“It’s a vile business,” he said, “but we saw the possibilities of it long since, and had our suspicions of Torode himself.  I’m not sure that he’s the only one at it either.  They miscall us Le Marchants behind our backs, but honest smuggling’s sweet compared with that kind of work.  And so Torode is Main Rouge!  That’s news anyway.  If ever we get home, mon beau, we’ll make 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, Carre, 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 Josephine.”

“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 full and proper appreciation of his sister.  He conceded, in brotherly fashion, that she was a good little girl, and pretty, as girls went, and possessed of a spirit of her own.  And I, who had never had a sister, nor indeed much to do with girls as a class, could only marvel at his dullness, for to me Carette was the very rose and crown of life, and the simple thought of her was a cordial to the soul.

I confided to him my plans for escape, and we laid our heads together as to the outer stockade, but with all our thinking could not see the way across it.  That open space between, with its hedge of sentries, seemed an impassable barrier.

We were also divided in opinion as to the better course to take if we should get outside.  Le Marchant favoured a rush straight to the east coast, which was not more than thirty miles away.  There he felt confident of falling in with some of the free-trading community who would put us across to Holland or even to Dunkerque, where they were in force and recognised.  I, on the other hand, stuck out for the longer journey right through England to the south coast, whence it should be possible to get passage direct to the Islands.  Whichever way we went we were fully aware that our troubles would only begin when the prison was left behind us, and that they would increase with every step we took towards salt water.  For so great had been the waste of life in the war that the fleets were short-handed, and anything in the shape of a man was pounced on by the pressgangs as soon as seen, and flung aboard ship to be licked into shape to be shot at.