ts people say: "We are the conquering race; we
conquered England, England did not conquer us."

A little island lying in the wash of St. Michael's Basin off the coast
of France, Norman in its foundations and in its racial growth, it has
been as the keeper of the gate to England; though so near to France
is it, that from its shores on a fine day may be seen the spires of
Coutances, from which its spiritual welfare was ruled long after
England lost Normandy. A province of British people, speaking still the
Norman-French that the Conqueror spoke; such is the island of Jersey,
which, with Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, Herm, and Jethou, form what we
call the Channel Isles, and the French call the Iles de la Manche.

CHAPTER I

In all the world there is no coast like the coast of Jersey; so
treacherous, so snarling; serrated with rocks seen and unseen, tortured
by currents maliciously whimsical, encircled by tides that sweep up
from the Antarctic world with the devouring force of a monstrous
serpent projecting itself towards its prey. The captain of these tides,
travelling up through the Atlantic at a thousand miles an hour, enters
the English Channel, and drives on to the Thames. Presently retreating,
it meets another pursuing Antarctic wave, which, thus opposed in its
straightforward course, recoils into St. Michael's Bay, then plunges, as
it were, upon a terrible foe. They twine and strive in mystic conflict,
and, in rage of equal power, neither vanquished nor conquering, circle,
mad and desperate, round the Channel Isles. Impeded, impounded as they
riot through the flumes of sea, they turn furiously, and smite the
cliffs and rocks and walls of their prison-house. With the frenzied
winds helping them, the island coasts and Norman shores are battered by
their hopeless onset: and in that channel between Alderney and Cap de la
Hague man or ship must well beware, for the Race of Alderney is one of
the death-shoots of the tides. Before they find their way to the main
again, these harridans of nature bring forth a brood of currents which
ceaselessly fret the boundaries of the isles.

Always, always the white foam beats the rocks, and always must man go
warily along these coasts. The swimmer plunges into a quiet pool, the
snowy froth that masks the reefs seeming only the pretty fringe of
sentient life to a sleeping sea; but presently an invisible hand reaches
up and grasps him, an unseen power drags him exultingly out to the