rouble also."

"If he had any end to serve I could believe it of him."

"But what end?"

"Young Torode wants Carette."

He laughed as though he deemed my horizon bounded by Carette, as indeed it
was. "No need for him to make away with the whole of her family in order
to get her," he said. "It would not commend him to her."

And presently, after musing over the matter, he said, "All the same, Carre,
what I can't understand is why you're alive. In Torode's place now I'd
surely have sunk you with the rest. Man! his life is in your hands."

"I understand it no more than you do. I can only suppose he thought he'd
finally disposed of me by shipping me aboard the _Josephine_."

"A sight easier to have shipped you into the sea with a shot at your heels,
and a sight safer too."

"It is so," I said. "And how I come to be here, and alive, I cannot tell."

As soon as the lung healed, and he was able to get about in the fresh air,
he picked up rapidly, and we began to plan our next move.

We grew very friendly, as was only natural, and our minds were open to one
another. The only point on which I found him in any way awanting was in a
full and proper appreciation of his sister. He conceded, in brotherly
fashion, that she was a good little girl, and pretty, as girls went, and
possessed of a spirit of her own. And I, who had never had a sister, nor
indeed much to do with girls as a class, could only marvel at his dullness,
for to me Carette was the very rose and crown of life, and the simple
thought of her was a cordial to the soul.

I confided to him my plans for escape, and we laid our heads together as to
the outer stockade, but with all our thinking could not see the way across
it. That open space between, with its hedge of sentries, seemed an
impassable barrier.

We were also divided in opinion as to the better course to take if we
should get outside. Le Marchant favoured a rush straight to the east coast,
which was not more than thirty miles away. There he felt confident of
falling in with some of the free-trading community who would put us across
to Holland or even to Dunkerque, where they were in force and recognised.
I, on the other hand, stuck out for the longer journey right through
England to the south coast, whence it should be possible to get passage
direct to the Islands. Whichever way we went we were fully aware that our
troubles would only begin when the prison was left behind us, and that they
would incr