A sailor was knocked overboard, the carpenter was killed
outright, two other men were seriously wounded, and Hozier received a
blow on the forehead from a flying scrap of metal that stretched him on
the deck.

The gunners on shore had not allowed for the drifting of the ship.
That second shell was meant to demolish the chart-house and clear the
bridge of its occupants. Striking high and forward, it had robbed the
_Andromeda_ of her last chance. Now she was rolling in the full grip
of the tidal stream. It could only be a matter of a minute or less
before she struck.

CHAPTER IV

SHOWING WHAT BECAME OF THE "ANDROMEDA"

The island artillery did not succeed in hitting the crippled ship
again. Three more shells were fired, but each projectile screamed
harmlessly far out to sea. A trained gunner, noting these facts, would
reason that the shore battery made good practice in the first instance
solely because its ordnance was trained at a known range. Indeed, he
might even hazard a guess that the _Andromeda's_ warm reception was
arranged long before her masts and funnel rose over the horizon. That
the islanders intended nothing less than her complete destruction was
self-evident. Without the slightest warning they had tried to sink
her; and now that she was escaping the further attentions of the field
pieces, a number of troops stationed on South Point and the Isle des
Fregates began to pelt her with bullets.

Iris, when the first paralysis of fear had passed, when her stricken
senses resumed their sway and her limbs lost their palsy, flinched from
this new danger, and sank sobbing to her knees behind the canvas shield
of the bridge. Somehow, this flimsy shelter, which sailors call the
"dodger," gave some sense of safety. Her throbbing brain was incapable
of lucid thought, but it was borne in on her mistily that the world and
its occupants had suddenly gone mad. The omen of the blood-red water
had justified itself most horribly. The dead carpenter was sprawling
over the forecastle windlass. His hand still clutched the brake. The
sailor at the wheel had been shot through the throat, and had fallen
limply through the open doorway of the chart-room; he lay there,
coughing up blood and froth, and gasping his life out. The two men
wounded by the second shell were creeping down the forward companion in
the effort to avoid the hail of lead that was beating on the ship.
Hozier was raising himself on hands and