to clearer impressions. But she took much for granted. For instance, it did not seem an unreasonable thing that the familiar faces of men from the Andromeda should gather near her on an uneven shelf of rock strewn with broken bolders and the litter of sea-birds. She recognized them vaguely, and their presence brought a new confidence. They increased in number; sailor-like, they began to take part instantly in the work of rescue; but she wondered dully why Hozier did not come to her, nor did she understand that he had gone back to that raging inferno beneath until she saw his blood-stained face appear over the lip of the precipice.

Then she screamed wildly: "Thank God! Oh, thank God!" and staggered to her feet in the frantic desire to help in unfastening the ropes that bound him to the insensible Watts. One of the men tried to persuade her to sit down again, but she would not be denied. Her unaccustomed fingers strove vainly against the stiff strands, swollen as they were with wet, and drawn taut by the strain to which they had been subjected. Tears gushed forth at her own helplessness. The pain in her eyes blinded her. She shrank away again. Not until Philip himself spoke did she dare to look at him, to find that he was bending over her, and endeavoring to allay her agitation by repeated assurance of their common well-being.

But her distraught brain was not yet equal to a complexity of thought. Watts was lying close to her feet, and it thrilled her with dread and contempt when Coke bestowed a well-considered kick on his chief officer's prostrate form.

"Oh, how dare you?" she cried, indignant as an offended goddess.

"Sorry, miss," said Coke, scowling as if he were inclined to repeat the assault, though he was not then aware of the more strenuous method adopted by the rock as a sobering agent. "I didn't know you was there. But 'e fair gev' me a turn, 'e did, singin' 'is pot-'ouse crambos w'en we was in the very jors of death, so to speak."

"He must not sing," she announced gravely, "but really you should not kick him."

"Come, Miss Yorke," broke in Hozier, who was choking back a laugh that was nearer hysteria than he dreamed, "our Portuguese friends say we must not remain here an instant longer than is necessary."

"Yes," said a strange voice, "the sea is moderating. At any moment a boat may appear. Follow me, all of you. The road is a rough one, but it is not far."

The speaker was an elderly man, long-haired and bearded, of whose personality the girl caught no other details than the patriarchal beard, a pair of remarkably bright eyes, a long, pointed nose, and a red scar that ran diagonally across a domed forehead. He turned away without further explanation, and began to climb a natural pathway that wound itself up the side of an almost perpendicular wall of rock.

Hozier caught Iris by the arm, and would have assisted her, but she shook herself free. She felt, and conducted herself, like a fractious child.

"I can manage quite well," she said with an odd petulance. "Please look after that unfortunate Mr. Watts. I am not surprised that he should have been frightened by the rats. They terrified me, too. Oh, how awful they were—in the dark—when their eyes shone!"

Her mind had traveled back to the two nights and a day passed in the lazaretto. She sobbed bitterly, and stumbled over a steep ledge. She would have fallen were it not for Philip's help.

"Watts is all right," he soothed her. "Two of the men are seeing to him. And the rats are all gone now. There are none here!"

"Are you sure?"

"Quite sure."

"What became of them?"

"They are all—we left them behind on the ship."

Suddenly she clung to him.

"Don't let them send me back to the ship," she implored.

"No, no. You are safe now."

"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.

"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.

"You can rest here in absolute safety, madame," he said. "Permit me to arrange a seat. Then I shall bring you some wine."

Iris flung off the hand which held her arm so persuasively.

"Please do not attend to me. There are wounded men who need attention far more than I," she said, speaking in English, since it never entered her mind that the Portuguese officer had been addressing her in French.

He was puzzled more by her action than her words, but Hozier, who had followed close behind, explained in sentences built on the Ollendorffian plan that mademoiselle was disturbed, mademoiselle required rest, mademoiselle hardly understood that which had arrived, et voilá tout.

The other man smiled comprehension, though he scanned Hozier with a quick underlook.

"Is monsieur the captain?" he asked.

"No, monsieur the captain comes now. Here he is."

"Mademoiselle, without doubt, is the daughter of monsieur the captain?"

"No," said Hozier, rather curtly, turning to ascertain how Iris had disposed of herself in the interior of the cavern. It was his first experience of a South American dandy's pose towards women, or, to be exact, toward women who are young and pretty, and it seemed to him not the least marvelous event of an hour crammed with marvels that any man should endeavor to begin an active flirtation under such circumstances.

He saw that Iris was seated on a camp stool. Her face was buried in her hands. A wealth of brown hair was tumbled over her neck and shoulders; the constant showers of spray had loosened her tresses, and the unavoidable rigors of the passage from ship to ledge had shaken out every hairpin. The Tam o' Shanter cap she was wearing early in the day had disappeared at some unknown stage of the adventure. Her attitude bespoke a mood of overwhelming dejection. Like the remainder of her companions in misfortune, she was drenched to the skin. That physical drawback, however, was only a minor evil in this almost unpleasantly hot retreat; but Hozier, able now to focus matters in fairly accurate proportion, felt that Iris had not yet plumbed the depths of suffering. Their trials were far from ended when their feet rested on the solid rock. There was every indication that their rescuers were refugees like themselves. The scanty resources visible in the cave, the intense anxiety of the elderly Portuguese to avoid observation from the chief island of the group, the very nature of the apparently inaccessible crag in which he and his associates were hiding—each and all of these things spoke volumes.

Hozier did not attempt to disturb the girl until the dapper officer produced a goatskin, and poured a small quantity of wine into a tin cup. With a curious eagerness, he anticipated the other's obvious intent.

"Pardon me, monsieur," he said, seizing the vessel, and his direct Anglo-Saxon manner quite robbed his French of its politeness. Then his vocabulary broke down, and he added more suavely in English: "I will persuade her to drink a little. She is rather hysterical, you know."

The Portuguese nodded as though he understood. Iris looked up when Hozier brought her the cup. The mere suggestion of something to drink made active the parched agony of mouth and throat, but her wry face when she found that the liquid was wine might have been amusing if the conditions of life were less desperate.

"Is there no water?" she asked plaintively.

The officer, who was following the little by-play with his eyes, realized the meaning of her words.

"We have no water, mademoiselle," he said. Then he glanced at the group of bedraggled sailors. "And very little wine," he added.

"Please drink it," urged Hozier. "You are greatly run down, you know, though you really ought to feel cheerful, since you have escaped with your life."

"I feel quite brave," said Iris simply. "I would never have believed that I could go through—all that," and her childish trick of listening to the booming of the distant breakers told him how vivid was her recollection of the horrors crowded into those few brief minutes.

"Be quick, please," put in the elderly Portuguese with a tinge of impatience. "We have no second cup, and there are wounded men——"

"Give it to them," said Iris, lifting her face again for an instant. "I do not need it. I have told you that once already. I suppose you think I should not be here."

"I am sure our friend did not mean that," said Hozier, looking squarely into those singularly bright eyes. He caught and held them.

"I did not mean that the lady should be left to die if that is the interpretation put on my remark," came the quiet answer. "But it was an act of the utmost folly to bring a delicate girl on such an errand. I cannot imagine what your captain was thinking of when he agreed to it."

"Wot's that, mister?" demanded Coke. Now that his fit of rage had passed, the bulky skipper of the Andromeda was red-faced and imperturbable as usual. The manifold perils he had passed through showed no more lasting effect on him than a shower of sleet on the thick hide of the animal he so closely resembled.

"Are you the captain?" said the other.

"Yes, sir. An' I'd like to 'ear w'y my ship or 'er present trip wasn't fit for enny young leddy, let alone——"

"That is a matter for you to determine. I suppose you know best how to conduct your own business. My only concern is with the outcome of your rashness. Why did you deliberately sacrifice your ship in that manner?"

The speaker's cut-glass style of English left his hearers in no doubt as to what he had said. During the tense silence that reigned for a few seconds even some among the crew pricked their ears, while Hozier and Iris forgot other troubles in their new bewilderment. There were reasons why the drift of the stranger's words should be laid deeply to heart by three people present. Coke, at any rate, found himself nearer a state of pallid nervousness than ever before in the course of a variegated life. It was impossible that he should actually grow pale, but his brick-red features assumed a purple tint, and his fiery little eyes glinted.

"Wot are you a-drivin' at, mister?" he growled at last, after trying vainly to expectorate and compromising the effort in a husky gargle.

"Do you deny, then, that you acted like a madman? Do you say that you did not know quite well the risk you ran in bringing your vessel to the island in broad daylight?"

Then Coke found his breath.

"Risk!" he roared. "Risk in steamin' to an anchorage an' sendin' a boat ashore for water? There seems to be a lot of mad folk loose just now on Fernando Noronha, but I'm not one of 'em, an' that's as much as I can say for enny of you—damme if it ain't."

Evidently the Portuguese was not accustomed to the direct form of conversation in vogue among British master mariners. He bent his piercing gaze on Coke's angry if somewhat flustered countenance, and there was a perceptible stiffening of voice and manner when he said:

"Who are you, then? Who sent you here?"

"I'm Captain James Coke, of the British ship Andromeda, that's 'oo I am, an' I was sent 'ere, or leastways to the River Plate, by David Verity an' Co., of Liverpool."

It must not be forgotten that Coke shared with his employer a certain unclassical freedom in the pronunciation of the ship's name; the long "e" apparently puzzled the other man.

"Andromeeda?" he muttered. "Spell it!"

"My godfather, this is an asylum for sure," grunted Coke, in a spasm of furious mirth. "A-n-d-r-o-m-e-d-a. Now you've got it. Ain't it up to Portygee standard? A-n-d-r-o-m-e-d-a! 'Ow's that for the bloomin' spellin' bee?"

But Coke's humor made no appeal. The staring, brilliant eyes fixed on him did not relax their vigilance, nor did any trace of emotion exhibit itself in that calm voice.

"You are unlucky, Captain Coke, most unlucky," it said. "I regret my natural mistake, which, it seems, was shared by the authorities of Fernando do Noronha. You have blundered into a nest of hornets, and, as a result, you have been badly stung. Let me explain matters. I am Dom Corria Antonio De Sylva, ex-President of the Republic of Brazil. There is, at this moment, a determined movement on foot on the mainland to replace me in power, and, with that object in view, efforts are being made to secure my escape from the convict settlement in which my enemies have imprisoned me. I and two faithful followers are here in hiding. My friend, Capitano Salvador De San Benavides," and he bowed with much dignity toward the uniformed officer, "came here two days ago in a felucca to warn me that a steamer would lie to about a mile south of the island to-night. The steamer's name is Andros-y-Mela—it is rather like the name of your unhappy vessel—so much alike that the Andromeda has been sunk by mistake. That is all."

Coke, listening to this explanation with the virtuous wrath of a knave who discovers that he has been wrongfully suspected, bristled now with indignation.

"Oh, that's all, is it?" he cried sarcastically. "No, sir, it ain't all, nor 'arf, nor quarter. Let me tell you that no crimson pirate on Gawd's earth can blow a British ship off the 'igh seas an' then do the dancin'-master act, with 'is 'and on 'is 'eart, an' say it was just a flamin' mistake. All! says you? Don't you believe it. There's a lot more to come yet, take my tip—a devil of a lot, or I'm the biggest lunatic within a ten-mile circle of w'ere I'm stannin', which is givin' long odds to any other crank in the whole creation."

And Coke was right, though he little guessed then why he was so thoroughly justified in assuming that he and the other survivors of the Andromeda had not yet gone through half, or quarter, or more than a mere curtain-raising prelude to the strange human drama in which they were destined to be the chief actors.

CHAPTER VI

BETWEEN THE BRAZILIAN DEVIL AND THE DEEP ATLANTIC

There was an awkward pause. Coke, rascal though he was, and pot-bellied withal, was no Falstaff. Rather did he suggest the present-day atavism of some robber baron of the Middle Ages, whose hectoring speech bubbled forth from a stout heart. But the ragged ex-President heeded him not. After a moment of placid scrutiny of his enraged countenance by those bright, watchful eyes, Coke might have been non-existent so far as recognition of his outburst was apparent during the sonorous discussion that ensued between Dom Corria Antonio De Sylva and the Señor Capitano Salvador De San Benavides.

The latter, it is true, betrayed excitement. At first he favored Iris with a deprecatingly admiring glance, as one who would say, "Dear lady, accept my profound regret and respectful homage." But that phase quickly passed. His leader was not a man to waste words, and the gallant captain's expressive face soon showed that he had grasped the essential facts. They did not please him. In fact, he was distinctly cowed, almost stunned, by his companion's revelations.

