turmoil, and between that outlying peak and the shore the waters
tore and foamed with wild white crests--tumbling green ridges that were
never two seconds the same. While all along the great black base of the
peak the white waves rushed like mighty rockets, flinging long white
arms up its ragged sides and crashing together at the end in dazzling
bursts of foam.

"Wonderful!" said Gard. "I've lain here for hours watching it."

"I've swum it," said Nance quietly.

"So've I," said Bernel.

"Never! You two? I wonder you came back alive!"

"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 fishing 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 conqu