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"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!
He blessed them, and remarked that a really "smart" wedding would be just the thing to inaugurate the new reign at Rio de Janeiro. He was far more perplexed by the untimely wrath of Philip Hozier. He thought of it for at least five minutes next morning. Then he sought Dickey Bulmer, who had just quitted Coke's bedroom, and was examining the rare shrubs that bordered the lawn.
"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.
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.
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?
"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.
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!
"Good! Then that's settled." David pursed out his thick lips with a sigh of relief. Though he had watched the spoken record of the Andromeda and her company for craftier hints than was suspected by his fellow travelers, he was not deaf to Coke's appreciation of Hozier.
"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?"
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.
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