It fell to De Sylva to explain matters to his unexpected guests.

"My friend agrees with me that it is only fair that the exact position should be revealed to you," he said, addressing Coke, though a dignified gesture invited the others to share his confidence.

"It don't take much tellin'," began Coke. De Sylva silenced him with an emphatic hand.

"Please attend. The situation is not so simple as you seem to imagine. The loss of your ship cannot be dealt with here. It raises issues of international law which can only be settled by courts and governments. You know, I suppose, that nothing will be done until a complaint is lodged by a British minister, and that hinges upon the very doubtful fact that you will ever again see your own country."

The ex-President certainly had the knack of expressing himself clearly. Those concluding words rang like a knell. They even called Watts back from the slumber of unconsciousness; the "chief" stirred himself where he lay on the floor of the cavern, and began to quaver.

"——twelve old salts an' the skipper's lass
Marooned in the Spanish Main, O.
Sing hay——"

Coke, taken by surprise, was unable to stop this warbling earlier. But his hand clutched Watts's shoulder, and his venomous whisper of "Shut up, you ijjit!" was so unmistakable that the lyric ceased.

De Sylva seemed to be aware of some peculiarity in the symptoms of the wounded man's recovery, but he continued speaking in the same balanced tone.

"It happens, by idle chance, that my enemies have become yours. The men who destroyed your ship thought they were injuring me. I have just pointed out to Capitano De San Benavides the precise outcome of this attack. Until a few moments ago we shared the delusion that the troops on Fernando de Noronha believed we were now on our way to a Brazilian port. We were mistaken. More than that, we know now that they have obtained news—probably through a traitor to our cause—of the Andros-y-Mela's voyage. They were prepared for her coming. They had made arrangements to receive her—almost at the place decided on by our friends in Brazil. It is more than likely that the Andros-y-Mela is now lying under the guns of some coast fortress, since the presence of troops and cannon on this side of the island is unprecedented."

"I don't see wot all this 'as to do with me," blurted out Coke determinedly.

"No. It would not concern you in the least if you were safe at sea. But, since you are here, it does concern you most gravely. From one point of view, you served my cause well by preparing to lower a boat. You misled my persecutors as to locality, at least. Of course, I saw you, and thought you were mad, but your action did help to conceal from the soldiers the secret of my true hiding-place. I wish to be candid with you. If my friends and I had realized that you were here by accident, we ought to have taken no steps to save you."

"Really!" snarled Coke, eying the unruffled Brazilian much as an Andulusian bull might glare at a picador. A buzz of angry whispering came from the crew. Even Iris flashed a disdainful glance at the man who uttered this atrocious sentiment. De Sylva raised his hand. He permitted himself the luxury of a wintry smile.

"Pray, do not misunderstand me," he said. "I am humane as most others, but it is difficult to decide whether or not mere humanity, setting aside self-interest, would not rather condemn you to the speedy death of the wreck than drag you to the worse fate that awaits you here. And please remember that we did succor you, thus risking observation and a visit by the troops when the sea permits a landing. But that is not the true issue. An hour ago there were four people on this bare rock—four of us who looked for escape to-night. We were supplied with such small necessaries of existence as would enable us to live if our rescuers were delayed for a day, or even two. Now, there will be no rescue. We are—" he looked slowly around—"twenty instead of four; but we have the same quantity of stores, which consist of a half-emptied skin of wine, a bunch of bananas, a few scraps of maize bread, and some strips of dried meat. Do you follow me?"

Coke, who had been holding Watts in a sitting posture by a firm grip on his collar, allowed the limp figure to sprawl headlong again. He wanted to plunge both hands deeply into his trousers pockets, because men of his type associate attitude so closely with thought that the one is apt to become almost dependent on the other. And so, for the moment, the safeguarding of Watts was of no consequence. But Watts had benefited much by the sousing of the spray, while his recovery was expedited by the forcible ejection of the salt water he had swallowed. He raised himself on one hand, and looked about with an inquiring eye. The Brazilian officer's uniform seemed to fascinate him.

"'Ello!" he gurgled. "Run in? Well I'm——"

"Is not that man wounded? I thought I saw him dashed against the rocks," said De Sylva.

"'E ought to be," said Coke, "but 'e's on'y drunk. A skin o' rum, 'arf empty, too, just like your skin o' wine, mister."

"Let him be taken outside and gagged if he resists."

There was an uneasy movement among the men. Their common impulse was to obey. Coke spread his feet a little apart.

"Leave 'im alone. 'E'll do no 'arm now," he said.

"I cannot be interrupted," cried De Sylva, whose iron self-restraint seemed to be yielding before British truculence.

"I'll keep 'im quiet but I can't 'ave 'im roasted afore 'is time, an' that's wot's 'ul 'appen if you tied him up in that gulley."

"Thanke'ee, skipper. You allus were a reel pal," murmured Watts.

Coke bent over him.

"If your tongue don't stop waggin' it'll soon be stickin' out between yer teeth," he hissed. "This ain't no fancy lock-up in the East Injia Dock Road, Arthur, me boy. They won't bring you a pint of cocoa 'ere, an' ax if you're comfortable. You 'aven't long to live accordin' to all accounts, so just close your mouth an' open your ears, an' mebbe you'll know w'y."

De Sylva regained his self-possession with a rapidity that was significant. He had not climbed to the presidential chair of the Republic from a clerkship in the London Embassy of the Empire without acquiring the habit of estimating his fellow men speedily and accurately. Here was one who might be led, but would never permit himself to be driven. Moreover, this dethroned ruler was by way of being a philosopher.

"I hate drunkards," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "You cannot trust them. If I had been surrounded by trustworthy men, I should not——"

He broke off. There was a sound of hurrying footsteps on the steep pathway. A figure, clad in rags that surpassed even De Sylva's, appeared in the entrance. A brief colloquy took place. De Sylva's eager questions were answered in monosyllables, or the nearest approach thereto.

"Marcel tells me that one of your boats is drifting away with a man lying in the bottom," came the uneasy explanation.

Coke's face showed a degree of surprise, which, in his case, was almost invariably akin to disbelief, but an exclamation from Hozier drew all eyes.

"Good Lord!" he cried, "that must be the lifeboat I was trying to clear when the ship struck. Macfarlane was helping me, but he was hit by a bullet and dropped across the thwarts. I thought he was dead!"

"Dead or alive, he is better off than we," said De Sylva. He questioned Marcel again briefly. "There can be no doubt that the man in the boat cast off the lashings when he found that the ship was sinking," he continued in English. "Marcel saw him doing that, and wondered why he was alone. At any rate, if he is carried beyond the reef, he has a fighting chance. We have none."

"Why not? Are these men on the island so deaf to human sympathies that they would murder all of us in cold blood?"

The girl's sweet, low-pitched voice sounded inexpressibly sad in that vaulted place. Even De Sylva's studied control gave way before its music. He uttered some anguished appeal to the deity in his own tongue, and flung out his hands impulsively.

"What would you have me say?" he cried, and his eyes blazed, while the scar on his forehead darkened with the gust of passion that swept over his strong features. "I might lie to you, and try to persuade you that we can exist here without food or water, whereas to-morrow, or next day at the utmost, will see most of us dead. But in a few hours you will realize what it means to be kept on this bare rock under a tropical sun. You can do one thing. Your party greatly outnumbers mine. Climb to the top-most pinnacle and signal to the island. You will soon be seen."

He laughed with a savage irony that was not good to hear, but Coke caught at the suggestion.

"Even that is better'n tearin' one another like mad dogs," he growled. "I know wot's comin'. I've seen it wonst."

Hozier made for the exit, where Marcel stood, irresolute, apparently waiting for orders.

"Where are you going?" demanded De Sylva.

"To see what is becoming of the lifeboat."

"Better not. You cannot help your friend, and the instant it becomes known to the troops that there is a living soul on the Grand-père rock they will come in a steam launch and shoot everyone at sight."

"Will that be the answer to our signal?"

It was Iris who asked the question, and the Brazilian's voice softened again.

"Yes," he said.

"Why, then, do you advise us to seek our own destruction?"

He bowed. His manner was almost humble.

"It is the easier way," he murmured.

"Is there no other?"

"None—unless we attack two hundred soldiers with sticks, and stones, and three revolvers, and a sword."

Hozier came back. He had merely stepped a pace or two into the sunlight. Through the northerly dip of the gulley he had seen the ship's boat whirled past an islet by the fierce current. Macfarlane was not visible. Perhaps that was better so. At any rate, the sight of the small craft vanishing behind one of the island barriers brought home with telling force the predicament of those who remained. Now that the sheer frenzy of the wreck had relaxed, Philip's head was like to split with the throbbing anguish of the blow he had received. But his mind was clearer. De Sylva's words, amplifying his own vague recollection of the scene on board the Andromeda, enabled him to construct a picture of events as they were. And his blood boiled when he thought of Iris, snatched many times from death, only to face it once more in the ravening form of starvation and thirst.

"Attack!" he said hoarsely. "How is that possible? A deep and wide channel separates us from the main island."

The Brazilian, who seemed to have argued himself into a state of stoic despair, gave a startling answer.

"We have a boat, a sort of boat," he said quietly.

"How many will it hold?"

"Three, in a smooth sea, and with skilled handling. It nearly overturned when I and two others crossed from the island, a distance of three hundred yards."

"But we have ropes, clothes, perhaps some few pieces of wreckage. Can nothing be done to repair it?"

"Meaning that we draw lots to see who shall endeavor to escape to-night?"

"The men might even do that."

"Ah, yes—the men, of course. I think it hopeless. But, try it! Yes, certainly, try it!"

A pause, more eloquent than the most impassioned speech, showed how this frail straw, eddying in the vortex of their fate, might yet be clutched at. San Benavides, trying vainly to guess what was being said, blurted forth an anxious inquiry. His compatriot explained briefly. Somehow, the measured cadence of their talk had a less reliable sound than the vigorous Anglo-Saxon. They were both brave men. They had not scrupled to risk their lives in an enterprise where success beckoned even doubtingly. But they were lacking when all that remained to be settled was how best to die; in such an hour the men of an English speaking race will ever choose a fighting death.

This time, it was a woman who decided.

Iris rose to her feet. She brushed back the strands of damp hair from her face, and with deft hands made a rough-and-ready coil of her abundant tresses.

"Are you planning to send me with two others adrift in a boat, while seventeen men are left here?" she asked.

The Brazilian ceased speaking. There was another uneasy pause. Hozier felt that the question was addressed to him, but he was tongue-tied, almost shame-faced. Coke, however, did not shirk the task of enlightening her.

"Something like that," he said. "We can't let you cut in with the rest of us, missy. That wouldn't be reasonable. But it's best to fix the business fair an' square. We ain't agoin' to try any other way, not so long as I'm skipper," and he looked with brutal frankness at De Sylva and the anxious but uncomprehending San Benavides.

The ex-President knew what he meant; even in his despondency he resented the implied slur on his good faith.

"You cannot examine the boat until darkness sets in," he said. "Then you will find out how frail a foundation you are building on. It is absolutely ridiculous to assume that she can be made seaworthy. Her occupants would be drowned before they were clear of the islands."

"In any case, I refuse to go," said Iris.

De Sylva smiled gloomily.

"You are courageous, senhora, and, in some respects, you are wise," he said. "Yet … I must admit it … I would urge you to select the boat—in preference …"

Marcel, the Brazilian who had come to tell them of the drifting life-boat, turned away from the mouth of the cavern, and scrambled down the ravine.

"Wot's 'e after?" demanded Coke, suddenly suspicious.

"He and Domingo are keeping a lookout," said De Sylva. "If the soldiers intend to visit us we should at least be warned. The boat is hidden among the rocks on the landward side," he added, not without a touch of scorn.

"That man has taught us our own duty," cried Iris. "The boat that brought these men to this rock can bring nineteen men and a woman to Fernando Noronha. We must land there to-night. With those to guide us who know the coast, surely that should be possible. We have a right to struggle for our lives. We, of the Andromeda, at least, have done no wrong to the cruel wretches who sought to kill us without mercy to-day. Why should we not endeavor to defend ourselves? There is food there, and guns in plenty. Let us take them. Above all, let us not dream of any such useless device as this proposal to send three to drown somewhere in the sea and leave seventeen to perish miserably here. We are in God's hands. Let us trust to Him, but while doing that fully and fearlessly, we must seek life, not death."

