e rough natures of our
Island men. And so, from every outstanding point, great pieces become
detached and form separate islets, between which and the parent isles the
currents run like mill-races and take toll of the unwary and the stranger.
So, Sercq nuzzles Le Tas, and Jethou Crevichon, and Guernsey Lihou and the
Hanois, and even Brecqhou has its whelp in La Givaude. Herm alone, with its
long white spear of sand and shells, is like a sword-fish among the nursing
whales.

In the distance the long ridge of Sercq looks as bare and uninteresting as
would the actual back of a basking whale. It is only when you come to a
more intimate acquaintance that all her charms become visible. Just as I
have seen high-born women, in our great capital city of London, turn cold
unmoved faces to the crowd but smile sweetly and graciously on their
friends and acquaintances.

As you draw in to the coast across the blue-ribbed sea, which, for three
parts of the year, is all alive with dancing sunflakes, the smooth bold
ridge resolves itself into deep rents and chasms. The great granite cliffs
stand out like the frowning heads of giants, seamed and furrowed with ages
of conflict. The rocks are wrought into a thousand fantastic shapes. The
whole coast is honeycombed with caves and bays, with chapelles and arches
and flying buttresses, among which are wonders such as you will find
nowhere else in the world. And the rocks are coloured most wondrously by
that which is in them and upon them, and perhaps the last are the most
beautiful, for their lichen robes are woven of silver, and gold, and gray,
and green, and orange. When the evening sun shines full upon the Autelets,
and sets them all aflame with golden fire, they become veritable altars and
lift one's soul to worship. He would be a bold man who would say he knew a
nobler sight, and I should doubt his word at that, until I had seen it with
my own eyes.

The great seamed rocks of the headlands are black, and white, and red, and
pink, and purple, and yellow; while up above, the short green herbage is
soft and smooth as velvet, and the waving bracken is like a dark green robe
of coarser stuff lined delicately with russet gold.

Now I have told you all this because I have met people whose only idea of
Sercq was of a storm-beaten rock, standing grim and stark among the
thousand other rocks that bite up through the sea thereabouts. Whereas, in
reality, our Island is a little paradise, gay with