things hot for him. He's a treacherous devil. I'm not sure he hadn't a hand
in our trouble also."

"If he had any end to serve I could believe it of him."

"But what end?"

"Young Torode wants Carette."

He laughed as though he deemed my horizon bounded by Carette, as indeed it
was. "No need for him to make away with the whole of her family in order
to get her," he said. "It would not commend him to her."

And presently, after musing over the matter, he said, "All the same, Carré,
what I can't understand is why you're alive. In Torode's place now I'd
surely have sunk you with the rest. Man! his life is in your hands."

"I understand it no more than you do. I can only suppose he thought he'd
finally disposed of me by shipping me aboard the _Joséphine_."

"A sight easier to have shipped you into the sea with a shot at your heels,
and a sight safer too."

"It is so," I said. "And how I come to be here, and alive, I cannot tell."

As soon as the lung healed, and he was able to get about in the fresh air,
he picked up rapidly, and we began to plan our next move.

We grew very friendly, as was only natural, and our minds were open to one
another. The only point on which I found him in any way awanting was in a