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.