"Bully for you, miss!" roared a sailor, and a growl of admiration rang through the cave. Instantly a hubbub of talk showed how intent the crew had been on the previous discussion, but Coke shouted them into silence.

"Oo axed wot you think, you swabs?" he bellowed. "Stow your lip! Sink me, if you don't all do as you're bid, an' keep still tongues in your 'eds, I'll want to know w'y—P.D.Q."

A big, blond Norwegian, Hans Olsen by name, strode forward. Unlike the usual self-contained Norseman, he was reputed a "sea-lawyer" in the forecastle.

"We haf somedings ter zay for our lifes, yez," he protested. Coke bent and butted him violently in the stomach with his head. The man crashed against the rocky wall, and sat dazed where he had fallen.

"You've got to obey orders—savvy?" growled Coke.

"Yez," gasped Olsen, evidently fearing a further assault.

The incident ended. Its outstanding feature was the amazing activity displayed by the burly skipper, who had rammed his man before the big fellow could lift a finger. It might be expected that Iris would show some sign of dismay, owing to this unlooked-for violence. But she was now beyond the reach of merely feminine emotions. She had protested against the kicking of Watts because it seemed to lack motive, because Watts was helpless, and because she herself was half-delirious at the time. Olsen's attitude, on the other hand, hinted at mutiny, and mutiny must be repressed at any cost.

De Sylva's incisive accents helped to bridge a moment fraught with possibilities, for it would be idle to assume that this polyglot gathering was composed of Bayards. Self-preservation is apt to prove stronger than chivalry under such circumstances. Let it be assumed that three among the twenty could escape that night, and it was horribly true that the field of selection might be narrowed by a wild-beast struggle long before the sun went down.

"The young lady has at least given us a project," he said. "It is a desperate one, Heaven knows! It offers a fantastic chance, and I can see no other, but—what can we do without arms?"

"Use our heads," put in Hozier. He had not the slightest intention of making a light-hearted joke at that crisis in their affairs, but he happened to look at Coke, and an involuntary smile gleamed through the crust of clotted blood and perspiration that gave his good-looking face a most sinister aspect. The Irishman cackled with laughter.

"Begob, that's wan for the skipper," he crowed; then some of the others grinned, and the Andromeda's little company stood four-square again to the winds of adversity. Having blundered into prominence, the second mate was quick to see that he must hammer home the facts, though in more serious vein.

"Bring us to the island, Senhor De Sylva," he said, "and we will make a fight of it. In any case, even if we fail, they will not deliberately kill a woman. There must be other women there who will intervene in behalf of one of their own sex. But we may succeed. It is improbable that the whole of the troops will be gathered in one spot. Why should we not take some small detachment by surprise and secure their weapons? If we can land unobserved, we ought to be able to drop on them apparently from the skies. I take it that the presence here of Captain San Benavides is unknown, and the leadership of an officer in the enemy's own uniform should turn the scale in our favor. Have you no followers among the troops or islanders? Suppose we make good our first attack, and seize a strong position—isn't it probable we may receive assistance from your partisans?"

"Perhaps—among the convicts," was De Sylva's grim reply.

"No officials, or soldiers?"

"Not one. They are chosen for this service on account of their animosity against the former Government. How else could you account for their treatment of unarmed men on a ship crippled by their first shell?"

"You spoke of a steam launch. Where is that kept?"

"At a wharf under the walls of the citadel which commands the town and anchorage."

"Assuming we have a stroke of luck and rush some outpost, would it be possible to cross the island before dawn and board the launch or some other craft in which we can put to sea?"

"There is only the launch, and some small fishing catamarans. No other boats are allowed to exist on the island, in order to prevent the escape of convicts. The boat we possess is really a badly-constructed catamaran, without a sail, and minus the out-rigger which alone renders it safe for the shortest voyage."

"Wy didn't you say that sooner, mister?" put in Coke. "If some of these jokers knew wot sort of craft it was, mebbe it wouldn't 'ave needed a shove in the stommick to bring Hans Olsen to heel."

"I am sorry," said De Sylva. "You see, I realized the utter folly of trying to escape in that fashion."

The two men looked each other squarely in the eye. The ex-President of a great republic and the master of a worn-out tramp steamer were both born leaders of men. Whatsoever prospect of a cabal existed previously, it was scotched now, beyond doubt. Henceforth, no matter what ills threatened, surely the little army mustered on the Grand-père rock would stand or fall together!

An unerring token of unity was forthcoming at once.

"Please, miss, an' gents all, may we smoke?" pleaded a voice.

Iris was for an immediate permission, but De Sylva shook his head.

"Not until the tide falls," he said. "There is a very real fear of a visit from the launch. It has passed this spot four times during the past two days—ever since my absence was discovered, in fact. The soldiers have searched every outlying island, but they have avoided Grand-père because it is believed that a landing is highly dangerous if not quite impracticable. My friend Marcel, a fisherman, discovered by accident the only safe means of reaching the path which winds round the island. Happily, the wretch who betrayed the mission of the Andros-y-Mela did not know the secret of my refuge. And I see now that the Governor must be convinced that I am still hiding among the cliffs, or your vessel would not have appeared off South Point this morning. No, there must be no smoking as yet. In this clear air the slightest cloud might be seen rising above the rocks from without."

Marcel reappeared at the entrance. With him was another man, whom Hozier remembered seeing when he was hauled up from the ship with Iris.

"Ah, I was not mistaken," went on De Sylva. "Here comes news of the launch! They have signaled for it across the island."

Marcel entered the cave with an expressive gesture, for long habit had almost robbed him of his native vivacity. His companion, Domingo, climbed the opposite wall of the ravine and stretched himself at full length in a niche where there was room for a man to lie. Some tufts of rough grass grew there in sufficient density to conceal his head while he peered between the stalks. They could see him quite plainly, but no one wanted to speak. Though the unceasing wash of a heavy swell against the rocks would have drowned the noise had they shouted in unison, there was no need to tell anyone present that a very real and dangerous crisis had arrived. The slow change in the direction of Domingo's gaze showed the approach and passing of the hostile vessel. It was evident that a long halt was made in the channel close to the wreck, of which some fragments remained above water. Still, curiously enough, it was impossible for those on board the launch to read the ship's name, since the word "Andromeda," twice embossed on the sharp cut-water, was hidden by the jutting rocks on both sides of the cleft.

But it was not the fear of instant death following on the discovery that the Grand-père islet was inhabited that kept tongues mute and ears on the alert during a quarter of an hour that seemed to be protracted to a quarter of a day. At present they were shut off from hostile bullets by the walls of a fortress stronger than any that could be built by men's hands. The greater danger was that the enemy's suspicions might be aroused. Let those who held Fernando Noronha with the armed forces of Brazil once come to regard the isolated rock in mid channel as providing even a possible refuge for the ex-President and his friends, and it would mean the complete overthrow of the slender chance of saving their lives that still offered itself.

So they waited in silence, watching the rigid figure of the prostrate Brazilian, just as those among them who were saved from the Andromeda had watched the arch of spray and spindrift from the slowly sinking forecastle.

At last Domingo turned his head slightly, and gave them a reassuring little nod. He said something, which De Sylva translated.

"They have a photograph of the wreck," he said, "and are now steaming through the northerly channel to the anchorage on the west side of the island. Most fortunately, they do not seem to be aware of your drifting boat."

Then he added, with a courtliness that was so incongruous with his unkempt appearance and patched and tattered garments;—"If the Senhora permits, the men may smoke now. In another hour the channel will not be navigable. We have a hot and tiring day before us, and I advise sleep for those to whom it is vouchsafed. If the weather continues to improve, the next tide will bring us a smooth sea. Given that, and a dark night—well—we may make history. Who knows?"

CHAPTER VII

CROSS PURPOSES

Though Iris gave such warlike counsel, it would be doing her a grave injustice to assume that her gentle disposition was changed because of the day's sufferings. The erstwhile light-hearted schoolgirl and youthful mistress of her uncle's house had been subjected to dynamic influences. The ordeal through which she had passed, unscathed bodily but seared in spirit, had left her strung to a tense pitch. Relaxation had not come—as yet. She only knew that she resented to the uttermost the Brazilians' malevolent fury. Hers was a nature that could not endure unfairness. It was unfair of David Verity to seek to mend his shattered fortunes by forcing her into a hateful marriage; unfair of both Verity and Coke to found their new venture on a great fraud; and monstrously unfair of these island factionaries to vent their spite on an innocent ship. So, for the hour, she was inspired. It is the high-souled enthusiast who devotes life itself to a cause; those who practice oppression have ever most to beware of in the man or woman whose conscience will not condone a wrong.

Of course, in this present clash of emotions, Iris little understood what her advice really meant. She was appealing to heaven rather than to the force of arms. To one of her temperament, it seemed incredible that a number of inoffensive strangers should be slaughtered because a South American republic could not agree in choosing a president. Such a thing was unheard of in her previous experience, built on no more solid foundation than the humdrum existence of Brussels and Bootle. And the inhabitants of neither Brussels nor Bootle settle their political differences by shooting casual visitors at sight.

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.

Hozier, who had aroused her by touching her shoulder, fancied he saw the gleam of merriment in her face.

"What is amusing you?" he asked.

She told him, though she spoke with difficulty.

"It is not quite so bad as that," he said. "If there is no hitch in our plans, we should be on the island within five hours. We have everything thought out as far as may be in view of the unknown. At any rate, Miss Yorke, if we succeed in getting you safely ashore, you personally will have but slight cause for further anxiety. The proposal is that Marcel shall take you at once to the hut of an old convict whom he can trust——"

"A convict!" she gasped. The word was ominous, and she was hardly awake.

"The population of Fernando Noronha is almost entirely made of convicts and soldiers," he explained.

"But am I to be left there alone?"

"What else is there to be done? You cannot join in the attack on a fort—and that offers our only chance, it would seem. Granted an effective surprise, we may carry it. Then your guardian will bring you to us."

"What if you fail?"

"We must not fail," he said quietly.

"Please do not hide the alternative from me," she pleaded. "I have endured so much——"

"Well, don't you see, this man—who, by the way, is married, and has a daughter aged fourteen—will, if necessary, reveal your presence to the Governor. By that time, say, in a day or two, the excitement will have died down, the news of your escape will be cabled to England, you will be sent to the coast on the Government steamer, and you can travel home by the next mail."

"That sounds very simple—and European," she said, and the pathetic sarcasm was not lost on him.

"It is reasonable enough. Unfortunately for us, all the bother centers round Senhor De Sylva, to whom we owe our lives. He is outside at the moment, showing our skipper the lay of the land before the light fails, so I am free to speak plainly. When he is dead there will be no further trouble, till the next revolution. But why endeavor to look ahead when seeing is impossible? At present, what really presses is the necessity that you should eat and drink. We have shared out the whole of the available food. Here is your portion. We deemed it best to give the men one square meal. They know now that they must earn the next one."

With each instant her perceptive powers were quickening. She was aware that he had deliberately avoided the main issue. De Sylva's probable death implied a good deal, but it was the supreme test of her courage that she refrained from useless questioning. Yet she thrust aside the two bananas and supply of dried meat and crusts that Hozier placed before her.

"I cannot eat," she murmured, striving to control her voice.

"But you must. It is imperative. You would not wish to break down at the very moment your best energies will be in demand. Our lives, as well as your own, may depend on your strength. Come, Miss Yorke, no woman could have been pluckier than you. Don't fail us now."

The gloom was deepening momentarily. Hozier's back was turned to the entrance, and, in the ever-growing darkness, she was unable to see his face; but his anxious protest in no wise deceived her; she even smiled again at the ruse that attempted to saddle her with some measure of responsibility for the success or failure of the raid.

"If I promise to eat—and drink this sour wine—will you be candid?" she asked.

"Well——"

"One must bargain. There is no other way.… Promise!"

"I suppose you mean that I must agree to please you by wild guessing about events that may turn out quite differently."

"Candid, I said."

"Yes—that most certainly."

"In the first place, may we go into the fresh air? I must have slept many hours. What time is it?"

"About seven o'clock."

"Seven! Have I been lying here since goodness knows what time this morning?"

