on him further, but the talking was evidently
trying to him, and I had to wait. It was much to have learnt that up to a
month ago all was well with those dearest to me, though his last words
raised new black fears.

I hung about outside till the hospital attendant paid his belated visit,
and then questioned him.

"A shot through the lung," he told me, "and a bout of fever on top of it.
Lung healing, needs nursing. Do you know him?"

"He is from my country. If you'll tell me what to do I'll see to him."

"Then I'll leave him to you. We've got our hands full over there," and he
gave me simple directions as to treatment, and told me to report to him
each day.

And so my work was cut out for me, and for the time being all thought of
escape was put aside.

It was as much as I could do to keep Le Marchant from talking, but I
insisted and bullied him into the silence that was good for him, and had my
reward in his healing lung and slowly returning strength.

To keep him quiet I sat much with him, and told him by degrees pretty
nearly all that had happened to me. In the matter of Torode I could not at
first make up my mind whether to disclose the whole or not, and so told him
only how John Ozanne and the _Swallow_ encountered Main Rouge, and came to
grief, and how the privateer, having picked me up, had lodged me on board
the _Josephine_.

I thought he eyed me closely while I told of it, and then doubted if it was
not my own lack of candour that prompted the thought.

His recovery was slow work at best, for the wound had brought on fever, and
the fever had reduced him terribly, and when the later journeying renewed
the wound trouble he had barely strength to hang on. But he was an Island
man, and almost kin to me for the love I bore Carette, and I spared myself
no whit in his service, thinking ever of her. And the care and attention I
was able to give him, and perhaps the very fact of companionship, and the
hopes I held out of escape together when he should be well enough, wrought
mightily in him. So much so that the hospital man, when he looked in, now
and again, to see how we were getting on, told me he would want my help
elsewhere as soon as my present patient was on his feet again, as I was
evidently built for tending sick men.

As soon as Le Merchant's lung healed sufficiently to let him speak without
ill consequences, I got out of him particulars of the disaster that had
befallen them.

They were running an u