The _Andromeda's_ crew did not attempt to minimize it.

The choice offered lay only in the manner of their death.

As to the prospect of ultimate escape, they hardly gave it a thought.

Some among them had served in the armies of Europe, and they, at least, were under no delusion concerning the issue of an attack on a fort by less than a score of unarmed men--seventeen to be exact, since two of the ship's company were so maimed by the bursting of the shell on the forecastle as to be practically helpless; it was by the rarest good fortune that they were able to walk.
Iris smiled at them in her frank way.
"I hope you will all be spared to ship on a new _Andromeda_," she said.
No sooner had the words left her lips than the thought came unbidden: "If my uncle and Captain Coke wished the ship to be thrown away, nothing could have better suited their purposes than this tragic error." For the instant, the unforeseen outcome of that Sunday afternoon's plotting in the peaceful garden of Linden House held her imagination.
She recalled each syllable of it, and there throbbed in her brain the hitherto undreamed of possibility that Coke had brought the _Andromeda_ to Fernando Noronha in pursuance of his thievish project.
At once she whispered to Hozier: "Is there anyone on the path below ?" "No," he said.

"The Brazilians are with Coke at the top of the gully." "Is it safe for us to go the other way." "I think so.