"You were thoroughly used up," he said, and he added, with a laugh: "If it is any consolation, I may tell you that, to the best of my belief, you never moved nor uttered a sound."

"For instance, I didn't snore," she cried, rising to her feet, and thanking the kindly night that veiled her untidiness.

"I—don't—think so."

"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.

"I hope you will all be spared to ship on a new Andromeda," she said. No sooner had the words left her lips than the thought came unbidden: "If my uncle and Captain Coke wished the ship to be thrown away, nothing could have better suited their purposes than this tragic error."

For the instant, the unforeseen outcome of that Sunday afternoon's plotting in the peaceful garden of Linden House held her imagination. She recalled each syllable of it, and there throbbed in her brain the hitherto undreamed of possibility that Coke had brought the Andromeda to Fernando Noronha in pursuance of his thievish project.

At once she whispered to Hozier:

"Is there anyone on the path below?"

"No," he said. "The Brazilians are with Coke at the top of the gully."

"Is it safe for us to go the other way."

"I think so. But you must be careful not to slip."

She caught his arm, little knowing the thrill her clasp sent through his frame. This simple gesture of her confidence was bitter-sweet. He resolutely closed his eyes to the knowledge that this might be their last talk.

"I shall not fall," she said. "I am a good mountaineer. I learnt the trick of it in Cumberland. Come with me. There is a pleasant breeze blowing from the sea."

They climbed down. Neither spoke until they stood on the curving ledge that had proved their salvation. Though the tide was rising again, the heavy sea was gone. The current still created some spume and noise as it swept past the reef, but its anger had vanished with the gale. Beyond the fringe of broken water a slight swell only served to mirror in countless facets the tender light of a perfect sunset. The eastern horizon was a broad line of silver. Nearer, the shadow of the island created bands of purest green and ultramarine.

They reached the place from which the Brazilians had thrown the rope. They could hear the quiet plash of the water in the cleft. Piled against a low-lying rock were the funnel and other debris of the Andromeda. The black hull was plainly visible beneath the surface. Even while they were looking at the wreck a huge fish curled his ten feet of length with stealthy grace from out some dim recess; it might be, perhaps, from out the crushed shell of the chart-room.

Hozier glanced at his companion. He half expected her to shrink back appalled at this sinister sight; it was her destiny to surprise him not once but many times during that amazing period.

"Is that a shark?" she asked quietly.

"Yes.… You stipulated for candor, you know."

"I had no notion that such a monster could move with so great elegance. I think I would rather be eaten by a shark than lie at the bottom of the sea like our poor vessel there."

"Even a shark would appreciate the compliment," he said.

Her eyes continued to watch the terrifying apparition until it prowled into hidden depths again.

"I am not sorry I have seen it," she murmured. "It helps one to understand. We are glib concerning the laws of nature, and seem to regard them much as the printed regulations stuck on hackney carriages, whatsoever they may be. Yet, how cruelly just they are! I suppose that the finding of the ship's booty by that huge creature has given a new span of life to some weaker fish."

Hozier did not know whether or not she had realized the shark's real quest. Her next words enlightened him.

"If we follow the others, will the soldiers throw our dead bodies into the sea?" she asked.

"I want you to believe that you will be absolutely safe if we escape being discovered during the crossing of the narrow strip of water that separates this rock from the island," he hastened to say. "That is your only risk, and it is a light one. Senhor De Sylva is sure that the troops will not keep the keenest lookout to-night. They are still convinced that the insurgent steamer is sunk. Our chief danger will date from to-morrow's dawn. Marcel reports that a systematic search of the island was begun to-day. It will be continued to-morrow, but on new lines, because, by that time, they will have learnt the truth. The Andros-y-Mela is not lying in pieces at the foot of this rock, the President has not escaped, and every practicable inch of Fernando Noronha and the adjacent islands will be scoured in the hope of finding him. At first sight, that looks like being in our favor; in reality, it means the end if we are discovered here. The soldiers will shoot first and inquire afterwards. I have not the slightest doubt but that plenty of evidence will be forthcoming that we were a set of desperadoes who had unlawfully interfered in the affairs of a foreign state."

She appeared to be weighing this argument, sitting in judgment on De Sylva and his theories.

"I want to do that which is for the good of all," she said at length. "Do you ask me to go to this convict's house, Mr. Hozier?"

"I urge it on you with the utmost conviction. With you off our hands, we can act freely. We must deliver an attack to-night. God in Heaven, you cannot think that we would expose you to the perils of a desperate fight!"

His sudden outburst was unexpected, even by himself. He trembled in an agony of passion. Iris placed a timid hand on his shoulder.

"I will go," she whispered. "Please do not be distressed on my account. I will go. I brought you here, not to discuss my own fate, but yours. These Brazilians will not scruple to make use of you, and then throw you aside if it suits their purpose. That man, De Sylva, does not care how he attains power, and I know that he and the officer entertain some plan which they have not revealed to you."

"You … know."

"Yes. I understand a little of their language. I have a mere glimpse of its sense, as one sees a landscape through a mist. When De Sylva told you to-day that San Benavides was with you heart and soul, he was lying. There were things said about a ship, and midnight, and a boat. I watched the officer's face. He was wholly opposed to the landing to-night. My mind is not so vague now. I think I can grasp his meaning. Was it not to-night that the Andros-y-Mela was to appear?"

"Yes."

"Well, may they not hope secretly that she will keep to the fixed hour? Once you and I and the others are on the island, and an alarm is given, the Brazilians could slip away unnoticed. Yes, that is it. I do not trust them any more than I trusted Captain Coke. Don't you realize that he brought the Andromeda to this place in order to wreck her more easily? It was to supply a pretext for the visit that he made undrinkable the water in the ship's tanks."

That appealing hand still rested on Philip's shoulder. Its touch affected him profoundly. With a lightning dart of memory his thoughts went back to the moment when she lay, inert and half-fainting, in his arms on the bridge, after he had taken her from the lazarette. But he controlled his voice sufficiently to say:

"You may be right; indeed, I know you are right, so far as Coke is concerned. When I went aft to find out if one of the boats could not be cleared, I noticed that a steering-gear box had been prised open again. I had time for only a second's glance, but I was sure the damage had not been done by a bullet. So the Andromeda was doomed to be lost, no matter what happened. By ——, forgive me, Miss Yorke, but this kind of thing makes one savage."

"Perhaps it is matterless now. Coke will stand by the rest of us in our struggle for life, at any rate. But the Brazilians——"

"Have no fear of them. I, too, have watched San Benavides. I don't like the fellow, and wouldn't place an ounce of faith in him, but De Sylva has brains, and he knows well enough that no ship from Brazil will come to Fernando Noronha in his behalf. In fact, he dreads a visit by a Government vessel, in which event our frail chance of seizing that launch——"

She felt, rather than saw, that he had suddenly grown rigid. His right arm flew out and drew her to him.

"Sh-s-s-h!" he breathed, and pulled her behind a rock. Her woman's heart yielded to dread of the unseen. It pulsed violently, and she was tempted to scream. Despite his warning, she must at least have whispered a question, but her ears caught a sound to which they were now well accustomed. The light chug-chug of an engine and the flapping of a propeller came up to them from the sea. The steam launch was approaching. Perhaps they had been seen already! As if to emphasize this new peril, there was an interval of silence. Steam had been shut off. Philip touched the girl's lips lightly with a finger. Then he lay flat on the ledge and began to creep forward. It was impossible that he should run and warn the others, but it was essential, above all else, that he should ascertain what the men on the launch were doing, and the extent of their knowledge.

He found a tuft of the grass that clung to a crevice where its roots drew hardy sustenance from the crumbling rock; he ventured to thrust his head through this screen, following Domingo's example some hours earlier. Almost directly beneath, his eager glance found the little vessel. She was floating past with the current. He peered down on to her deck as if from the top of a mast. A few cigarette-smoking officers were grouped in her bows. Apparently, they were more interested in the remains of the Andromeda than in the natural fortress overhead. Clustered round the hatch were some twenty soldiers, also smoking.

One of the officers pointed to the ledge; he was excited and emphatic. Philip could not imagine that they had detected him, but he feared lest Iris, in her agitation, might have moved. In that clear, calm air, not even the growing dusk would hide the flutter of a skirt or the altered position of a white face. A man in charge of the wheel replied to the officer with a laugh. The first speaker turned, glanced at the Brothers reef, behind which the Andromeda's boat had vanished that morning, and nodded dubiously. The man at the wheel growled an order, and the engine started again. Though Hozier knew not what was said, the significance of this pantomime was not lost on him. The local pilot was afraid of these treacherous waters in the dark, but next day Frade de Francez (which is the islanders' name for the Grand-père Rock) would surely be explored if a landing could be made. At a guess, the silent watcher took it that the steersman had declined to make a circuit of the rock until the light was good.

Away bustled the launch, but Hozier did not move until there was no risk of his figure being silhouetted against the sky. Even then, he wormed his way backward with slow caution. Iris was crouched where he had left her, wide-eyed, motionless.

"Good job we came here," he said. "It is evident they mean to maintain a patrol until there is news of De Sylva one way or the other. It will be interesting now to hear what the gallant San Benavides says. If any ship comes to Fernando Noronha to-night she will be seen from the island long before any signal is visible at this point."

"Do you think the others saw the launch?" she asked.

"No—not unless some of the men strayed down the gully, which they were told not to do. The breakers would drown the noise of the engines and screw."

There was a slight pause.

"Will you tell them?" she went on.

"Why not?"

This time the pause was more eloquent than words. Quite unconsciously, Iris replied to her own question.

"Of course, as you said a little while ago, we owe our lives to Dom Corria De Sylva," she murmured, as if she were reasoning with herself.

By chance, probably because Hozier stooped to help her to her feet, his arm rested lightly across her shoulders.

"I will not pretend to misunderstand you," he said. "If the Brazilians do not mean to play the game, it would be a just punishment to let them rush on their own doom. But De Sylva may not agree with this fop of an officer, and, in any event, we must go straight with him until he shows his teeth."

"You seem to dislike Captain San Benavides," she said inconsequently.

"I regard him as a brainless ass," he exclaimed.

"Somehow, that sounds like a description of a dead donkey, which one never sees."

"Mademoiselle!" came a voice from the lip of the ravine.

"One can hear him, though," laughed Hozier, with a warning pressure that suspiciously resembled a hug. These two were children, in some respects, quicker to jest than to grieve, better fitted for mirth than tragedy.

They moved out from their niche, and San Benavides blustered into vehement French.

"We are going to the landing-place before it is too dark," he muttered angrily. "We must not show a light; in a few minutes the path will be most dangerous. Please make haste, mademoiselle. We did not know where you had gone."

"The men knew," suggested Hozier in the girl's ear. He dared not trust either his temper or his vocabulary.

"We shall lose no time, now, monsieur," said Iris, hurrying on.

"This way then. No, we do not pass the cave. We go right round the cliff. Permit me, mademoiselle. I am acquainted with each step."

He took her hand. Philip followed. He was young enough to long for an opportunity to tell San Benavides that he was a puppy, a mongrel puppy. Just then he would have given a gun-metal case, filled with cigars—the only treasure he possessed—for a Portuguese dictionary.

After a really difficult and hazardous descent, they found the others awaiting them in a rock-shrouded cove. The barest standing-room was afforded by a patch of shingle and detritus. Alongside a flat stone lay three broad planks tied together with cowhide. The center plank was turned up at one end. This was the catamaran, which de Sylva had dignified by the name of boat. The primitive craft rested in a black pool in which the stars trembled, though they were hardly visible as yet in the brighter sky. The water murmured in response to the movement of the tide, but to the unaided eye there was no vestige of a passage through the volcanic barrier that reared itself on every hand.

"Were 'ave you bin?" growled Coke. "We've lost a good ten minnits. You ought to 'ave known, Hozier, that it's darkest just after sunset."

"We could not have started sooner, sir."

"W'y not? We were kep' waitin' up there, searchin' for you."

"That was our best slice of luck to-day. Had any of you appeared on the ledge you would have been seen from the launch."

"Wot launch?"

"The launch that visited us this morning. Ten minutes ago she was standing by at the foot of the rock."

Philip spoke slowly and clearly. He meant his news to strike home. As he anticipated, De Sylva broke in.

"You saw it?" he asked, and his deep voice vibrated with dismay.

"Yes. I even made out, by actions rather than words, that the darkness alone prevented the soldiers from coming here to-night. The skipper would not risk it."

