his 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 Coke, 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 Coke
himself could not have supplied any reasonable analysis. 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
Coke, 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,