ole idea was absurd.

All these things he thought over as, his first essential labours
completed, he lay under the screen of the ridge and watched the sun
dropping towards Guernsey in a miracle of eventide glories.

Below him, the long slow seas rocketted along the ragged black base of
his rock with mighty roarings and tumultuous bursts of foam, and on the
ledges the gulls and cormorants squabbled and shrieked, and took long
circling flights without fluttering a wing, to show what gulls could do,
or skimmed darkly just above the waves and into them, to show that
cormorants were never satisfied. And now and again wild flights of
red-billed puffins swept up from the water and settled out of his sight
at the eastern end of the rock, and he promised himself to look them up
some other day if opportunity offered.

From the constant tumult of the seas about his rock, except just at low
water, he saw little fear of being taken by surprise, even if his
presence there became known. Twice only in the twenty-four hours did it
seem possible for any one to effect a landing there, and at those times
he promised himself to be on the alert.

He lay there till the sun had gone, and the pale green and amber, and
the crimson and gold of his going had slowly passed from sea and sky,
and left them grey and cold; till a single light shone out on Sark,
which he knew must be in one of the miners' cottages, and many lights
twinkled in Guernsey; till beneath him he could no longer see the sea,
but only the white foam fury as it boiled along the rocks. Then he crept
away to his burrow, rejoicing in the thought of the companionship of a
fire and hot food.

CHAPTER XXII

HOW THE STARS SANG OF HOPE

It took Gard some time to get his fire started, and when it did blaze
up, with fine spurts of gas from the tar, and vivid blue and green and
red flames from the salted wood, the little stone bee-hive glowed like
an oven and presently grew as hot as one. The smoke escaped but slowly
through the single hole in the roof, and at last he could stand it no
longer, and crept out into the night until his fire should have burned
down to a core of red ashes over which he could grill his dinner.

And what a night! He had seen the stars from many parts of the earth and
sea, but never, it seemed to him, had he seen such stars as these, so
close, so large, so wonderfully clean and bright. And, indeed, glory of
the heavens so supreme as that is possible