De Sylva said something under his breath. He spoke rapidly to San Benavides, and the latter seemed to be cowed, for his reply was brief. Then the ex-President reverted to English.

"I have decided to send Marcel and Domingo ashore first," he said. "They will select the safest place for a landing. Marcel will bring back the catamaran, and take off Mr. Hozier and the young lady. Captain Coke and I will follow, and the others in such order as Senhor Benavides thinks fit. The catamaran will only hold three with safety, but Marcel believes he can find another for Domingo. Remember, all of you, silence is essential. If there is an accident, some of us may be called on to drown without a cry. We must be ready to do it for the sake of those who are left. Are we all agreed?"

A hum of voices answered him. De Sylva was, at least, a born leader.

CHAPTER VIII

THE RIGOR OF THE GAME

In obedience to their leader's order, Marcel, the taciturn, and Domingo, from whose lips the Britons had scarce heard a syllable, squatted on the catamaran. Marcel wielded a short paddle, and an almost imperceptible dip of its broad blade sent the strangely-built craft across the pool. Once in the shadow, it disappeared completely. There was no visible outlet. The rocks thrust their stark ridge against the sky in a seemingly impassable barrier. Some of the men stared at the jagged crests as though they half expected to see the Brazilians making a portage, just as travelers in the Canadian northwest haul canoes up a river obstructed by rapids.

"Well, that gives me the go-by," growled Coke, whose alert ear caught no sound save the rippling of the water. "I say, mister, 'ow is it done?" he went on.

"It is a simple thing when you know the secret," said De Sylva. "Have you passed Fernando Noronha before, Captain?"

"Many a time."

"Have you seen the curious natural canal which you sailors call the Hole in the Wall?"

"Yes, it's near the s'uth'ard end."

"Well, the sea has worn away a layer of soft rock that existed there. In the course of centuries a channel has been cut right across the two hundred yards of land. Owing to the same cause the summer rains have excavated a ravine through the crater up above, and a similar passage exists here, only it happens to run parallel to the line of the cliff. It extends a good deal beyond its apparent outlet, and is defended by a dangerous reef. Marcel once landed on a rock during a very calm day, and saw the opening. He investigated it, luckily for me—luckily, in fact, for all of us."

Watts interrupted De Sylva's smooth periods by a startled ejaculation, and Coke turned on him fiercely.

"Wot's up now?" he demanded. "Ain't you sober yet?"

"Some dam thing jumped on me," explained Watts.

"Probably a crab," said De Sylva. "There are jumping crabs all around here. It will not hurt you. It is quite a small creature."

"Oh, if it's on'y a crab," muttered Watts, "sorry I gev' tongue, skipper. I thought it was a rat, an' I can't abide 'em."

"Then you must learn to endure them while you are in Fernando do Noronha itself," went on the Brazilian. "The island absolutely swarms with rats; some of the larger varieties are rather dangerous."

"Sufferin' Moses!" groaned Watts. "It'll be the death o' me."

"Wot color are they?" asked Coke. De Sylva's reply was given in a tone of surprise. Certainly these hardy mariners had selected an unusual topic for discussion at a critical moment.

"The common dark gray," he said.

"That's all right, then," sneered Coke. "Watts don't mind 'em gray. They're old messmates of his. It's w'en they're pink or green that he fights shy of 'em."

"I hate rats of any sort——" began Watts hotly, spurred to anger by an audible snigger among the men, but De Sylva stopped his protest peremptorily. It was idiotic, this bantering when the next half hour might be their last.

"You must learn to guard your tongue," he said with harsh distinctness. "We cannot have our plans marred by a fool's outcry."

Nevertheless, the chief officer of the Andromeda was far from being a fool. He had cut an inglorious figure during the wreck, but he was sober enough now, and it hurt his pride to be jeered at by his own skipper and treated with contumely by one whom he privately classed as a Dago. He had the good sense to realize that the present was no fit time for a display of temper; but he nursed his wrath. Dom Corria would have been well advised had he followed the counsel given so ungraciously, and guarded his own tongue.

It might well be that the ex-President, whose fortunes were on the tiptoe of desperate hazard, was beginning to despair. He may have scanned the meager forces at his disposal and felt that he was asking the gods for more than they could grant. A few minutes earlier he had put forth the suave suggestion that Hozier should be given the speediest chance of securing the girl's safety. That was politic; perhaps his stanch nerve was yielding to the strain, now that the two islanders were gone on their doubtful quest. Be that as it may, his attitude did not encourage light conversation. Even Coke withheld some jibe at the unfortunate mate's expense. A chill silence fell on the little group. The more imaginative among them were calculating the exact kind of lurch taken by the unstable raft that would mean "drowning without a cry."

Thus the minutes sped, until a dim shape emerged from the opposite blackness. It came unheard, growing from nothing into something with ghostly subtlety. Iris, a prey to many emotions, managed to stifle the exclamation of alarm that rose unbidden. But Hozier read her distress in a hardly audible sob.

"It is our friend, Marcel," he whispered. "So Domingo has made good his landing. Be brave! The sea is quite calm. This man has been to the island and back in less than a quarter of an hour."

His confidence gave her new courage. She even tried to turn danger itself into a jest.

"We seem to be living in spasms just now," she said. "We certainly crowd a good deal of excitement into a very few minutes."

The catamaran swung round and grated on the shingle. Marcel was in a hurry.

"Are you ready?" asked De Sylva, bending toward Iris.

"Yes," she said.

"Then you had better kneel behind Marcel, and steady yourself by placing your hands on his shoulders. Yes, that is it. Do not change your position until you are ashore. Now you, Mr. Hozier."

Marcel murmured something.

"Ah, good!" cried De Sylva softly. "Domingo, too, has secured a catamaran. He is bringing it at once in order to save time."

A second spectral figure emerged from the gloom. Without waiting for further instructions, Marcel swung his paddle, and the one craft passed the other in the center of the pool. Iris felt Hozier's hands on her waist. He obeyed orders, and uttered no sound, but the action told her that she might trust him implicitly. When the narrow cleft was traversed, and she saw the open sea on her right, there was ample need for some such assurance of guardianship. Viewed from the cliff, the swell that broke on the half-submerged reef was of slight volume, but it presented a very different and most disconcerting aspect when seen in profile. It seemed to be an almost impossible feat for any man to propel three narrow planks, top-heavy with a human freight, across a wide channel through which such a sea was running. Indeed, Hozier himself, sailor as he was, felt more than doubtful as to the fate of their argosy. But Marcel paddled ahead with unflagging energy once he was clear of the tortuous passage, and, before the catamaran had traveled many yards, even Iris was able to understand that the outlying ridge of rocks both protected their present track and created much of the apparent turmoil.

At last the raft, for it was little else, bore sharply out between two huge bowlders that might well have fallen from the mighty pile of Grand-père itself. Pointed and angular they were, and set like a gateway to an abode of giants. Beyond, there was a shimmer of swift-moving water, with a silver mist on the surface, though from a height of a few feet it would have been easy to distinguish the bold contours of Fernando Noronha itself.

Marcel plied his paddle vigorously, and Iris thought they were heading against the current, since there was a constant swirl of white-tipped waves on both sides of the curved plank, and her dress soon became soaked. But Hozier knew that one man could not drive a craft that had no artificial buoyancy in the teeth of a four-knot tidal stream. Marcel was edging across the channel, and making good use of the very force that threatened to sweep him away. Indeed, in less than five minutes, a definite clearing yet darkening of the atmospheric light showed that land was near. The hiss of the ripple subsided, the tide ceased its chant, and a dark mass sprang into uncanny distinctness right ahead.

The girl's first sensation on nearing the island was an unpleasant one. She was conscious of a slight but somewhat nauseating odor, quite unlike anything within her ken previously. It suffused the air, and grew more pronounced as the catamaran crept noiselessly into a tiny bay.

Hozier sympathized with her distress; knowing that acquaintance with an evil often helps to minimize its effect, he bent close to her ear and whispered the words:

"Mangrove swamp."

Iris had read of mangroves. In a dim way, she classed them with tamarinds, and cocoa-palms, and other sub-tropical products. At any rate, she was exceedingly anxious to tell Hozier that if mangroves tasted as they smelt she would need to be very hungry before she ate one!

Marcel was endowed with quick ears. Though Hozier's whisper could hardly have reached him, he held up a warning hand, even while he brought the catamaran ashore on the shingle, so gently that not a pebble was disturbed. He rose, a gaunt scarecrow, stepped off, and drew the shallow craft somewhat further up the sloping beach. Then he helped Iris to her feet. She became conscious at once that his thumb-nail was of extraordinary length, and—so strangely constituted is human nature—this peculiarity made a lasting impression on her mind.

Hozier, thinking that he ought to remain near the catamaran, stood upright, but did not offer to follow the others. Iris, filled with a sudden fear, hung back. The Brazilian, aware of her resistance, sought its cause. He saw Hozier, grinned, and beckoned to him. So the three went in company, and at each upward stride the disagreeable stench, ever afterwards associated with Fernando Noronha in the girl's memories, became less and less perceptible, until, after a short walk through a clump of banana trees, it vanished altogether.

At that instant, when Iris was beginning to revel in the sweet incense of a multitude of unseen flowers, Marcel halted, motioned to Hozier to stand fast, and indicated that Iris was to come with him. At once she shrank away in terror. Though in some sense prepared for this parting, she felt it now as the crudest blow that fortune had dealt her during a day crowded with misfortunes. In all likelihood, those two would never meet again. She needed no telling as to the risk he would soon be called on to face, and her anguish was made the more bitter by the necessity that they should go from each other's presence without a spoken word.

Nevertheless, she forced herself to extend a hand in farewell. Her eyes were blinded with tears. She knew that Hozier drew her nearer. With the daring of one who may well cast the world's convention to the winds, he gathered her to his heart and kissed her. Then she uttered a little sob of happiness and sorrow, and fainted.

It was not until she was lying helpless in his embrace, with her head pillowed on his breast, and an arm thrown limply across his shoulder, that Philip understood what had happened. He loved her, and she, the promised wife of another man, had tacitly admitted that she returned his love. Born for each other, heirs of all the ages, they were destined to be separated under conditions that could not have been brought about by the worst tyrant that ever oppressed his fellow creatures. Small blame should be his portion if in that abysmal moment there came to Philip a dire temptation. There was every reason to believe that he and Iris, if they found some hiding-place on the island that night, might escape. He could send Marcel crashing into the undergrowth with a blow, carry the unconscious girl somewhere, anywhere, until the darkness shrouded them, and wait for the dawn with some degree of confidence. In a red fury of thought he pictured her face when she regained possession of her senses and was told that they had no more to fear. He saw, with a species of fantastic intuition, that the island authorities would actually acclaim them for the tidings they brought. And then, he would find those grave brown eyes of hers fixed on his in agonized inquiry. What of the others? Why had he betrayed his trust? Dom Corria de Sylva had sent him ashore in advance of any among the little band of fugitives. Marcel and Domingo were outside the pale. Their lives, at least, were surely forfeit when recaptured. It was not a prayer but a curse that Hozier muttered when Marcel whispered words he did not understand, but whose obvious meaning was that now the girl must be carried to the convict's hut, since they were losing time, and time was all-important.

So they strode on, across ground that continued to rise in gentle undulations. Even in his present frenzied mood, Hozier noticed that they were following the right bank of a rivulet, the catamaran being beached on the same side of its cove-like estuary. Progress was rather difficult. They were skirting a wood, and the trailers of a great scarlet-flowered bean and a climbing cucumber smothered the ground, canopied the trees, and swarmed over the rocks. He could not distinguish these hindrances in the darkness, but he soon found that he must walk warily. As for the effort entailed by his forlorn burden he did not give a thought to it until Marcel indicated that he must stand fast. The Brazilian went on, leaving Hozier breathless. Evidently he went to warn the inhabitants of a wretched hut, suddenly visible in the midst of a patch of maize and cassava, that there were those at hand who needed shelter.

