Carette, of course, understood, and approved all I had done. She saw with me the necessity of keeping the matter from my mother, lest her peace of mind should suffer shipwreck again, and to no purpose. Her loving tenderness and thought for my mother at this time were a very great delight to me, and commended her still more to my mother herself.
My grandfather was still in Guernsey. His leg had taken longer to heal than it might have done, and, failing my information against the Herm men, his was of use to the authorities in preparing the charge against them.
There were near forty prisoners brought over from Sercq, some of them so sorely wounded that it was doubtful if they would live until their trial. The rest had been killed, except some few who were said to have got across to France. To my great relief neither young Torode nor his mother was among the dead or the captives.
Krok was supposed in Sercq to be with my grandfather in Guernsey, and his absence excited no remark. For myself, in Sercq my absence was accounted for by the necessity for my being in Guernsey,—while in Guernsey an exaggerated account of the wound I had received on the Coupée offered excuse for my retirement; and so the matter passed without undue comment.
George Hamon had informed my grandfather of his recognition of Torode, and he told me afterwards that for a very long time the old man flatly refused to believe it.
My news of Torode's recovery was not, I think, over-welcome to Uncle George. He would have preferred him dead, and the old trouble buried for ever, forgetting always that his death must have left something of a cloud on my life, though he always argued strongly against that view of the case.
"I find it hard to swallow, mon gars, in spite of George Hamon's assurance," said my grandfather when we spoke of it.
"I found it hard to believe. But Uncle George had no doubts about it. Krok, too, recognised him."
"Krok did? Ah—then—" and he nodded slow acceptance of the unwelcome fact.
Before I was through with the telling of my story, and signing it, and swearing to it before various authorities, I was heartily sick of the whole matter, and wished, as indeed I had good reason, that I had never sailed with John Ozanne in the Swallow.