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If she takes to young Torode while I'm away it's because she likes him best." "And she, Carette, what did she say to it?" "She didn't say anything." "Tuts! How did she look, boy? A girl tells more with her face and her eyes than with her tongue, even when they say opposite things." "I'm not sure how she took it, Aunt Jeanne. How would you have taken it, now?" "Ma fé!
My work lay on Herm, and as like as not might end there, for death as sudden and certain as Helier Le Marchant's awaited me if Torode set eyes on me, and that I knew full well. Had my brain been working quietly I should probably have doubted the wisdom of crossing to Herm in daylight.
Then there was much sluicing of water above my head, as our decks were washed down, and presently there came a rattling of boards which puzzled me much, until the end of one dipped suddenly across my porthole, and my straining wits suggested that Torode was changing his stripes and becoming a Frenchman once more.
And then, Torode having spoken no word, and the doctor saying he could do no more for him, I had him carried down to the boat and took him across to the Ecréhous. He had been gaining strength daily, and, except for a certain disinclination to exertion of any kind, and his lack of speech, looked almost himself again.
"Peter Port can wait the news, and Torode can wait his dues. I am not going till I take you with me, Carette." "They will kill you!" she cried, and let go my hands to wring her own. "Not if I can help it," I said stubbornly. "I want to live and I want you, and God fights on the right side. If they do get you away, Carette, remember that if I am alive I will follow you to the end of the world."
Tired of honest trading?" "I didn't know privateering had become dishonest." "Bit different from what you've been accustomed to, isn't it?" "Bit more profitable anyway, so they say. Are you open for any hands?" But Torode had turned and was in conversation with someone inside the rampart.
He seized his right hand with his left, and held it and quieted himself by a great effort. And slowly and jerkily he wrote, in letters that fell about the page, "Carette Torode " and then the charcoal fell out of his hand and he rolled in a heap on the floor. My heart gave a broken kick and fell sickly. It dropped in a moment to what had happened.
For here, in this close darkness, were we three within arm's length of one another; the man I had reason to fear and hate above any other on earth, and the price of whose life was my own, a price I would not pay; the woman whose life was dearer to me than my own, for whom I would gladly pay any price, even the utmost; and myself, by force of circumstances, the unwilling link that had brought them both there, and the menace to both their lives, for Torode came for me and Carette came with me.
With another rock I could have smashed him where he lay, and at small risk to myself; but hurling rocks in hot blood is one thing and smashing fallen men is another; and Torode, lying on his face, was safer from harm than Torode on his feet with his gun in his hand.
I held him firmly by the head and soothed him with encouraging words. The old horse snuffled between gratitude and disgust, and Carette clung tightly up above, and vowed that she would not cross on Black Boy whatever Torode might say. She was devoutly thankful, I could see, when Gray Robin stepped safely onto the spreading bulk of Little Sercq.
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