in a landing and get up the slope before the others
could damage them. I accepted her sacrifice, and set my teeth, and strove
to pull harder still.

Young Torode himself was distinguishable in the boat behind, and I knew his
passion for her and did not believe he would deliberately attempt her life.
Nor do I now. Possibly his intent was only to frighten us, but when bullets
fly, lives are cheap.

Torode himself stood up in the stern of his boat, and levelled at us, and
fired. But the shot went wide, and I only pulled the harder, and was not
greatly in fear, for shooting from a jumping boat is easy, but hitting a
jumping mark is quite another matter.

We drove past Moie de Bretagne, with the green seas leaping up its fretted
sides and lacing them with rushing white threads as they fell. How often
had Carette and I sat watching that white lacery of the rocks and swum out
through the tumbling green to see it closer still. Good times they were,
and my thought shot through them like an arrow as we swung past Rouge Cane
Bay and opened Gorey.

But these times were better, even though death came weltering close behind
us. For, come what might, we were man and woman, and all the man within me,
and what there might be of God, clave to this sweet woman who sat before
me--who sat of her own choice between me and death--and I knew that she
loved me as I loved her, and my heart was full and glad in spite of the
hunting Death behind.

We were in among the tumbled rocks. I knew them like a book. We swept
across the dark mouth of Gorey. In among the ragged heads and weltering
white surf of the Pierres-a-Beurre; past the sounding cave where the
souffleur blows his spray a hundred feet into the south-west gale. We swung
on a rushing green-white swirl towards a black shelf, behind which lies a
deep dark pool in a mighty hollow worn smooth and round with the ceaseless
grinding of the stones that no tide can ever lift.

"Ready!" I cried.

And at the next wave we leaped together, and the hand that I held in mine
was steadier than my own, for mine was all of a shake with the strain.

Without a look behind we dived in among the black rocks, and a bullet
spatted white alongside.

Now we were hidden from them for the moment, until they should land and
follow. We scrambled up the yellow grit above, joined hands, and raced
along the rabbit tracks, through waist-high bracken and clumps of gorse,
for the Coupee.

"If they follow,..." I pa