reason of the very dangers we have shared! To state such a mad
proposition is to answer it. Who is he that he should sunder those
whom God has joined together? And what other man and woman now
breathing can lay better claim than we to have been joined by the
Almighty?"

The strange exigencies of their lives during the past two days had
ordained that this should be Philip's first avowal of his feelings.
Under the stress of overpowering impulse he had clasped Iris to his
heart when they were parting on the island. In obedience to a stronger
law than any hitherto revealed to her innocent consciousness the girl
had flown to his arms when he came to the hut. And that was all their
love-making, two blissful moments of delirium wrenched from a time of a
gaunt tragedy, and followed by a few hours of self-negation. Yet they
sufficed--to the man--and the woman is never too ready to count the
cost when her heart declares its passion.

But the morrow was not to be denied. Its bitter awakening had come.
In the very agony of a sublime withdrawal Iris realized what manner of
man this was whom she had determined to thrust aside so that she might
keep her troth. She dared not look at him. She could not compel her
quivering lips to frame a word of excuse or reiterated resolve. With a
heart-breaking cry of sheer anguish she fled from him, running away
along the deck with the uncertain steps of some sorely stricken
creature of the wild.

He did not try to restrain her. Heedless of the perplexed scowl with
which Coke was watching him from the bridge, he looked after her until
she vanished in the cabin which had been vacated for her use by the
chief engineer of the vessel. Even her manifest distress gave him a
sense of riotous joy that was hardly distinguishable from the keenest
spiritual suffering.

"Give you up!" he muttered again. "No, Iris, not if Satan brought
every dead Verity to aid the living one in his demand."

Coke, to whom tact was anathema, chose that unhappy instant to summon
him to take charge of the ship. The German master and crew had not
caused trouble to their conquerors after the first short struggle.
They washed their hands of responsibility, professed to be satisfied
with the written indemnity and promise of reward given by De Sylva, and
otherwise placed the resources of the vessel entirely at his disposal.
A more peaceable set of men never existed. Though they numbered
sixteen, three more than the