ud of
her lover. At these mortal crises, the woman demands courage in the
man.

"Oh!" she gasped, and clung to him more tightly.

Under such circumstances it was only to be expected that his arm would
clasp her round the waist; Disraeli's famous epigram was coined for
diplomacy, not for love-making.

Hozier strained his eyes through the gloom to try and discover the
effect of the cannonade on the gunboat. He was quickly alive to the
significance of the answering broadside. Then the black hull grew dim
and vanished. His sailor's sympathies went with the escaping ship.

"She has got away! I am jolly glad of it," he cried. "It was a dirty
trick to open fire on her in that fashion. Just how they served the
_Andromeda_, the hounds, only we had never a gun to tickle them up in
return."

"Do you think that many of the poor creatures have been killed?" asked
Iris tremulously. The din of ordnance and bursting shells had ceased
as suddenly as it began. Lights appeared in nearly every house.
Shouting men were running along the neighboring wharf. Maceio, never a
heavy sleeper in bulk, dreamed for a second of earthquakes, leaped out
of bed, and ran into the streets in the negligent costume which the
Italians describe by the delightful word, _confidenza_.

"I don't suppose so," Hozier reassured her. "If the artillery had made
good practice at that short range the gunboat must have sunk at her
moorings. Her men naturally couldn't miss the town. There was a rare
old rattle among the crockery behind the soldiers. Did you hear it? I
wonder what went over?"

He was as excited as a schoolboy, almost jubilant. Poor Iris! Though
she was now a veteran in scenes of death and disaster, she realized
that fate had erred in choosing her as a heroine.

Coke and Watts drew near.

"Dom Wot's-'is-name wasn't long in gettin' busy," chuckled Coke. "Gev'
her a dose of the _Andromeda's_ physic, eh? I'm sorry the blighters
managed to 'ook it."

Though he had just uttered an opinion directly contrary to his
captain's, Hozier deemed it wise to be non-committal.

"The guns must have been laid badly," he said.

"Mebbe, an' wot's more, d--n 'em, they knew there was something in
front that could shoot back."

So Coke was at least impartial. He cared not a jot how the Brazilians
slaughtered each other so long as De Sylva established the new regime
speedily.

"I never was a fightin' man meself," murmured Watts weakly. "That