"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 c.o.ke 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 c.o.ke, 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."

c.o.ke, 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 c.o.ke, 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 c.o.ke himself could not have supplied any reasonable a.n.a.lysis. 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 c.o.ke, 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 c.o.ke 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 c.o.ke 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 ent.i.tled 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 c.o.ke'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 p.o.o.p. 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 G.o.d of literature?

While, therefore, it was strange that Captain c.o.ke 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 c.o.ke. 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 c.o.ke. "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. c.o.ke 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 circ.u.mstance, 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. c.o.ke 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 phosph.o.r.escent 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 pa.s.sionate 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 _tete-a-tete_ 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?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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 c.o.ke 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 hoa.r.s.e voice that had roused Iris answered his questions, and, in the faint light that came from the binnacle, she caught a flicker of amus.e.m.e.nt 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 c.o.ke said he would see you and warn you of my visit."

"I can only a.s.sure 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 c.o.ke's marked effort to keep the girl and him apart had been defeated by a sailor's blunder.