I do not think there was in me any mercenary motive in this matter.  I am quite sure that in so thinking of things I attributed none to Carette.  It seemed to me that if a man wanted a wife he ought to be able to keep her, and I considered the girl who married a man of precarious livelihood—­as I saw some of them do—­very much of a fool.  I have since come to know, however, that that is only one way of looking at it, and that to some women the wholehearted love of a true man counts for very much more than anything else he can bring her.

For money, simply as money, I had no craving whatever.  For the wife it might help me to, and the security and comfort it might bring to her, I desired it ardently, and my thoughts were much exercised as to how to arrive at it in sufficiency.  I found myself at one of the great cross-roads of life, where, I suppose, most men find themselves at one time or another.  I knew that much—­to me, perhaps, everything—­must depend on how I chose now, and I spent much time wandering in lonely places, and lying among the gorse cushions or in the short grass of the headlands, thinking of Carette and trying to see my way to her.

There were open to us all, in those days, four ways of life—­more, maybe, if one had gone seeking them, but these four right to our hands.

I could ship again in the trading line,—­and some time, a very long way ahead, I might come to the command of a ship, if I escaped the perils of the sea till that time came.  But I could not see Carette very clearly in that line of life.

I could join a King’s ship, and go fight the Frenchmen and all the others who were sometimes on our side and sometimes against us.  But I could not see Carette at all in that line of life.

I could settle down to the quiet farmer-fisherman life on Sercq, as my grandfather had done with great contentment.  But I was not my grandfather, and he was one in a thousand, and he had never had to win Carette.

And, lastly,—­I could join my fellows in the smuggling or privateering lines, in which some of them, especially the Guernsey men, were waxing mightily fat and prosperous.

For reasons which I did not then understand, but which I do now, since I learned about my father, my mother’s face was set dead against the free-trading.  And so I came to great consideration of the privateering business and was drawn to it more and more.  The risks were greater, perhaps, even than on the King’s ships, since the privateer hunts alone and may fall easy prey to larger force.  But the returns were also very much greater, and the life more reasonable, for on the King’s ships the discipline was said to be little short of tyranny at times, and hardly to be endured by free men.

When, as the result of long turning over of the matter in my own mind, I had decided that the way to Carette lay through the privateering, I sought confirmation of my idea in several likely quarters before broaching it at home.