And as I went I thought of Carette and how she looked when I spoke about her to her father.  And one minute I thought I had seen in her a brief look which was not entirely discontent, and the next minute I was in doubt.  Perhaps it was a gleam of anger and annoyance.  I could not tell, for the chief thing I had seen in her face was undoubtedly a vast confusion at the publicity of my declaration.  In my mind also was the contradiction of Helier Le Marchant’s assertion that Torode would take no Island man into his crew, and his fathers advice to go and try him.  I was inclined to think that Helier would prove right, for, even with my four years’ experience of men and things, I saw that Monsieur Le Marchant was beyond my understanding.

My boat swirled into the narrow way between Herm and Jethou, where the water came up lunging and thrusting like great black jelly-fish.  I dropped my sail and took the oars, and stood with my face to the bows and pulled cautiously among the traps and snares that lay thick on every side and still more dangerously out of sight.  So I crept round the south of Herm and drew into the little roadstead on the west.

And the first thing I saw, and saw no other for a while, was the handsomest ship I had ever set eyes on.  A long low black schooner, with a narrow beading of white at deck level, and masts that tapered off into fishing-rods.  She was pierced for six guns a-side, and a great tarpaulin cover on the forecastle and another astern hinted at something heavier there.  Her lines and finish were so graceful that I felt sure she was French built, for English builders ever consider strength before beauty.  A very fast boat, I judged, but how she would behave in dirty weather I was not so sure.  Anyway, a craft to make a sailor’s heart hungry to see her loosed and free of the seas.  She sat the water like a gull, so lightly that one half expected a sudden unfolding of wings and a soaring flight into the blue.

I was still gazing with all my eyes, and drifting slowly in, when a sharp hail brought me round facing a man who leaned with his arms on a wall of rock and looked over and down at me.

“Hello there!”

“Hello!” I replied, and saw that it was young Torode himself.

From my position I could see little except the rising ground in the middle of the island, but I got the impression, chiefly no doubt from what I had heard, and from the thin curls of smoke that rose in a line behind him, that there was quite a number of houses there.  In fact the place had all the look of a fortified post.

“Tiens!  It is Monsieur Carre, is it not?  And what may Monsieur Carre want here?” His tone was somewhat masterful, if not insolent.  I felt an inclination to resent it, but bethought me in time that such could be no help to my plans, and that, moreover, nothing was to be gained by concealment.

“I came to see your father.  Is he to be seen?”