But it was a garment of
far-flung amplitude, woven on the shadowy loom of night and the sea,
and from such mysterious warp and weft is often produced the sable robe
of tragedy and death. It was so now, within an ace. At one instance,
the restless plain of the ocean seemed to bear no other argosy than the
_Andromeda_; in the next, Hozier's quick-moving glance had caught the
pallid sheen of some small craft's starboard light. No need to tell
him what might happen. A sailing vessel, probably a fishing smack, was
crossing the steamer's course. He sprang to the telegraph, and
signaled "Slow" to the engine-room. Simultaneously he shouted to the
steersman to starboard the helm, and the siren trumpeted a single
raucous blast into the silence. With the rattle of the chains and
steering-rods in the gear-boxes came a yell from the lookout forward:

"Light on the port bow!"

Hozier repeated the hail, but promised the blear-eyed sentinels in the
bows of the ship a lively five minutes when the watch was relieved.
Slowly the _Andromeda_ swung to the west. Even more slowly, or so it
appeared to the anxious man on the bridge, a red eye peeped into being
alongside the green one. A blacker smear showed up on the black sea,
and a hoarse voice, presumably situated beneath the smear, expressed a
desire for information.

"Arr ye all aslape on board that crimson collier?" it asked in a
Waterford brogue.

"Got the hooker's wheel tied, I suppose?" retorted Hozier, for the now
visible schooner had not attempted to change her course by half a
point. She was now bowling along with every stitch set before a
five-knot breeze from the east; the tilt of her sails was such that she
practically presented only the outline of her spars when first sighted
from the steamer; and her side lights probably had tallow candles in
them.

"Bedad, it's aisier in moind we'd be if you were tied to it," shouted
the voice, and Hozier felt, like many another Saxon, that an Irishman's
last word is often the best one.

The engines resumed their cadence, and the _Andromeda_ crept round
again to South 15 West. She was back on her proper line when a heavy
step sounded on the iron rungs of the bridge ladder.

"Wot's up?" demanded Coke, who was fully dressed, though Hozier thought
he had retired two hours earlier. "Oh, the beer is frothin' up to
their eyes, is it?" went on the skipper, after listening to a brief
summary of events. "I thought, mebbe, the wh