The time passed very slowly with me. I spent most of it against the bars,
peering out at the sea. Once or twice distant boats passed across my narrow
view, and I wondered who were in them. And I thought sadly of the folk in
Peter Port still looking hopefully for the _Swallow_, and following her
possible fortunes, and wishing her good luck--and she and all her crew,
except myself, at the bottom of the sea, as foully murdered as ever men in
this world were.

Twice each day Torode himself brought me food and watched me steadfastly
while I ate it. His oversight and interest never seemed to slacken. At
first it troubled me, but there was in it nothing whatever of the captor
gloating over his prisoner; simply, as far as I could make out, a gloomy
desire to note how I took matters, which put me on my mettle to keep up a
bold front, though my heart was heavy enough at times at the puzzling
strangeness of it all.

I thought much of Carette and my mother, and my grandfather and Krok, and I
walked each day for hours, to and fro, to and fro, to keep myself from
falling sick or going stupid. But the time passed slower than time had ever
gone with me before, and I grew sick to death of that narrow cleft in the
rock.

By a mark I made on the wall for each day of my stay there, it was on the
tenth day that Torode first spoke to me as I ate my dinner.

"Listen!" he said, so unexpectedly, after his strange silence, that I
jumped in spite of myself.

"Once you asked to join us and I refused. Now you must join us--or die. I
have no desire for your death, but--well--you understand."