She whispered so low that he hardly heard it:
“No.... My ankle.... Their ropes twisted my foot and cut into it.”
“That will soon be all right,” he said. “The important thing is to get back to the shore. Your two executioners will have certainly landed by now and must be scrambling up the staircase as hard as they can climb. So we have nothing to fear from them.”
He got to work quickly. He took the two oars, which de Bennetot had not taken the trouble to remove—unless perhaps he had thought that if the boat were found it would look less suspicious if the oars were in it—and began to row towards the shore, telling her how he had come to her help in the nick of time, in a cheerful, careless voice, as if nothing more extraordinary had happened than happens at an ordinary picnic.
“Let me introduce myself in a rather more formal way, though I’m not particularly presentable at the moment, since I am only dressed in my shirt, one stocking, and a knife hanging from a string from my neck,” he said. “I am Ralph d’Andresy, at your service—since chance willed it. And a very simple chance it was.... I overheard a conversation.... I learned that there was a plot in action against a certain lady.... So I took the liberty of forestalling it. I hurried down to the beach, undressed, and when the two cousins came out of the entrance of the tunnel I slipped into the water. All I had to do then was to hide behind your boat and catch hold of the stern when they started to tow it out to sea. And that was what I did do. Neither of them had the slightest idea that they were taking out with their victim a champion swimmer who had made up his mind to save her. But I’ll tell you more about it later when you’re in a state to understand. I’ve got an idea that at the moment I’m babbling away to the empty air.”
He paused.
“I’m feeling very ill,” she murmured. “I’m utterly worn out.”
“I can tell you what to do,” he said quickly. “Lose consciousness. Nothing is so restful as to lose consciousness.”
She seemed to follow his advice, for after a little moan or two, she began to breathe quietly and regularly. He covered her up with the rug and fell to rowing again.
“It’s better as it is,” he said to himself. “I can act exactly as I like without having to explain what I’m doing.”