on ma couzaine, a sailor near him said that the bay
and the rock were called Perce.

Perce Bay--that was the exact point for which Elie Mattingley and
Carterette had sailed with Sebastian Alixandre. How strange it was! He
had bidden Carterette good-bye for ever, yet fate had now brought him to
the very spot whither she had gone.

The Rock of Perce was a wall, three hundred feet high, and the wall
was an island that had once been a long promontory like a battlement,
jutting out hundreds of yards into the gulf. At one point it was pierced
by an archway. It was almost sheer; its top was flat and level. Upon
the sides there was no verdure; upon the top centuries had made a green
field. The wild geese as they flew northward, myriad flocks of gulls,
gannets, cormorants, and all manner of fowl of the sea, had builded upon
the summit until it was rich with grass and shrubs. The nations of the
air sent their legions here to bivouac, and the discord of a hundred
languages might be heard far out to sea, far in upon the land. Millions
of the races of the air swarmed there; at times the air above was
darkened by clouds of them. No fog-bell on a rock-bound coast might
warn mariners more ominously than these battalions of adventurers on the
Perce Rock.

No human being had ever mounted to this eyrie. Generations of fishermen
had looked upon the yellowish-red limestone of the Perce Rock with a
valorous eye, but it would seem that not even the tiny clinging hoof of
a chamois or wild goat might find a foothold upon the straight sides of
it.

Ranulph was roused out of the spell Perce cast over him by seeing the
British flag upon a building by the shore of the bay they were now
entering. His heart gave a great bound. Yes, it was the English flag
defiantly flying. And more--there were two old 12 pounders being trained
on the French squadron. For the first time in years a low laugh burst
from his lips.

"O mai grand doux," he said in the Jersey patois, "only one man in the
world would do that. Only Elie Mattingley!"

At that moment, Mattingley now issued from a wooden fishing-shed with
Sebastian Alixandre and three others armed with muskets, and passed
to the little fort on which flew the British and Jersey flags. Ranulph
heard a guffaw behind. Richambeau, the captain, confronted him.

"That's a big splutter in a little pot, gunner," said he. He put his
telescope to his eye. "The Lord protect us," he cried, "they're going to
fight my