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. But all my thoughts were in a vast
confusion, with this one thought only overtopping all the rest,--Carette
was in the hands of Torode, and I must get there as quickly as possible.

There are times when foolish recklessness drives headlong through the
obstacles which reason would bid one avoid, and so come desperate deeds
accomplished while reason sits pondering the way.

I have since thought that the only possible reason why I succeeded in
crossing unseen was that the boiling anxiety within drove me to the venture
at once. I followed so closely on their track that they had not yet had
time to take precautions, which presently they did. But at the time my one
and only thought--the spring and spur of all my endeavour--was
this,--Carette was on Herm and I must get there too.

The toil of rowing, however, relieved my brain by degrees to the point of
reasonable thinking. One unarmed man against a multitude must use such
strategy as he can devise, and so such little common-sense as was left me
took me in under the Fauconnière by Jethou, and then cautiously across the
narrow channel to the tumbled masses of dark rock on the eastern side of
Herm. Here were hiding-places in plenty, and I had no difficulty in poling
my boat up a ragged cleft where none could see it save from the entrance.
And here I was safe enough, for all the living was on the other side of
the island, the side which lay towards Guernsey.

Instinct, I suppose, and the knowledge of what I myself would have done in