WHEREIN THE "ANDROMEDA" BEGINS HER VOYAGE The second officer of the _Andromeda_ was pacing the bridge with the slow alertness of responsibility.

He would walk from port to starboard, glance forrard and aft, peer at the wide crescent of the starlit sea, stroll back to port, and again scan ship and horizon.
Sometimes he halted in front of the binnacle lamp to make certain that the man at the wheel was keeping the course, South 15 West, set by Captain Coke shortly before midnight.

His ears listened mechanically to the steady pulse-beats of the propeller; his eyes swept the vague plain of the ocean for the sparkling white diamond that would betoken a mast-head light; he was watchful and prepared for any unforeseen emergency that might beset the vessel intrusted to his care.

But his mind dwelt on something far removed from his duties, though, to be sure, every poet who ever scribbled four lines of verse has found rhyme and reason in comparing women with stars, and ships, and the sea.
If Philip Hozier was no poet, he was a sailor, and sailors are notoriously susceptible to the charms of the softer sex.

But the only woman he loved was his mother, the only bride he could look for during many a year was a mermaid, though these sprites of the deep waters seem to be frequenting undiscovered haunts since mariners ceased to woo the wind.