And I told her more fully than I had done of all that had happened to me on
Herm, and on the French ship in the West Indies, and at Amperdoo, and of
our escape into France in the preventive officers' boat, and of that last
desperate pull across from Surtainville.

"But, mon Gyu, Phil, what a strange man!" she said of Torode. "Why should
he let you live one time, and try his hardest to kill you another?"

"I do not know. I have puzzled over it to no purpose. Now I have given it
up."

"He is perhaps mad," she suggested.

"He did not seem so, except in not making an end of me when he had the
chance, and that truly was madness on his part."

The time was never long with us, for we were strangely set apart from time
and its passage. We ate and slept, and talked and walked, just whenever the
inclination came, and measurements of time we had none. But Aunt Jeanne's
pie was finished and we were down to the ham bone, and what little bread
and gâche we had left was growing hard, and by that Carette said we had
been there at least three days, and we looked for George Hamon's coming at
any moment, except when the tunnel was growling and the Boutiques roaring
and sobbing.




CHAPTER XXXIV