except his own boot lying in the mouth of the largest of the black
slits, as though anxious on its own account to be gone.

The still air was already becoming heavy with the pungent smoke of his
torches. He stepped cautiously across to the body again, and picked a
couple of buttons from the coat. They came off in his hand, and when he
touched the buckles on the shoes they did the same. Then he turned and
made for his waiting shoe just as his last torch went out.

The smell of the fresh salt air, when he wriggled out into the well, was
almost as good as a feast to him. He climbed hastily to the surface,
and, as he crept out from under the topmost slab, took careful note of
its position, and then scored with a piece of rock each stone which led
up to it. For, if ever he should need an inner sanctuary, here was one
to his hand, and evidently quite unknown to the present generation of
Sark men.

He recovered his eggs, and crept round the shoulder of the rock. The
gale pounced on him like a tiger on its half-escaped prey. It beat him
flat, worried him, did its best to tear him off and fling him into the
sea. But--Heavens!--how sweet it was after the musty quiet of the
death-chamber below!

Inch by inch, he worked his way back in the teeth of it, and crawled
spent into his bee-hive. Then, ravenous with his exertions, he broke one
of his eggs into his tin dipper, and forthwith emptied it outside, and
the gale swept away the awful smell of it.

The next was as bad, and his hopes sank to nothing.

The third, however, was all right. He mixed it with some cognac and
whipped it up with a stick, and the growlers inside fought over it
contentedly.

He was almost afraid to try another. However, he could get more
to-morrow. So he broke the fourth, and found it also good, so whipped it
up with more cognac, and felt happier than he had done since he nibbled
his rabbit-bones.

As he lay that night, and the gale howled about him more furiously than
ever, his thoughts ran constantly on the dead man lying in the silent
darkness down below.

It was very quiet down there, and dry; but this roaring turmoil, with
its thunderous crashings and hurtling spray, was infinitely more to his
taste, wet though he was to the bone, and almost deafened with the
ceaseless uproar. For this, terrible though it was in its majestic fury,
was life, and that black stillness below was death.

To the tune of the tumult without, he worked out the dead ma