So some of the men were doing their duty. Thank God for that! Undeterred by the fact that a live shell had burst among the engines, the oil-stained, grim-looking engineers had not quitted their post until they had taken such precautions as lay in their power to insure the ship's safety. A light broke in on the fog in the girl's mind. Even now, at the very gate of eternity, one might try to help others! The thought brought a ray of comfort. She was about to look for the speakers when a bullet drilled a hole in a panel close to her side. She began to run again, for a terrified glance through the forward gangway showed that the ship was quite close to the land, where men in blue uniforms, wearing curiously shaped hats and white gaiters, were scattered among the rocks, some standing, some kneeling, some prone, but all taking steady aim. But it showed something more. Hozier was now lying sideways on the raised deck of the forecastle; he partly supported himself on his right arm; his left hand was pressed to his forehead; he was trying to rise. With an intuition that was phenomenal under the circumstances, Iris realized that he was screened from observation for the moment by the windlass and the corpse that lay across it. But the ship's ever increasing speed, and the curving course of her drifting, would soon bring him into sight, and then those merciless riflemen would shoot him down. "Oh, not that! Not that!" she wailed aloud. An impulse stronger than the instinct of self-preservation caused the blood to tingle in her veins. She had waited to take that one look, and now, bent double so as to avoid being seen by the soldiers, she sped back through the gangway, gained the open deck, crouched close to the bulwarks on the port side, and thus reached unscathed the foot of the companion down which the wounded men had crawled. The zinc plates on the steps were slippery with their blood, but she did not falter at the sight. Up she went, stooped over Hozier, and placed her strong young arms round his body. "Quick!" she panted, "let me help you! You will be killed if you remain here!" Her voice seemed to rouse him as from troubled sleep. "I was hit," he muttered. "What is it? What is wrong?" "Oh, come, come!" she screamed, for some unseen agency tore a transverse gash in the planking not a foot in front of them. He yielded with broken expostulations. She dragged him to the top of the stairs. Clinging to him, she half walked, half fell down the few steps. But she did not quite fall; Hozier's weight was almost more than she could manage, but she clung to him desperately, saved him from a headlong plunge to the deck, and literally carried him into the forecastle, where she found some of the crew who had scurried there like rabbits to their burrow when the first shell crashed into the engine-room. Iris's fine eyes darted lightning at them.