“Oh, Phil!  Phil!  What is it?  I thought you were dead.”

“Dieu merci, it is he who is dead, I think.  We will see,” and I managed a light with my flint and steel and knelt down by the fallen man.

“Who is it?” asked Carette, breathless still.

“It is Monsieur Torode.”

“Torode!” she gasped, and bent with me to make sure.  “Bon Dieu, how came he here?”

“That I don’t know.  This seems not the hiding-place Uncle George supposed.  I was wakened by his trying to strike a light, and I thought he was a ghost.”

I hoped he was dead, and so an end to all our fears from him.  But I found him still breathing, though but faintly, and he had not his senses.  I dragged him across to my bed and sought for his wound, and found it at last in the head.  Either the old pistol had cast high, or my sudden up-jump, or his down-bending, had upset my aim.  For the shot had entered the side of his head at the back, just above the ear, and as I could find no hole whence it had issued it was probably in his head still.  The wound had bled very little, but beyond his slow, heavy breathing he gave no sign of life.

On the floor, where he had fallen, I found a seaman’s torch, which had been lighted but was now sodden with water.  He had probably dropped it or dragged it in some pool as he made his way into the cave.

And, now that the hot anger and the fear of the man were out of me, and he lay under my hand helpless to do us further harm, I found myself ready to do what I could for him, since, unfortunately, he was not dead.

I took Uncle George at his word and broached one of his little kegs, and found it most excellent French cognac, and mixing some with water in the lid of the can, I prevailed on Carette to drink some too.  We had both been not a little shaken by these happenings, and the fiery life in the spirit pulled us together and braced the slackened ropes.  I dropped a little into Torode also, and it ran down his throat, but he showed no sign of appreciation, and I doubted the fine liquor was wasted.

Then, as there was no chance of sleep, I lit my pipe and found comfort in it, and regretted that Carette had no similar consolation of her own, though I do not take to women smoking as I have seen many of them do abroad.  But there was not even a crust to eat, so we sat and talked in whispers of the very strange fate, or chance, or the leading of God, that had brought Torode to us in this remote place into which we had fled to escape him.

“But, Phil, however did he get here?” asked Carette.  “For Uncle George said that no living man—?”

“It was that made me think him a ghost,” I said, “until I heard his flint and steel, which no ghost needs.”

“Did he come in the way we did?”

“He was standing just there when I woke.  I’ll go and look,” and I crept away down the narrow way till I found myself against the piled stones which blocked it, and felt certain that no one had passed that way since George Hamon went out and closed the door behind him.  I heard the in-coming tide gurgling in the channel outside, and returned to Carette much puzzled.