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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.
Full twenty of the assailants fell, Dom Miguel de Barraca among them. There was an instant of terrible silence, as between the shocks of an earthquake. "Now, come on!" shouted the same voice, and Philip Hozier rushed into the ballroom, followed by his scouts and a horde of Brazilian regulars.
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.
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.
His apparent gravity drew the girl's thoughts for an instant from contemplating her own unhappiness. "How could you have done that?" she asked. "We are going there to suit Senhor De Sylva's ends. We have suffered so much already for his sake that we could hardly betray him now." Hozier spread wide his hands with a fine affectation of amazement. "I wasn't talking about De Sylva," he cried.
She walked on the after deck with San Benavides, and seemed to be listening with great attention to something he was telling her. Hozier was often compelled to look that way in order to make certain that the Sao Geronimo was not overhauling the ship in one of her circling flights over the wide channel.
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.
Hozier laughed. Two days ago he would have asked no better luck than the helping of Dom Corria to regain his Presidentship. Now, there was Iris to protect. He would not be content to leave her in charge of the first grimy collier they encountered, nor was he by any means sure that she would agree to be thus disposed of.
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.
Hozier, of course, had forgiven Iris for her aloofness, and Iris, with that delightful inconsistency which ranks high among the many charms of her sex, found that "Philip dear," though she might not marry him, was her only possible companion. He, having acquired an experience previously lacking, took care to fall in with her mood.
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