ed, and the fields at Belfontaine hungered for it. Philip
Carre and Krok and the small boy had been busy with it since the early
morning, and many boat-loads had been carried to Port a la Jument as long
as the flood served for the passage of the Gouliot, and since then, into
Havre Gosselin for further transport when the tide turned.

The weather was close and heavy still, sulky-looking, as though it
contemplated another outbreak before settling to its usual humour. There
was no sun, and now and again drifts of ghostly haze trailed over the long
sullen waves.

But the small boy knew every rock on the shore of Brecqhou, and the more
deadly ones that lay in the tideway outside, just below the surface, and
whuffed and growled at him as he passed. His course shaped itself like that
of bird or fish, without apparent observation.

The boat was heavy, but his bare brown arms worked the single oar over the
stern like tireless little machines, and his body swung rhythmically from
side to side to add its weight to his impulse.

He kept well out round Pente-a-Fouille with its jagged teeth and circles of
sweltering foam. The tide was rushing south through the Gouliot Pass like a
mill-race. It drove a bold furrow into the comparatively calm waters
beyond, a furrow which leaped and writhed and spat like a tortured snake
with the agonies of the narrow passage. And presently it sank into twisting
coils, all spattered and marbled with foam, and came weltering up from
conflict with the rocks below, and then hurried on to further torment along
the teeth of Little Sark.

At the first lick of the Race on his boat's nose, the small boy drew in his
oar without ever looking round, dropped it into the rowlock, fitted the
other oar, and bent his sturdy back to the fight.

The twisting waters carried him away in a long swirling slant. He pulled
steadily on and paid no heed, and in due course was spat out on the other
side of the Race into the smooth water under lee of Longue Pointe. Then he
turned his boat's nose to the north, and pulled through the slack in the
direction of Havre Gosselin.

He was edging slowly round Pierre au Norman, where a whip of the current
caught him for a moment, when a merry shout carried his chin to his
shoulder in time to see, out of the corner of his eye, a small white body
flash from a black ledge above the surf into the coiling waters beyond. He
stood up facing the bows and held the boat, till a brown head bobb