A dog barked—Marcel whistled softly, and the animal began to whimper. The Brazilian vanished. Hozier still held Iris in his arms; his heart was beating tumultuously; his throat ached with the labor of his lungs. His straining ears caught rustlings among the grass and roots, but otherwise a solemn peace brooded over the scene. Just beyond the hut, which was shielded from the arid hill by a grove of curiously contorted trees, the inner heights of the island rose abruptly. Something that resembled a column of cloud showed behind the rugged sky-line of the land. Even while he waited there, he saw a glint of light on its eastern side. He fancied that under stress of emotion and physical weakness his eyes were deceiving him; but the line of golden fire grew brighter and more definite. It was broken but unwavering, and black shadows began to take form as part of this phenomenon. Then he remembered the giant peak of Fernando Noronha, that mis-shapen mass which thrusts its amazing beacon a thousand feet into the air. The rising moon was gilding El Pico long ere its rays would illumine the lower land—that was all—yet he hailed the sight as a token of deliverance. It was not by idle chance that that which he had taken for a cloud should be transmuted into a torch; there sprang into his heated brain a new trust. He recalled the unceasing vigilance of One All-Powerful, who, ages ago, when His people were afflicted, "went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light."

Then Marcel came, and aroused him from the stupor that had settled on him, and together they entered into the hovel, where a dark-skinned woman and a comely girl uttered words of sympathetic sound when Iris was laid on a low trestle, and Hozier took a farewell kiss from her unheeding lips.

The Englishman stumbled away with his guide; he fancied that Marcel warned him several times to be more circumspect. He did his best, but, for the time, he was utterly spent. At last the Brazilian signified that they were near a trysting place. He uttered a cry like a night-jar's, and the answer came from no great distance. Soon they encountered Coke and De Sylva, who were awaiting them anxiously, and wondering, no doubt, why Hozier was missing, since Domingo and Marcel had fixed on an aged fig-tree as a rendezvous, and Hozier was not to be found anywhere near it.

The two boatmen hurried away, and De Sylva placed his lips close to Philip's ear.

"What went wrong?" he asked.

"Iris—Miss Yorke—fainted," was the gasping reply.

"Ah. You had to carry her?"

"Yes."

De Sylva fumbled in a pocket. He produced a flask.

"Here is some brandy. I kept it for just such an extremity. We cannot have you breaking down. Drink!"

Two weary hours elapsed before the little army of the Grand-père Rock was reunited on the shore of Cotton-Tree Bay. Then there was a further delay, while their indefatigable scouts brought milk and water, some coarse bread, and a good supply of fruit from the hut. It was part of their scheme that they should give their friend's habitation a wide berth. If their plans miscarried he was instructed to say that he had found the English lady wandering on the shore soon after daybreak. In any event, there would be no evidence that he had entertained the invaders in his hovel; otherwise, he would lose the first-class badge that permitted him, a convict, to dwell apart with his wife and daughter.

It was with the utmost difficulty that the men could be restrained from expressing their delight when they were given water and milk to drink. The water was poor, brackish stuff; the milk was sour and had lost every particle of cream; yet they deemed each a nectar of rank, and even the miserable Watts, who had long ago ascertained that the rustlings in the herbage were caused by countless numbers of rats and mice, was ready to acclaim beverages which he was too apt to despise.

About midnight there was a bright moon sailing overhead, and De Sylva gave a low order that they were to form in Indian file. Marcel led, the ex-President himself followed, with San Benavides, Coke, and Hozier in close proximity. Domingo brought up the rear, in order to prevent straggling, and assist men who might stray from the path.

Avoiding the cultivated land surrounding the creek, the party struck up the hillside. A few plodding minutes sufficed to clear the trees and dense undergrowth. A rough, narrow path led to the saddle of the central ridge. They advanced warily but without any real difficulty. Hozier took a listless interest in watching the furtive glances cast over his shoulder by San Benavides so long as the south coast of the island was visible. At each turn in the mountain track the Brazilian officer searched the moonlit sea for the agreed signal. At last, when the northern side also came in sight, and the whole island lay spread before them, San Benavides resigned himself to the inevitable. For a little while, at least, he was perforce content to survey events through the eyes of his companions, and throw in his lot irrevocably with theirs.

Roughly speaking, Fernando Noronha itself, irrespective of the group of islands at its northeasterly extremity, stretches five miles from east to west, and averages a mile and a half in width. From Cotton-Tree Bay, to which the catamarans had brought the small force, it was barely a mile to the village, convict settlement, and citadel. Some few lights twinkling near the shore showed the exact whereabouts of the inhabited section. Another mile away to the right lay Fort San Antonio, which housed the main body of troops. Watch-fires burning on South Point, whence came the shells that disabled the Andromeda, revealed the presence of soldiers in that neighborhood. De Sylva explained that a paved road ran straight from the town and landing-place to the hamlet of Sueste and an important plantation of cocoanuts and other fruit-bearing trees that adjoined South Point. It was inadvisable to strike into that road immediately. A little more to the right there was a track leading to the Curral, or stockyard. If they headed for the latter place the men could obtain some stout cudgels. The convict peons in charge of the cattle should be overpowered and bound, thus preventing them from giving an alarm, and it was also possible to avoid the inhabited hillside overlooking the main anchorage until they were close to the citadel. Then, crossing the fort road, they would advance boldly to the enemy's stronghold, first making sure that the launch was moored in her accustomed station in the roadstead beneath the walls. San Benavides would answer the sentry's questions, there would be a combined rush for the guard-room on the right of the gate, and, if they were able to master the guard, as many of the assailants as possible would don the soldiers' coats, shakos, and accouterments. Granted success thus far, there should not be much difficulty in persuading the men in charge of the launch that a cruise round the island was to be undertaken forthwith. Marcel would remain with them until the citadel was carried. He would then hurry back to bring Iris across the island to an unfrequented beach known as the Porto do Conceiçao, where he would embark her on a catamaran and row out to the steamer, which, by that time, would be lying off the harbor out of range of the troops who would surely be summoned from the distant fort.

The project bristled with audacity, and that has ever been the soul of achievement. Even the two wounded men from the Andromeda took heart when they listened to De Sylva's low-toned explanation, given under the shadow of a great rock ere the final advance was made. If all went well at the beginning, the small garrison of the citadel would be astounded when they found themselves struggling against unknown adversaries. Haste, silence, determination—these things were essential; each and all might be expected from men who literally carried their lives in their hands.

A keen breeze was blowing up there on the ridge. A bank of cloud was rising in the southwest horizon, and, at that season, when the months of rain were normally at an end, the mere presence of clouds heralded another spell of broken weather, though the preceding gale had probably marked the worst of it. Indeed, valuable auxiliary as the moon had proved during the march across rough country, it would be no ill hap if her bright face were veiled later. The mere prospect of such an occurrence was a cheering augury, and it was in the highest spirits that the little band set out resolutely for the Curral.

Here they encountered no difficulty whatever. Perhaps the prevalent excitement had drawn its custodians to the town, since they found no one in charge save a couple of barking dogs, while, if there were people in the cattle-keepers' huts, they gave no sign of their presence. A few stakes were pulled up; they even came upon a couple of axes and a heavy hammer. Equipped with these weapons, eked out by three revolvers owned by the Brazilians and the dapper captain's sword, they hurried on, quitting the road instantly, and following a cow-path that wound about the base of a steep hill.

They met their first surprise when they tried to cross the road to the fort. Quite unexpectedly, they blundered into a small picket stationed there. Its object was to challenge all passers-by during the dark hours, and it formed part of the scheme already elaborated by the authorities for a complete search of every foot of ground. But Brazilian soldiers are apt to be lax in such matters. These men were all lying down, and smoking. For a marvel, they happened to be silent when Marcel led his cohort into the open road. They were listening, in fact, to the crackling of the undergrowth, though utterly unsuspicious of its cause, and the first intimation of danger was given by the startling challenge:

"Who goes there?"

It was familiar enough to island ears, and the convict answered readily:

"A friend!"

"Several friends, it would seem," laughed a voice. "Let us see who these friends are."

Luckily, in response to De Sylva's sibilant order, most of the Andromeda's crew were hidden by the scrub from which they were about to emerge.

The soldiers rose, and strolled nearer leisurely.

"Now!" shouted De Sylva, leaping forward.

There was a wild scurry, two or three shots were fired, and Hozier found himself on the ground gripping the throat of a bronzed man whom he had shoved backward with a thrust, for he had no time to swing his stake for a blow. He was aware of a pair of black eyes that glared up at him horribly in the moonlight, of white teeth that shone under long moustachios of peculiarly warlike aspect, but he felt the man was as putty in his hands, and his fingers relaxed their pressure.

He looked around. The fight was ended almost as soon as it began. The soldiers, six in all, were on their backs in the roadway. Two of them were dead. The Italian sailor had been shot through the body, and was twisting in his last agony.

The bloodshed was bad enough, but those shots were worse. They would set the island in an uproar. The reports would be heard in town, citadel, and fort, and the troops would now be on the qui vive. But De Sylva was a man of resource.

"Strip the prisoners!" he cried. "Take their arms and ammunition, but bind them back to back with their belts."

"Butt in there, me lads," vociferated Coke, who had accounted for one of the Brazilians with an ax. "Step lively! Now we've got some uniforms an' guns, we can rush that dam cittydel easy."

Hozier was busy relieving his man of his coat. When the prone warrior realized that he was not to be killed, he helped the operation, but Philip was thinking more of Iris than of deeds of derring-do.

"Why attempt to capture the citadel at all?" he asked. "Now that we can make sufficient display, is there any reason that we should not go straight for the launch?"

"Hi, mister, d'ye 'ear that?" said Coke to De Sylva. "There's horse sense in it. The whole bally place will be buzzin' like a nest of wasps till they find out wot the shots meant."

"I think it is a good suggestion," came the calm answer, "provided, that is, the launch is in the harbor."

"She's just as likely to be there now as later. If she isn't, we must hark back to the first plan. Now, you swabs, all aboard! See to them buckles afore you quit."

A bell began to toll in the convict settlement. Lights appeared in many houses scattered over the seaward slope. In truth, Fernando Noronha had not been so badly scared since its garrison mutinied three years earlier because arrears of pay were not forthcoming. It was impossible to determine as yet whether or not the island steamer was at her berth, so they could only push on boldly and trust to luck. Hozier, never for an instant forgetting Iris, saw that Marcel still remained with his leader. Under these new circumstances, it certainly would be a piece of folly to send back until they were sure of the launch. So he hurried after them, struggling the while into a coat far too small, though fortunate in the fact that his captive's head was big in proportion to the rest of his body.

Some few men were met, running from the town to the main road where they had located the shooting. Each breathlessly demanded news, and was forthwith given most disconcerting information by a savage blow. The Andromeda had received no quarter, and her crew retaliated now. They did not deliberately murder anyone, but they took good care that none of those whom they encountered would be in a condition to work mischief until the night was ended.

It was a peculiar and exasperating fact that although they were descending a steep incline to the harbor the presence of trees and houses rendered it impossible to see the actual landing-place. Hence, there was no course open but to race on at the utmost speed, though De Sylva was careful to keep his small force compact, and its pace was necessarily that of its slowest members. Among these was Coke, who had never walked so far since he was granted a captain's certificate. He swore copiously as he lumbered along, and, what between shortness of breath and his tight boots and clothing, the latter disability being added to by a ridiculously inadequate Brazilian tunic, he was barely able to reach the water's edge.

Happily, the launch was there, moored alongside a small quay. From the nearest building it was necessary to cross a low wharf some fifty yards in width, and De Sylva's whispered commands could not restrain the eager men when escape appeared no longer problematical but assured. They broke, and ran, an almost fatal thing, as it happened, since the soldiers whom Philip had seen from the rock were still on board. One of them noticed the inexplicable disorder among a body of men some of whom resembled his own comrades. He had heard the firing, and was discussing it with others when this strange thing happened.

He challenged. San Benavides answered, but his voice was shrill and unofficer-like.

The engines were started. A man leaped to the wharf. He was in the act of casting a mooring rope off a fixed capstan when De Sylva shot him between the shoulder-blades.

"On board, all of you!" shrieked the ex-President in a frenzy.

"At 'em, boys!" gasped Coke, though scarce able to stagger another foot.

The men needed no bidding. Sheets of flame leaped from the vessel's deck as the soldiers seized their rifles and fired point-blank at these mysterious assailants who spoke in a foreign language. But flame alone could not stop that desperate attack. Some fell, but the survivors sprang at the Brazilians like famished wolves on their prey. There was no more shooting. Men grappled and fell, some into the water, others on deck, or they sprawled over the hatch and wrought in frantic struggle in the narrow cabin. The fight did not last many seconds. An engineer, finding a lever and throttle valve, roared to a sailor to take the wheel, and already the launch was curving seaward when Hozier shouted:

"Where is Marcel?"

