news without comment. She would have been equally
undisturbed if told it was midnight, and that the vessel had gone
ashore on the coast of China.

Just then the track turned sharply away from the sea. A dry
water-course cut deeply into the cliff where torrential rains had found
an upright layer of soft scoria imbedded in the mass of basalt. Their
guide was standing on the sky-line of the cleft, some forty feet above
them.

"Tell the others to make haste," he said. "This is the end of your
journey."

It did not strike either Hozier or the girl as being specially
remarkable that a man should meet them in this extraordinary place and
address them in good English. Iris, at any rate, gave no heed to this
most amazing fact. She merely observed for the first time that the
elderly stranger, while dressed in a beggar's rags, assumed an air of
command that was almost ludicrous.

"Who is he?" she asked, being rather breathless now after a steep climb.

"I don't know," said Hozier.

"How absurd!" she gasped. "I--I think I'm dreaming. Why--have
we--come here?"

She heard a coarse chuckle from Coke, not far below.

"Let 'im cough it up," the skipper was saying. "It'll do 'im good.
I've seen 'im blind many a time, but 'ow any man could dope 'isself in
that shape in less'n two minutes!---- Well, it fair gives me the
go-by!"

Two minutes! Hozier listened, and he was recovering his wits far more
rapidly than Iris. Was the skipper, then, in league with nature
herself to perplex him? And Watts, too? Why did Coke hint so coarsely
that he was drunk? He was on the bridge while he, Philip, was
attending to the lead, and at that time the chief officer was perfectly
sober.

Iris, once again, was deeply incensed by Coke's brutality.

"Horrid man!" she murmured, but she had no breath left for louder
protest. It was hot as a furnace in this narrow ravine; each upward
step demanded an effort. She would have slipped and hurt herself many
times were it not for Hozier's firm grasp, nor did she realize the
sheer exhaustion that forced him to seek support from the neighboring
wall with his disengaged hand. The man in front, however, was alive to
their dangerous plight. He said something in his own language--for his
English had the precise staccato accent of the well-educated
foreigner--and another man appeared. The sight of the newcomer
startled Iris more than any other event that had happened since the
_Andromeda_ rea