ld be done. He left them talking and sped away
across the downs, across the fields, towards Creux harbour.

He might, if he had known it, have found a boat nearer at hand, Rouge
Terrier way or in Breniere Bay. But he was a Sark man, and a farmer at
that, and knew little and cared less, of the habits of Little Sark.

And the rest, falling to his idea, streamed after him, for that which
lay under the cliff could only be gotten out by boat.

So to the Creux, panting the news as he went. And there, willing hands
dragged a boat rasping down the shingle, and lusty arms, four men rowing
and one astern sculling and steering at the same time, sent her bounding
over the water as though it were life she sought, not death. For, though
no man among them had any smallest hope of finding life in that which
lay under the cliff, yet must they strain every muscle, till the
labouring boat seemed to share their anxiety to get there and learn the
worst.

So, out past the Laches, with the tide boiling round the point; past
Derrible, with its yawning black mouths; past Dixcart with its patch of
sand; under the grim bastions of the Cagnon; the clean grey cliffs and
green downs above, all smiling in the morning sun; the clear green water
creaming among the black boulders, hissing among their girdles of tawny
sea-weeds, cascading merrily down their rifted sides; round the
Convanche corner, so deftly close that the beauty of the water cave is
bared to them, if they had eye or thought for anything but that which
lies under the cliff in Coupee Bay. And not a word said all the way--not
one word. Jokes and laughter go with the boat as a rule, and
high-pitched nasal patois talk; but here--not a word.

The prow runs grating up the shingle, the heavy feet grind through it
all in a line, for none of them has any desire to be first. Together
they bend over that which had been Tom Hamon, and their faces are grim
and hard as the rocks about them. Not that they are indifferent, but
that any show of feeling would be looked upon as a sign of weakness.

Under such circumstances men at times give vent to jocularities which
sound coarse and shocking. But they are not meant so--simply the protest
of the rough spirit at being thought capable of such unmanly weakness as
feeling.

But these men were elementally silent. One look had shown them there was
nothing to be done but that which they had come to do--to carry what
they had found back to the waiting crowd