"Lyin' dead on the wharf," said Watts.

"Are you certain?"

"He was alongside me, an' 'e threw is 'ands up, an' dropped like a shot rabbit."

"Then who has gone for Miss Yorke?"

"No one. D'ye think that this d—d President cares for anybody but hisself?"

Philip felt the deck throbbing with the pulsations of the screw. The lights on shore were gliding by. The launch was leaving Fernando Noronha, and Iris was waiting in that wretched hut beyond the hill, waiting for the summons that would not reach her, for Marcel was dead, and Domingo, the one other man who could have gone to her, was lying in the cabin with three ribs broken and a collar-bone fractured.

CHAPTER IX

WHEREIN CERTAIN PEOPLE MEET UNEXPECTEDLY

Iris came back from the void to find herself lying on a truckle bed in a dimly-lighted hovel. A cotton wick flickered in a small lamp of the old Roman type. It was consuming a crude variety of castor oil, and its gamboge-colored flame clothed the smoke-darkened rafters and mud walls in somber yet vivid tints that would have gladdened the heart of a Rubens. This scenic effect, admirable to an artist, was lost on a girl waking in affright and startled by unfamiliar surroundings. She gazed up with uncomprehending eyes at two brown-skinned women bending over her.

One, the elder, was chafing her hands; the other, a tall, graceful girl, was stirring something in an earthenware vessel. She heard the girl murmur joyfully:

"Graças a Deus, elh' abria lhes olhas!"

Iris was still wandering in that strange borderland guarded by unknown forces that lies between conscious life and the sleep that is so close of kin to death. If in full possession of her senses, she might not have caught the drift of the sentence, since it was spoken in a guttural patois. But now she understood beyond cavil that because she had opened her eyes, the girl was giving thanks to the Deity. The first definite though bewildering notion that perplexed her faculties, at once clouded and unnaturally clear, was an astonished acceptance of the fact that she knew what the strange girl had said, though the phrase only remotely resembled its Spanish equivalent. She gathered its exact meaning, word for word, and it was all the more surprising that both women should smile and say something quite incomprehensible as soon as Iris lifted herself on an elbow and asked in English:

"Where am I? How did I come here?"

[Illustration: "How did I come here?">[

Then she remembered, and memory brought a feeling of helplessness not wholly devoid of self-reproach. It was bad enough that her presence should add so greatly to the dangers besetting her friends; it was far worse that she should have fainted at the very moment when such weakness might well prove fatal to them.

Why did she faint? Ah! A lively blush chased the pallor from her cheeks, and a few strenuous heartbeats restored animation to her limbs. Of course, in thinking that she had yielded solely to the stress of surcharged emotions, Iris was mistaken. What she really needed was food. A young woman of perfect physique, and dowered with the best of health, does not collapse into unconsciousness because a young man embraces her, and each at the same moment makes the blissful discovery that the wide world contains no other individual of supreme importance. Iris's great-grandmother might have "swooned" under such circumstances—not so Iris, who fainted simply because of the strain imposed by failure to eat the queer fare provided by De Sylva and his associates. She hardly realized how hungry she was until the girl handed her the bowl, which contained a couple of eggs beaten up in milk, while small quantities of rum and sugar-cane juice made the compound palatable.

"Bom!" said the girl, "bebida, senhora!"

It certainly was good, and the senhora drank it with avidity, the mixture being excellent diet for one who had eaten nothing except an over-ripe banana during thirty hours. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to extend that period considerably. Iris had left practically untouched the meals brought her by the steward during the gale, and the early morning cup of coffee, which would have proved most grateful after a storm-tossed night, was an impossible achievement owing to the lack of water.

So Iris tackled the contents of the bowl with a vigorous appetite oddly at variance with the seeming weakness that ended in a prolonged fainting fit, and the hospitable Brazilians, to whom this fair English girl was a revelation in feature and clothing, bestirred themselves to provide further dainties. But, excepting some fruit, Iris had the wisdom to refuse other food just then. Her thoughts were rapidly becoming coherent, and she realized that a heavy meal might be absolutely disastrous. If the men made good their project she would be called on within an hour to cross the island. It seemed reasonable that, hungry though she was, she would be better fitted to climb the island hills at a fast pace if she ate sparingly. Still, she longed for a drink of water, and taxed her small stock of Spanish to make known her desire.

"Agua, senhora," she said with a smile, and the delight of mother and daughter was great, since they thought she could speak their language.

Therein, of course, they were disappointed, but not more so than Iris when she tasted the brackish fluid alone procurable on the south coast of Fernando Noronha. That was a fortunate thing in itself. Only those who have endured real thirst can tell how hard it is to refrain from drinking deeply when water is ultimately obtained; but the mixture of milk and eggs had already soothed her parched mouth and palate, and she quickly detected an unpleasantly salt flavor in the beverage they gave her.

Then she set herself to discover her whereabouts. The women were eager to impart information, but, alas, Iris's brain had regained its every-day limitations, and she could make no sense of their words. At last, seeing that the door was barred and the hut was innocent of any other opening, she stood upright, and signified by a gesture that she wished to go out. There could be no mistaking the distress, even the positive alarm, created by this demand. The girl clasped her hands in entreaty, and the older woman evidently tried most earnestly to dissuade her visitor from a proceeding fraught with utmost danger.

Being quite certain that they meant to be friendly, Iris sat down again. She knew, of course, that Marcel would come for her, if possible, and the relief displayed by her unknown entertainers was so marked that she resolved to await his appearance quietly. She would not abandon hope till daylight crept through the chinks of the hut. How soon that might be she could not tell. It seemed but a few seconds since she felt Hozier's arms around her, since her lips met his in a passionate kiss. But, meanwhile, someone had brought her here. Her dress, though damp, was not sopping wet. Even the slight token of the beaten eggs showed how time must have sped while she was lying there oblivious of everything. She tried again to question the women, and fancied that they understood her partly, as she caught the words "meia noite," but it was beyond her powers to ascertain whether they meant that she had come there at midnight, or were actually telling her the hour.

At any rate, they were most anxious for her well-being. The island housewife produced another dish, smiled reassuringly, and said, "Manioc—bom," repeating the phrase several times. The compound looked appetizing, and Iris ate a little. She discovered at once that it was tapioca, but her new acquaintance suggested "cassava" as an alternative. The girl, however, nodded cheerfully. She had heard the gentry at Fort San Antonio call it tapioca, and her convict father cultivated some of the finer variety of manioc for the officers' mess.

"Ah," sighed Iris, smiling wistfully, "I am making progress in your language, slow but sure. But please don't give me any mangroves."

The girl apparently was quite fascinated by the sound of English. She began to chatter to her mother at an amazing rate, trying repeatedly to imitate the hissing sound which the Latin races always perceive in Anglo-Saxon speech. Her mother reproved her instantly. To make amends, the girl offered Iris a fine pomegranate. Iris, of course, lost nothing of this bit of by-play. It was almost the first touch of nature that she had discovered among the amazing inhabitants of Fernando Noronha.

These small amenities helped to pass the time, but Iris soon noted an air of suspense in the older woman's attitude. Though mindful of her guest's comfort, Luisa Gomez had ever a keen ear for external sounds. In all probability, she was disturbed by the distant reports of fire-arms, and it was a rare instance of innate good-breeding that she did not alarm her guest by calling attention to them. Iris, amid such novel surroundings, could not distinguish one noise from another. Night-birds screamed hideously in the trees without; a host of crickets kept up an incessant chorus in the undergrowth; the intermittent roaring of breakers on the rocks invaded the narrow creek. The medley puzzled Iris, but the island woman well knew that stirring events were being enacted on the other side of the hill. Her husband was there—he had, indeed, prepared a careful alibi since Marcel visited him—and wives are apt to feel worried if husbands are abroad when bullets are flying.

So, while the girl, Manoela, was furtively appraising the clothing worn by Iris, and wondering how it came to pass that in some parts of the world there existed grand ladies who wore real cloth dresses, and lace embroidered under-skirts, and silk stockings, and shining leather boots—wore them, too, with as much careless ease as one draped one's self in coarse hempen skirt and shawl in Fernando Noronha—her mother was listening ever for hasty footsteps among the trailing vines.

At last, with a muttered prayer, she went to the door, and unfastened the stout wooden staple that prevented intruders from entering unbidden.

It was dark without. Dense black clouds veiled the moon, and a gust of wind moaned up the creek in presage of a tropical storm. Someone approached.

"Is that you, Manoel?" asked Luisa Gomez in a hushed voice.

There was no answer. The woman drew back. She would have closed the door, but a slim, active figure sprang across the threshold. She shrieked in terror. The new-comer was a Brazilian officer, one of those glittering beings whom she had seen lounging outside the Prindio[1] during her rare visits to the town. She was hoping to greet her Manoel, she half expected to find Marcel, but to be faced by an officer was the last thing she had thought of. In abject fear, she broke into a wild appeal to the Virgin; the officer merely laughed, though not loudly.

"Be not afraid, senhora—I am a friend," he said with quiet confidence, and the fact that he addressed her so courteously was a wondrously soothing thing in itself. But he raised a fresh wave of dread in her soul when he peered into the cabin and spoke words she did not understand.

"I think you are here, mademoiselle," he said in French. "I am come to share your retreat for a little while. Perchance by daybreak I may arrive at some plan. At present, you and I are in difficulties, is it not?"

Iris recognized the voluble, jerky speech. A wild foreboding gripped her heart until she was like to shudder under its fierce anguish.

"You, Captain San Benavides?" she asked, and her utterance was unnaturally calm.

"I, mademoiselle," he said, "and, alas! I am alone. May I come in? It is not well to show a light at this hour, seeing that the island is overrun with infuriated soldiers."

The concluding sentence was addressed to Luisa Gomez in Portuguese. Realizing instinctively that the man came as a friend, she stood aside, trembling, on the verge of tears. He entered, and the door was closed behind him. The yellow gleam of the lamp fell on his smart uniform, and gilded the steel scabbard of his sword. In that dim interior the signs of his three days' sojourn on Grand-père were not in evidence, and he had not been harmed during the struggle on the main road or in the rush for the launch.

He doffed his rakish-looking kepi and bowed low before Iris. Perhaps the white misery in her face touched him more deeply than he had counted on. Be that as it may, a note of genuine sympathy vibrated in his voice as he said:

"I am the only man who escaped, mademoiselle. The others? Well, it is war, and war is a lottery."

"Do you mean that they have been killed, all killed?" she murmured with a pitiful sob.

"I—I think so."

"You … think? Do you not know?"

He sighed. His hand sought an empty cigarette case. Such was the correct military air, he fancied—to treat misfortunes rather as jests. He frowned because the case was empty, but smiled at Iris.

"It is so hard, mademoiselle, when one speaks these things in a strange tongue. Permit me to explain that which has arrived. We encountered a picket, and surprised it. Having secured some weapons and accouterments, we hastened to the quay, where was moored the little steamship. Unhappily, she was crowded with soldiers. They fired, and there was a short fight. I was knocked down, and, what do you call it?—étourdi—while one might count ten. I rose, half blinded, and what do I see? The vessel leaving the quay—full of men engaged in combat, while, just beyond the point, a warship is signaling her arrival. It was a Brazilian warship, mademoiselle. She showed two red rockets followed by a white one. It was only a matter of minutes before she met the little steamship. I tell you that it was bad luck, that—a vile blow. I was angry, yes. I stamp my foot and say foolish things. Then I run!"

Iris made no reply. She hid her face in her hands. She could frame no more questions. San Benavides was trying to tell her that Hozier and the rest had been overwhelmed by fate at the very instant escape seemed to be within reach. The Brazilian, probably because of difficulties that beset him in using a foreign language, did not make it clear that he had flung himself flat in the dust when he heard the order to fire given by someone on board the launch. He said nothing of a tragic incident wherein Marcel, shot through the lungs, fell over him, and he, San Benavides, mistaking the convict for an assailant, wrestled furiously with a dying man. He even forgot to state that had he charged home with the others, he would either have met a bullet or gained the deck of the launch, and that his failure to reach the vessel was due to his own careful self-respect. For San Benavides was not a coward. He could be brave spectacularly, but he had no stomach for a fight in the dark, when stark hazard chooses some to triumph and some to die. That sort of devilish courage might be well enough for those crude sailors; a Portuguese gentleman of high lineage and proved mettle demanded a worthier field for his deeds of derring-do. Saperlotte! If one had a cigarette one could talk more fluently!

