the south side piled
themselves high in the great basin formed by Brecqhou and the Gouliot rocks
and Havre Gosselin, and finding an outlet through the Gouliot Pass, they
came leaping and roaring through, the narrow black channel in a very fury
of madness, and hurled themselves against their fellows who had taken the
north side of the Island, and there below me they fought like giants, and I
was never tired of watching.

But in the evenings, when the lamp was lit, and the fire of dried gorse and
driftwood burnt with coloured flames and lightning forks, my grandfather
would get out his books with a sigh of great content, and Krok would settle
silently to his work on net or lobster pot, and my mother took to teaching
me my letters, which was not at all to my liking.

At first I was but a dull scholar, and the letters had to be dinned into my
careless little head many times before they stuck there, and anything was
sufficient to draw me from my task,--a louder blast outside than usual, or
the sight of Krok's nimble fingers, or of my grandfather's deep absorption,
which at that time I could not at all understand, and which seemed to me
extraordinary, and made me think of old Mother Mauger, who was said to be a
witch, and who lost herself staring into her fire just as my grandfather
did into his books.

My wits were always busy with anything and everything rather than their
proper business, but my mother was patience itself and drilled things into
me till perforce I had to learn them, and, either through this constant
repetition, or from a friendly feeling for myself in trouble, Krok began to
take an intelligent interest in my lessons.

He would bring his work alongside, and listen intently, and watch the book,
and at times would drop his work and by main force would turn my head away
from himself to that which was of more consequence, when my mother would
nod and smile her thanks.

And so, as I slowly learned, Krok learned also, and very much more
quickly, for he had more time than I had to think over things, because he
wasted none of it in talking, and he was more used to thinking than I was.
And then, to me it was still only drudgery, while to him it was the opening
of a new window to his soul.

Why, in all these years, he had never learned to read and write--why my
grandfather had never thought to teach him--I cannot tell. Perhaps because
my mother had learned at the school; perhaps because Krok himself had shown
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