e won't take
you, mon gars. He picks his own, and there is not an Island man among
them."

The first thing I saw when I entered the house was Carette, busy at one of
the bunks in the dimness at the far end of the room. She looked round, and
then straightened up in surprise.

"Why, Phil? What are you doing here? One moment"--and I saw that she was
tying a bandage round the arm of the man in the bunk. His eyes caught the
light from the windows and gleamed savagely at me under his rumpled black
hair. A similar face looked out from an adjoining bunk. When she had
finished she came quickly across to me.

"Measles again?" I said, remembering my former visit.

"Yes, measles," she said, with the colour in her face and questions in her
eyes.

"I came to see your father, and if I was in luck, yourself also, Carette."

"He is sleeping," she said, with a glance towards a side room. "He was
anxious about these two, and he would take the night watch. They are
feverish, you see."

"I will wait."

"He won't be long. He never takes much sleep. What do you want to--" and
then some sudden thought sent a flush of colour into her face and a quick
enquiry into her eyes, and she stopped short and stood looking at me.

"It's this, Carette--" and then the door of the side room opened quietly
and Jean Le Marchant came out, looking at us with much surprise.

He was very little changed since I had seen him last. It was the same keen,
handsome face, with its long white moustache and cold dark eyes, somewhat
tired at the moment with their night duties.

"And this is--?" he asked suavely, as I bowed.

"It is Phil Carre, of Belfontaine, father," said Carette quickly. "He has
come to see you."

"Very kind of Monsieur Carre. It is not after my health you came to
enquire, monsieur?"

"No, sir. It is this. I have decided to go privateering, and I want to go
with the best man. I am told Torode of Herm is the best, and that you can
tell me more about him than anyone else."

"Ah--Torode! Yes, he is a very clever man is Torode--a clever man, and very
successful. And privateering is undoubtedly the game nowadays. Honest
free-trading isn't in it compared with the privateering, though even that
isn't what it was, they say. Like everything else, it is overdone, and many
mouths make scant faring. And so you want to go out with Torode?" he asked
musingly.

"That is my idea. You see, monsieur, I have spent nearly four years in the
trading to the