e was propped against the
chart-house, with a thick, black cigar sticking in his mouth and
apparently trying to touch his nose, she had lost a good deal of the
pallor and woe-begone semblance that had demoralized Hozier.

Coke heard the rapid, light footsteps, and turned his head. At all
times slow of thought and slower of speech, he was galvanized into a
sudden rigidity that differed only in degree from the symptoms
displayed by his chief officer. Certainly he could not have been more
stupefied had he seen the ghost reported overnight.

"They told me I should find you here, Captain," said she. "I must
apologize for thrusting my company on you for a long voyage,
but--circumstances--were--too much for me--and----"

Face to face with the commander of the ship, and startled anew by his
expression of blank incredulity, the glib flow of words conned so often
during the steadfast but dreadful hours spent in the lazarette failed
her.

"You know me," she faltered. "I am Iris Yorke."

Not a syllable came from the irate and astonished man gazing at her
with such a bovine stolidity. His shoulders had not abated a fraction
of their stubborn thrust against the frame of the chart-house. His
hands were immovable in the pockets of his reefer coat. The cigar
still stuck out between his lips like a miniature jib-boom. Had he
wished to terrify her by a hostile reception, he could not have
succeeded more completely, though, to be just, he meant nothing of the
sort; his wits being jumbled into chaos by the apparition of the last
person then alive whom he expected or desired to see on board the
_Andromeda_.

But Iris could not interpret his mood, and she strove vainly to conquer
the fear welling up in her breast because of the grim anger that seemed
to blaze at her from every line of Coke's brick-red countenance. In
the struggle to pour forth the excuses and protestations that sounded
so plausible in her own ears, while secured from observation behind the
locked door of her retreat, she blundered unhappily on to the very
topic that she had resolved to keep secret.

"Why are you so unwilling to acknowledge me?" she cried, with a nervous
indignation that lent a tremor to her voice. "You have met me often
enough. You saw me on Sunday at my uncle's house?"

"Did I?" said Coke, speaking at last, but really as much at a loss for
something to say as the girl herself. He had recognized her instantly,
just as he would recognize