the stern and sculled slowly and silently out from the land. I turned
to the north and felt my way among the rocks, grazing here, bumping there,
but moving so gently that no great harm was done.

I knew at last, by the changed voice of the sea on the shore, that I had
come to the first beach of shells, and there I turned the boat's nose in
and ran her softly aground.

Here, where the heights of Herm run down in green slopes to the long flat
beaches, I drew the boat well up and crept to the other side of the Island,
keeping as close to the high ground as I dared.

As soon as I came out on the western side I saw that work was still going
on busily in the little roadstead, and so far I was in time. The rocky
heights sloped gradually on that side also. The schooner had to lie in the
roads, and everything had to be conveyed to her by boat. There was much
traffic between her and the shore, and the work was carried on by the light
of many lamps.

Now where would they have stowed Carette? On the ship? In one of the
cottages? In the natural prison where they had kept me? The only three
possibilities I had been able to think of. To reduce them to two I would
try the least hazardous first, and that was the prison in the rock.

I had been carried to and from it blindfolded, but from what I had seen
from its windows I had formed a general idea as to where it lay. So I crept
back half-way towards the shell beach and then struck cautiously up towards
the tumbled masses of rock on the eastern side of the Island.

It was chancy work at best, with a possible stumble up against death at
every step. But life without Carette--worse still, life with Carette in
thrall to young Torode--would be worse to me than death, and so I take no
credit to myself for risking it for her. It was hers already, it did but
seek its own.

In daylight I could have gone almost straight to that cleft, steering my
course by the sea rocks I had noted from the window. But in the dark it was
different. I could only grope along in hope, with many a stop to wonder
where I had got to, and many a stumble and many a bruise. Stark darkness is
akin to blindness, and blindness in a strange land, and that a land of
rocks and chasms, is a vast perplexity. I wandered blindly and bruised
myself sorely, but suffered most from thought of the passing minutes, for
the minutes in which I might accomplish anything were numbered, and they
passed with no result.

I was half mind