awakened in the morning by the gale tearing at the massive
stones of his shelter as though it would carry them bodily into the sea.

And when he crawled out, flat like a worm, the wind caught him even so,
and he had to grimp to earth and anchor himself by projecting pieces of
rock.

Such seas as these he had never imagined round Sark; forgetting that
behind Guernsey lay thousands of miles of waters tortured past
endurance and racing now to escape the fury of the storm.

A white lash of spray came over him as he lay, and soaked him to the
skin, and, turning his face to the storm, he saw through the chinks of
his eyes a great wavering white curtain between him and the sky line.
The south-west portion of his island, where his freshwater pools were,
and the valley of rocks, were all awash, the mighty waves roaring clean
over the south stack, and rushing up into the black sky in rockets of
flying spray. The tide had still some time to run, and he feared what it
might be like at its fullest. It seemed to him by no means impossible
that it might sweep the whole rock bare.

CHAPTER XXV

HOW HE LIVED THROUGH THE GREAT STORM

It was a fortunate thing for Gard that the storm--the great storm from
which, for many a year afterwards, local events in Sark dated--came when
it did; two days after Bernel's visit and the replenishment of his
larder. For if he had been caught bare he must have starved.

Eight whole days it lasted, with only two slight abatements which, while
they raised his hopes only to dash them, still served him mightily.

During the first days he spent much of his time crouched in the lee of
his bee-hive, watching the terrific play of the waves on his own rock
and on the Sark headlands.

He wondered if any other man had seen such a storm under such
conditions. For he was practically at sea on a rock; in the midst of the
turmoil, yet absolutely unaffected by it.

On shipboard, thought of one's ship and possible consequences had always
interfered with fullest enjoyment of Nature's paroxysms. It was
impossible to detach one's thoughts completely and view matters entirely
from the outside. But here--he was sure his rock had suffered many an
equal torment--there was nothing to come between him and the elemental
frenzy. Nothing but--as the days of it ran on--a growing solicitude as
to what he was going to live on if it continued much longer.

Never was Sark rabbit so completely demolished as was that one