emen would shoot him
down.

"Oh, not that! Not that!" she wailed aloud.

An impulse stronger than the instinct of self-preservation caused the
blood to tingle in her veins. She had waited to take that one look,
and now, bent double so as to avoid being seen by the soldiers, she
sped back through the gangway, gained the open deck, crouched close to
the bulwarks on the port side, and thus reached unscathed the foot of
the companion down which the wounded men had crawled. The zinc plates
on the steps were slippery with their blood, but she did not falter at
the sight. Up she went, stooped over Hozier, and placed her strong
young arms round his body.

"Quick!" she panted, "let me help you! You will be killed if you
remain here!"

Her voice seemed to rouse him as from troubled sleep.

"I was hit," he muttered. "What is it? What is wrong?"

"Oh, come, come!" she screamed, for some unseen agency tore a
transverse gash in the planking not a foot in front of them.

He yielded with broken expostulations. She dragged him to the top of
the stairs. Clinging to him, she half walked, half fell down the few
steps. But she did not quite fall; Hozier's weight was almost more
than she could manage, but she clung to him desperately, saved him from
a headlong plunge to the deck, and literally carried him into the
forecastle, where she found some of the crew who had scurried there
like rabbits to their burrow when the first shell crashed into the
engine-room.

Iris's fine eyes darted lightning at them.

"You call yourselves men," she cried shrilly, "yet you leave one of
your officers lying on deck to be shot at by those fiends!"

"We didn't know he was there, miss," said one. "We'd ha' fetched him
right enough if we did."

Even in her present stress of mixed emotions, the sailor's words
sounded reasonable. Every other person on board was just as greatly
stunned by this monstrous attack as she herself, and the firing now
appeared to increase in volume and accuracy. Several bullets clanged
against the funnel or broke huge splinters off the boats.

"Gord A'mighty, listen to that," growled a voice. "An' we cooped up
here, blazed at by a lot of rotten Dagos, with not a gun to our name!"

Iris was still supporting Hozier, whose head and shoulders were
pillowed against her breast as she knelt behind him.

"Can nothing be done?" she asked. "I believe Captain Coke has been
killed. Mr. Hozier is badly injured, I fear.