“Where will you say I’ve gone?”

“Bidemme!  I don’t know ...  You can trust old Krok?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then, as soon as you have had the other patched up and settled somewhere in safety, you’d better leave him in Krok’s care and get back here.  And the sooner the better.  The people in Guernsey will want your story from your own lips in this matter.”

“How soon can we get into the cave?”

“Nom-de-Dieu, yes!...  Voyons donc!—­About two o’clock with a wet shirt. 
This wind will pile the water up, and the Race will be against us in the
Gouliot.  The sooner we’re off the better.”

He handed me a sum of money, packed into a basket all the eatables he could find and two bottles of wine, and lit a lantern, and we set off through the gusty night, past the deserted houses, past Beaumanoir all dark and dead, and so down into Havre Gosselin, where the waves were roaring white.

We drew in Uncle George’s small boat by its ropes and got aboard his larger one, and tied the smaller to drag astern.

The west wind was still blowing strong, but it had slackened somewhat with the turn of the tide.  But when we tried to breast the Gouliot passage with that heavy boat, we found it impossible.  Three times we nosed inch by inch into the swirling black waters, which leaped and spat and bit at us with fierce white fangs, and three times we were swept away down past Pierre au Norman, drooping over our oars like broken men.

“Guyabble!  This is no good!” gasped Uncle George, as we came whirling back the third time.  “We must go round.”  So we drew in the oars, and hoisted a bit of our lug, and ran straight out past Les Dents, whose black heads were sheets of flying foam, to make a long tack round Brecqhou.  Then, with the wind full on our port quarter, we made a quick, straight run for the Boutiques, and found ourselves not very far astray.  Dropping the sail, and leaving Krok in charge, Uncle George and I pulled in the small boat to the channel into which his cave opened.  It was still awash, but we could not wait.  We dragged the boat up onto the shingle just showing at the head of the chasm, then wading out up to our shoulders to the leaning slab, we pulled down the rock screen and crawled into the tunnel.

The wounded man lay just as we had left him, breathing slowly and regularly, but showing no other sign of life.  We dropped a little cognac into him, and took him by the shoulders and feet and carried him into the tunnel.  How we got him through I cannot tell—­inch by inch, shoving and hauling, till the sweat poured down us in that narrow place.

But we got him to the opening at last, and hauled the boat down and hoisted him in, soaked to the skin each one of us.  Uncle George carefully closed his door, and we pulled out to Krok, waiting in the lugger.

“Mon Dieu!  I have had enough of him,” said Uncle George, worn out, I suppose, with all the night’s doings.  “If he dies, I shall not care much.  He is better dead.”