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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.
Hozier!" cried Coke. "Yes, sir." "Is all clear forrard to let go anchor?" "Yes, sir." "Give her thirty. You go and see to it, will you?" Hozier made off at a run. Iris recalled the last time she heard similar words. She shuddered. Would that placid foreshore blaze out into a roar of artillery, and the worn-out Unser Fritz, like the worn-out Andromeda, stagger and lurch into a watery grave.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What other woman would have consented to be separated from her friends on Fernando Noronha merely because it increased their meager chances of safety? How few women, loving a man like Philip Hozier, who is assured of a splendid reward for his services to this State, would resolutely deny the claims of her own heart in order to keep her word?"
The navy, on the other hand, supports Dom Miguel Barraca, who supplanted me, and we shall surely meet a cruiser or gunboat at Pernambuco. You see, therefore, that common prudence " "I see that, whether willing or not, we are to be made the tools of your ambition," interrupted Hozier curtly.
For once, the true had outrivaled the fabulous. The steamer crept on lazily, and Iris fancied the hour must be nearer five o'clock than two when she heard Hozier's voice ring out clearly: "Buoy on the port bow!" There was a movement among the dim figures on the bridge. A minute later Hozier cried again: "Buoy on the starboard bow!" She understood then that they were in a marked channel.
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