Part 14 (1/2)

”On the slack it's not so bad, and at half ebb.”

”And what is there to see when you get there?”

”Oh, just rocks, and puffins and gulls. You can hardly walk without stepping on them. Do you remember how we sat and watched the baby gulls coming out, Nance?”

”Yes,” nodded Nance. ”And you nearly got your fingers bitten off by a puffin when you felt in its hole.”

”Ma de, yes! They do bite.”

”What do you call the rock?” asked Gard, nodding across at it.

”L'Etat,” said Nance. ”Mr. Cachemaille once told me that it had most likely at one time been joined on to Little Sark by a Coupee, just the same as Little Sark is joined to Sark. That's the Coupee, that shelf under water where the tide runs so fast. Some day, he said, perhaps our Coupee will go and we'll be an island just as L'Etat is.”

”It won't be this week,” said Bernel philosophically.

”It looks like the top of a high mountain just sticking up out of the water,” said Gard, fascinated by the ceaseless rush of those monstrous waves in an otherwise calm sea.

”I suppose that is what it is,” said Nance. ”It's far worse at the other end. You can't see it from here. No matter how smooth the sea is it seems to tumble down over some cliff under water and then come shooting up again, and it throws itself at the rocks and sends the spray up into the sky.”

”I'd like to go and see it,” said Gard. ”But I don't think I would like to swim. Could one get a boat?”

”We have a boat with Nick Mollet in the bay below here,” said Bernel.

”But he's generally out fis.h.i.+ng and you're always busy.”

”I'll take a holiday some day and you shall take me over.”

Time came when they went, but it was hardly a holiday undertaking.

CHAPTER XII

HOW NANCE CAME UP THE MAIN SHAFT WITHOUT GOING DOWN IT

It was a few days after this that Gard had another proof of Nance's and Bernel's fearlessness and prowess in the waters they had conquered into friendliness.

Bernel was a great fisherman. He could wheedle out rock-fish by the dozen while envious miners sat about him tugging hopefully at empty lines.

He had gone down one afternoon to the overhanging wooden slip at Port Gorey, and had excellent sport, until a sudden s.h.i.+ft of the wind to the south-west began piling the waters into the gulf on an incoming tide.

Then he drew in his lines and sat dangling his legs for a few minutes, before gathering up his catch and going home.

Nance saw him from the other headland and came tripping round to see how he had fared.

”Bern,” she cried, as she came up. ”Tell that man he's not safe down there. The waves are bad there sometimes.”

”Hi, you!” cried Bernel, to a miner who had been watching his success and had then climbed down seaward over the furrowed black ledges, hoping to do better there. ”Come back! It's not safe there.”

But the fisherman, intent on his sport, either did not, or would not, hear him.