Torode of Herm was a name known in all those coasts. The news of his treacheries and uprooting was bound to get there before long. Some long-headed busybody might stumble on our secret and undo us. My mind had been seeking a more solitary place, and, ranging to and fro, had lighted on the Ecréhou rocks, which I had visited once with my grandfather and Krok and had never forgotten.
"Do you know who this is, Krok?" I asked, and he raised his puzzled face and fixed his deep-set eyes on mine.
He shook his head, and sat, with his chin in his hands and his elbows on his knees, gazing down into the face below, and I sat watching him what time I could spare from my steering.
And at last he knelt down suddenly and did exactly as Uncle George had done—lifted the black moustache from off the unconscious man's mouth, and threw back his own head to study the result. Then I saw a wave of hot blood rush into his face and neck, and when it went it left his face gray. He looked at me with eyes full of wonder and pain, and then nodded his big head heavily.
"Who, then?" and he looked round in dumb impatience for something to write with, and quivered with excitement. But the ballast was bars of iron rescued from the sea, and there was nothing that would serve.
Then of a sudden he whipped out his knife, and with the point of it jerkily traced on the thwart where I sat, the word "FATHER," and pointed his knife at me.
"Yes," I nodded. "It is my father come back, when we all thought him dead. He comes in disgrace, and his life would be forfeited if they found him, so you and I are going to hide him for a time—till he is himself, and can go away again."
Krok nodded, and he was probably thinking of my mother, for his fist clenched and he shook it bitterly at the unconscious man.
Then he knelt again, and looked at his wound, and shook his head.
"It was I shot him, not knowing who he was. And so I must save his life, or have his blood on my hands."