"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 cuc.u.mber. 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 c.o.ke who tried to fill in some part of the blank s.p.a.ce.

"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 pa.s.sing steamer, there was every possibility that the st.u.r.dy 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 d.i.c.key" 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 d.i.c.key 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, la.s.s, 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 d.i.c.key 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 hara.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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 c.o.ke. 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 c.o.ke 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 pa.s.sion, 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 d.i.c.key 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 pa.s.sed, 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 d.i.c.key 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 circ.u.mstance 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 c.o.ke 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 c.o.ke 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 s.e.x. 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 c.o.ke on board?" said she.

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

"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 c.o.ke'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 c.o.ke was then closeted with David Verity in Exchange Buildings; she knew, because she had watched him pa.s.s 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.