"Believe me, mademoiselle," he went on, speaking with a proud humility that was creditable to his powers as an actor, "the tears came to my eyes when I understood what had happened. For myself, what do I care? I would gladly have given my life to save my brave companions. But I thought of you, solitary, waiting here in distress, so I hurried into the village, and my uniform secured me from interruption until I was able to leave the road and cross the hills."

Then the lightning of a woman's intuition pierced the abyss of despair. Surely there were curious blanks in this thrilling narrative. As was her way when thoroughly aroused, Iris stood up and seized San Benavides almost roughly by the arm. Her distraught eyes searched his face with a pathetic earnestness.

"Why do you think that the launch did not get away?" she cried. "It was dark. The moon might have been in shadow. If the launch met the warship and was seen, there must have been firing——"

"Chère mademoiselle, there was much firing," he protested.

"At sea?"

The words came dully. She was stricken again, even more shrewdly. The gloom was closing in on her, yet she forced herself to drag the truth from his unwilling lips.

"Yes. Of course, I could not wait there in that open place. I was compelled to seek shelter. Troops were running from town and citadel. I avoided them by a miracle. And my sole concern then was your safety."

"Oh, my safety!" she wailed brokenly. "How does it avail me that my friends should be slain? Why was I not with them? I would rather have died as they died than live in the knowledge that I was the cause of their death."

San Benavides essayed a confidential hand on her shoulder. She shrank from him; he was not pleased but he purred amiably:

"Mademoiselle is profoundly unhappy. Under such circumstances one says things that are unmerited, is it not? If anyone is to blame, it is my wretched country, which cannot settle its political affairs without bloodshed. Ah, mademoiselle, I weep with you, and tender you my most respectful homage."

A deluge of tropical rain beat on the hut with a sudden fury. Conversation at once became difficult, nearly impossible. Iris threw herself back on the trestle in a passion of grief that rivaled the outer tempest. San Benavides, by sheer force of habit, dusted his clothes before sitting on the chair brought by Luisa Gomez. The woman's frightened gaze had dwelt on Iris and him alternately while they spoke. She understood no word that was said, but she gathered that the news brought by this handsome officer was tragic, woeful, something that would wring the heartstrings.

"Was there fighting, senhor?" she asked, close to his ear, her voice pitched in a key that conquered the storm.

He nodded. He was very tired, this dandy; now that Iris gave no further heed to him, he was troubled by the prospects of the coming day.

"Were they soldiers who fought?"

He nodded again.

"No islanders?"

Then he raised a hand in protest, though he laughed softly.

"Your good man is safe, senhora," he said. "Marcel told him to go to Sueste and tend his cattle. When he comes home it will be his duty to inform the Governor that we are here. He will be rewarded, not punished. Sangue de Deus! I may be shot at dawn. I pray you, let me rest a while."

The girl, Manoela, weeping out of sympathy, crept to Iris's side and gently stroked her hair. Like her mother, she could only guess that the English lady's friends were captured, perhaps dead. Even her limited experience of life's vicissitudes had taught her what short shrift was given to those who defied authority. The Republic of Brazil does not permit its criminals to be executed, but it shows no mercy to rebels. Manoela, of course, believed that the Englishmen were helping the imprisoned Dom Corria to regain power. She remembered how a mutiny was once crushed on the island, and her eyes streamed.

Meanwhile, Luisa Gomez was touched by the good-looking soldier's plight. Never, since she came to Fernando Noronha to rejoin her convict husband, had she been addressed so politely by any member of the military caste. The manners of the officers of the detachment at Fort San Antonio were not to be compared with those of Captain San Benavides. Her heart went out to him.

"We must try to help you, Senhor Capitano," she said. "If the others are dead or taken, you may not be missed."

He threw out his hands in an eloquent gesture. Life or death was a matter of complete indifference to him, it implied.

"We shall know in the morning," he said. "Have you any cigarettes? A milrei[2] for a cigarette!"

"But listen, senhor. Why not take off your uniform and dress in my clothes? You can cut off your mustaches, and wear a mantilha over your face, and we will keep you here until there is a chance of reaching a ship. Certainly that is better than being shot."

He glanced at Iris. Vanity being his first consideration, it is probable that he would have refused to be made ridiculous in her eyes, had not a knock on the door galvanized him into a fever of fright. He sprang up and glared wildly around for some means of eluding the threatened scrutiny of a search party. Luisa Gomez flung him a rough skirt and a shawl. He huddled into a corner near the bed,—in such wise that the figures of Iris and Manoela would cloak the rays of the lamp,—placed his drawn sword across his knees, and draped the two garments over his head and limbs.

Then, greatly agitated, but not daring to refuse admittance to the dreaded soldiery, the woman unbarred the door. A man staggered in. He was alone, and a swirl of wind and rain caused the lamp to flicker so madly that no one could distinguish his features until the door was closed again.

But Iris knew him. Though her eyes were dim with tears, though the new-comer carried a broken gun in his hands, and his face was blood-stained, she knew.

With a shriek that dismayed the other women—who could not guess that joy is more boisterous than sorrow, she leaped up and threw her arms around him.

"Oh, Philip, Philip!" she sobbed. "He told me you were dead … and I believed him!"

The manner of her greeting was delightful to one who had faced death for her sake many times during the past hour, yet Hozier was so surprised by its warmth that he could find never a word at the moment. But he had the good sense to throw aside the shattered rifle and return her embrace with interest. Long ago exhausted in body, his mind reeled now under the bewildering knowledge that this most gracious woman did truly love him. When they parted in that same squalid hut at midnight, he took with him the intoxication of her kiss. Yet he scarce brought himself to believe that the night's happenings were real, or that they two would ever meet again on earth. And now, here was Iris quivering against his breast. He could feel the beating of her heart. The perfume of her hair was as incense in his nostrils. She was clinging to him as if they had loved through all eternity. No wonder he could not speak. Had he uttered a syllable, he must have broken down like the girl herself.

San Benavides supplied a timely tonic.

Throwing aside the rags which covered him, he tried to rise. Philip caught a glimpse of the uniform, the sheen of the naked sword. He was about to tear himself from Iris's clasp and spring at this new enemy when the Brazilian spoke.

"Mil diabos!" he cried in a rage, "this cursed Inglez still lives, and here am I posing before him like an old hag."

His voice alone saved him from being pinned to the floor by a man who had adopted no light measures with others of his countrymen during the past half-hour, as the dented gun-barrel, minus its stock, well showed. But the captain's mortified fury helped to restore Philip's sanity. Lifting Iris's glowing face to his own, he whispered:

"Tell me, sweetheart, how comes it that our Brazilian friend is here?"

"He ran away when some shots were fired," which was rather unfair of Iris. "He said the launch had been sunk by a man-of-war——"

"But he is wrong. I saw no man-of-war. We captured the launch. By this time she is well out to sea. Unfortunately, Marcel was killed, and Domingo badly wounded. There was no one to come for you, so I jumped overboard and swam ashore. I had to fight my way here, and it will soon be known that there are some of us left on the island. I thought that perhaps I might take you back to the Grand-père cavern. These people may give us food. I have some few sovereigns in my pocket.…"

"Oh, yes, yes!" She was excited now and radiantly happy. "Of course, Captain San Benavides must accompany us. He says the soldiers will shoot him if they capture him. I, too, have money. Let me ask him to explain matters to this dear woman and her daughter. They have been more than kind to me already."

She turned to the sulky San Benavides and told him what Hozier had suggested. He brightened at that, and began a voluble speech to Luisa Gomez. Interrupting himself, he inquired, in French, how Hozier proposed to reach the rock.

"On a catamaran. There are two on the beach, and I can handle one of them all right," said Philip. "But what is this yarn of a warship? When last I sighted the launch she was standing out of the harbor, and the first clouds of the storm helped to screen her from the citadel."

Iris interpreted. San Benavides repeated his story of the rockets. In her present tumult, the girl forgot the touch of realism with regard to the firing that he had heard. Certainly there was a good deal of promiscuous rifle-shooting after the departure of the launch, but warships use cannon to enforce their demands, and the boom of a big gun had not woke the echoes of Fernando Noronha that night. Philip deemed the present no time for argument; he despised San Benavides, and gave no credence to him. Just now the Brazilian was an evil that must be endured.

Luisa Gomez promised to help in every possible way. Her eyes sparkled at the sight of gold, but the poor woman would have assisted them out of sheer pity. Nevertheless, the gift of a couple of sovereigns, backed by the promise of many more if her husband devoted himself to their service, spurred her to a frenzy of activity.

There was not a moment to be lost. The squall had spent itself, and a peep through the chinks of the door showed that the moon would quickly be in evidence again. It was essential that they should cross the channel while the scattering clouds still dimmed her brightness; so Manoela and her mother collected such store of food, and milk, and water, as they could lay hands on. Well laden, all five hastened to the creek, and Hozier, Iris, and San Benavides, boarded the larger of the two catamarans. The strong wind had partly dissipated the noisome odor, but it was still perceptible. Iris was sure she would never like mangroves.

Having a degree of confidence in the queer craft that was lacking during their earlier voyage, they did not hesitate to stack jars and baskets against the curved prow in such a manner that the eatables would not become soaked with salt water. Then, after a hasty farewell, during which Iris showed her gratitude to those kindly peasants by a hug and a kiss, Hozier pushed off and tried to guide the catamaran as Marcel had done.

Oddly enough, he and Iris now saw the majestic outlines of the Grand-père for the first time. The great rock rose above the water like some immense Gothic cathedral. The illusion was heightened by a giant spire that towered grandly from the center of the islet. It looked a shrine built by nature in honor of its Creator, a true temple of the infinite, and the semblance was no illusion to these three castaways, since they regarded it as a sanctuary to which alone, under Heaven, they might owe their lives. Hozier, of course, realized that there was a certain element of risk in returning there. The island authorities would surely endeavor to find out where the party of desperadoes had lain perdu between the sinking of the ship and the attack on the picket. But the ill-starred Marcel had been confident that none could land on the rock who was not acquainted with the intricacies of the approach, and Philip was content to trust to the reef-guarded passage rather than seek shelter on the mainland.

Once embarked in the fairway, the management of the catamaran occupied his mind to the complete exclusion of all other problems. He was puzzled by the discovery that the awkward craft was traveling too far to the westward, until he remembered that the tide had turned, and that the current was either slack or running in the opposite direction. Changing the paddle to the starboard side, he soon corrected this deviation in the route. But he had been carried already a hundred yards or more out of the straight line. To reach the two pointed rocks that marked the entrance to the secret channel, he was obliged to creep back along the whole shoreward face of the Grand-père; and to this accident was due a surprise that ranked high in a day replete with marvels.

When the catamaran rounded the last outlying crag, and they were all straining their eyes to find the sentinel pillars, they became aware that a small boat was being pulled cautiously toward them from the opposite side of the rock.

Iris gasped. She heard Hozier mutter under his breath, while San Benavides revealed his dismay by an oath and a convulsive tightening of the hands that rested on the girl's shoulders.

Hozier strove with a few desperate strokes of the paddle to reach the shadows of the passage before the catamaran was seen by the boat's occupants. He might have succeeded. Many things can happen at night and on the sea—strange escapades and hair's-breadth 'scapes—thrills denied to stay-at-homes dwelling in cities, who seldom venture beyond a lighted area. But there was even a greater probability that the unwieldy catamaran might be caught by the swell and dashed side-long against one of the half-submerged rocks that thrust their black fangs above the water.

Happily, they were spared either alternative. At the very instant that their lot must be put to the test of chance, Coke's hoarse accents came to their incredulous ears.

"Let her go, Olsen," he was growling. "We've a clear course now, an' that dam moon will spile everything if we're spotted."

In this instance hearing was believing, and Philip was the first to guess what had actually occurred.

"Boat ahoy, skipper!" he sang out in a joyous hail.

Coke stood up. He glared hard at the reef.

"Did ye 'ear it?" he cried to De Sylva, who was steering. "Sink me, I 'ope I ain't a copyin' pore ole Watts, but if that wasn't Hozier's voice I'm goin' dotty."