Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 14, 2025
There were many such meetings, for we could see the riders' heads bobbing in every lane. And twice we met young Torode, galloping at speed, and showing to great advantage on Black Boy, whose ruffled black coat was streaked with sweat and splashed with foam, and who was evidently not enjoying himself at all.
The gray shadows drew slowly off the face of the sea, and we stood up and scanned the northern horizon anxiously. But there was no flaw upon the brimming white rim. Torode had evidently not been able to get round La Hague, and a man must have been blind indeed not to see therein the hand of Providence; for a cap full of wind and he would have been down on us like a wolf on two strayed lambs.
In my mind also was the contradiction of Helier Le Marchant's assertion that Torode would take no Island man into his crew, and his fathers advice to go and try him. I was inclined to think that Helier would prove right, for, even with my four years' experience of men and things, I saw that Monsieur Le Marchant was beyond my understanding.
Then young Torode sang "Jean Graïn d'orge," in a fine big voice, and Carette sang "Nico v'nait m' faire l'amour," in a very sweet one, and I was sorely troubled that I had never learned to sing.
For Carette and my mother and home and everything lay up the climbing way, and I believed, poor fool, that I had got the better of a man like Torode of Herm. At sight of us, one came running down from Les Lâches where he had gone at sound of the firing, and greeted us with amazement. "Bon Gyu, Phil Carré! And we thought you dead! And Helier Le Marchant! Where do you come from?
Safety for both of us lay in my arms and legs, and their power to gain a landing and get up the slope before the others could damage them. I accepted her sacrifice, and set my teeth, and strove to pull harder still. Young Torode himself was distinguishable in the boat behind, and I knew his passion for her and did not believe he would deliberately attempt her life. Nor do I now.
But there was not even a crust to eat, so we sat and talked in whispers of the very strange fate, or chance, or the leading of God, that had brought Torode to us in this remote place into which we had fled to escape him. "But, Phil, however did he get here?" asked Carette. "For Uncle George said that no living man ?"
It was, as I had thought, Torode himself, and I would have given all I possessed which indeed was not overmuch to know what was passing concerning me in that great black head of his. But I did not ask him, for I should not have expected him to tell me. I just ate and drank every scrap of what he brought me, with as cheerful an air as I could compass, and thanked him politely when I had done.
"'Tis, sure! Can you spare me Black Boy?" "Aw now, my dear, but I'm sorry! You see, I'd no idea of you coming, and the young Torode came along this very afternoon and begged me to lend him Black Boy, and I promised, not knowing But there's Gray Robin. You can have him. He's a bit heavy, maybe, but he's safe as a cart, and Black Boy's got more than a bit of the devil in him still.
A massive black head, and a grim dark face with a week's growth of bristling black hair about it, and a dark moustache, a strong lowering face, and a pair of keen black eyes that bored holes in one; that was Torode of Herm as I first set eyes on him. He stared at me so long and fixedly, as if he had never seen anything like me before, that at last, out of sheer discomfort, I had to speak.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking