"
Iris was far from Bootle and its moralities.
"I don't care what happens so long as you are not hurt," she whispered.
"Mr. Hozier," said Coke thickly.
"Yes, sir."
"You've got good eyes an' quick ears. Lay out as far forrard as you
can, an' pass the word for steerin'."
Hozier obeyed. The discordant bleat of a foghorn came again,
apparently right ahead. In a few seconds he caught the flapping of a
propeller, and silenced the launch's engines.
"We are close in now," he said to Coke, after a brief and noiseless
drift. "Why not try a hail!"
"Ship ahoy!" shouted Coke, with all the force of brazen lungs.
The screw of the unseen ship stopped. The sigh of escaping steam
reached them.
"_Holla_! _Wer rufe_?" was the gruff answer.
"Sink me if it ain't a German!" growled Coke, _sotto-voce_, "Norrie,
you must stick here till I sing out to you. Then open your exhaust an'
unscrew a sea-cock. . . . Wot ship is that?" he vociferated aloud.
Some answer was forthcoming--what, it mattered not. The launch bumped
into the rusty ribs of a twelve-hundred ton tramp. A rope ladder was
lowered. A round-faced Teuton mate--fat and placid--was vastly
surprised to find a horde of nondescripts pouring up the ship's side in
the wake of a short, thick, bovine-looking person who neither
understood nor tried to understand a word he was saying.
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