By squeezing hard against the bars where they were let into the rock on the right, I found I could just get a glimpse of the free blue sea rolling and tossing outside, and by dint of observation and much careful watching I learned where I was.
For, away out there among the tumbling blue waves, I could just make out a double-headed rock which the tide never covered, and I recognised it as the Grand Amfroque, one of our steering points in Great Russel.
So, then, I was in Herm, not four miles away from Brecqhou, and though, for any benefit the knowledge was to me, I might as well have been in America itself, it still warmed my heart to think that Carette was there, and almost within sight but for that wretched wall of rock. If fiery longing could melt solid rock, that barrier had disappeared in the twinkling of an eye.
The time passed very slowly with me. I spent most of it against the bars, peering out at the sea. Once or twice distant boats passed across my narrow view, and I wondered who were in them. And I thought sadly of the folk in Peter Port still looking hopefully for the Swallow, and following her possible fortunes, and wishing her good luck—and she and all her crew, except myself, at the bottom of the sea, as foully murdered as ever men in this world were.
Twice each day Torode himself brought me food and watched me steadfastly while I ate it. His oversight and interest never seemed to slacken. At first it troubled me, but there was in it nothing whatever of the captor gloating over his prisoner; simply, as far as I could make out, a gloomy desire to note how I took matters, which put me on my mettle to keep up a bold front, though my heart was heavy enough at times at the puzzling strangeness of it all.
I thought much of Carette and my mother, and my grandfather and Krok, and I walked each day for hours, to and fro, to and fro, to keep myself from falling sick or going stupid. But the time passed slower than time had ever gone with me before, and I grew sick to death of that narrow cleft in the rock.
By a mark I made on the wall for each day of my stay there, it was on the tenth day that Torode first spoke to me as I ate my dinner.
"Listen!" he said, so unexpectedly, after his strange silence, that I jumped in spite of myself.
"Once you asked to join us and I refused. Now you must join us—or die. I have no desire for your death, but—well—you understand."
"When I asked to join you I believed you honest privateers. You are thieves and murderers. I would sooner die than join you now."