not mean that! Philip, don't be angry with me
to-day. You are wringing my heart!"

It was in Hozier's mind to scoff in no measured terms at the absurd
theory that he should renounce his oft-won bride because a pair of
elderly gentlemen in Bootle had made a bargain in which she was staked
against so many bags of gold. But pity for her suffering joined forces
with a fine certainty that fortune would not play such a scurvy trick
as to rob him of his divinity after leading him through an Inferno to
the very gate of Paradise. For that is how he regarded the perils of
Fernando Noronha. He was young, and the ethics of youth cling to
romance. It seemed only right and just that he should have been proved
worthy of Iris ere he gained the heaven of her love. There might be
portals yet unseen, with guardian furies waiting to entrap him, and he
would brave them all for her dear sake. But his very soul rebelled
against the notion that he had become her chosen knight merely to
gratify the unholy ardor of some decrepit millionaire. He laughed
savagely at the fantasy, and his protest burst into words strange on
his lips.

"I shall never give you up to any other man," he said. "I have won you
by the sword, and, please God, I shall keep you against all claimants.
Twenty-two men sailed out of Liverpool on board the Andromeda, and it
was given to me among the twenty-two that I should pluck you from
darkness into light. I had only seen you that day on the wharf, yet I
was thinking of you constantly, little dreaming that you were within a
few yards of me all the time. I was planning some means of meeting you
again when our surly-tempered skipper bade me burst in the door that
kept you from me. And that is what I have been doing ever since,
Iris--breaking down barriers, smashing them, whether they were flesh
and blood or nature's own obstacles, so that I might not lose you.
Give you up! Not while I live! Why, you yourself dragged me away from
certain death when I was lying unconscious on the _Andromeda's_ deck.
A second time, you saved not me alone but the ten others who are left
out of the twenty-two, by bringing us back to Grand-pere in the hour
that our escape seemed to be assured had we put out to sea. We are
more than quits, dear heart, when we strike a balance of mutual
service. We are bound by a tie of comradeship that is denied to most.
And who shall sever it? The man who gains three times the worth of his
ship by