different shade and kind from that which flowed so temperately in our cool
Sercq veins.

It was much thinking of Carette and her ever-growing beauty and
accomplishments which brought me to that. Truly there was no girl in all
Sercq like her, nor on Guernsey I would wager, and her father and brothers
also were very different from the other Island men. As likely as not they
were French, come over to escape the troubles. That would account for many
things, and the idea, once in my mind, took firm root there. Sometime, when
opportunity offered, I would ask Jeanne Falla. She would certainly know
all about her own husband's family. Whether she would tell me was quite
another matter.

Up to now, you see, Carette, as Carette, had sufficed, but now Carette was
growing out of herself and her surroundings, and it was the why and
wherefore of this that my thoughts went in search of. For if Carette grew
out of her surroundings she might grow beyond me, and it behoved me to see
to it, for she had grown to be a part of my life, and life without her
would be a poor thing indeed.

And all these things I used to turn over and over in my heart during the
sultry night-watches in the West Indies, when the heat lightnings gleamed
incessantly all round the horizon, and it was too hot to sleep even when
off duty; and during the grimmer watches round about Newfoundland, with the
fog as thick as wool inside and outside one, and the smell of the floating
bergs in the air; and most of all when we were plunging homeward as fast as
we could make it, and the call of Carette drew my heart faster than my
body, till my body fairly ached for sight and sound of her.

CHAPTER XII

HOW AUNT JEANNE GAVE A PARTY

It was on my return from my fourth voyage--in the brig _Sarnia_--that
things began to happen.

The voyage had been a disastrous one all through. We had bad weather right
across to the Indies, and had to patch up there as best we could. It was
when we were slowly making our way north that a hurricane, such as those
seas know, caught us among the Bahamas and brought us to a sudden end.

The ship had been badly strained already on the voyage out, and the repairs
had been none too well done. Our masts went like carrots and we were
rolling helplessly in the grip of the storm, pumping doggedly but without
hope against seams that gaped like a sieve, when the Providence that rules
even hurricanes flung us high on a sandy coast and left us t