CHAPTER XXII

HOW THE _JOSÉPHINE_ CAME HOME


I had ample time to look my prospects in the face while we kept watch and
ward on Martinique, and no amount of looking improved them.

My greatest hope was to return to French and English waters in the
_Joséphine_. I could perhaps have slipped away into the island, but that
would in no way have furthered my getting home, rather would it have
fettered me with new and tighter bonds. For in the end I must have boarded
some English ship and been promptly pressed into the service, and that was
by no means what I wanted. It was my own Island of Sercq I longed for, and
all that it held and meant for me.

I saw clearly that if at any time we came to a fight with a British
warship, and were captured, I must become either prisoner of war as a
Frenchman, or pressed man as an Englishman. Neither position held out hope
of a speedy return home, but, of the two, I favoured the first as offering
perhaps the greater chances.

As the weeks passed into months, all of the same dull pattern, I lost heart
at times, thinking of all that might be happening at home.

Sometimes it seemed to me hardly possible that Torode would dare to go on