rious sweep, shook
herself proudly to the other tack, and went foaming past the Equetelees and
the Grands Bouillons, swept round the south of Jethou, and began short
tacking for Peter Port in wake of her consorts.

Since the guns, the drama out there had unfolded itself in silence, and
silence was unnatural when such goings-on were toward. The small boy danced
and waved his arms and cheered frantically. The ships beyond the reefs were
streaming away discomfited to the north-east, in the direction of La Hague.

The small girl nursed her knees, and watched, with only partial
understanding of it all in her looks.

"Why are you so crazy about it?" she asked.

"Because we've won, you silly!"

"Of course! We're English. But all the same we ran away."

"We're English"--and there was a touch of the true insular pride in her
voice, but they spoke in French, and not very good French at that, and
scarce a word of English had one of them at that time.

"Pooh! Three little corvettes from two men-o'-war and four big frigates!
And let me tell you there's not many men could have brought that ship
through those rocks like that. I wonder who it is? A Guernsey man for
sure!" [A very similar story is told of Sir James Saumarez in the
_Crescent_ off Vazin Bay in Guernsey. His pilot was Jean Breton, who
received a large gold medal for the feat.]

His war-dance came to a sudden stop with the fall of a heavy hand on his
shoulder, and he jerked round in surprise. It was a stout, heavily-built
man in blue cloth jacket and trousers, and a cap such as no Island man ever
wore in his life, and a sharp ratty face such as no Island man would have
cared to wear.

"Now, little corbin, what is it you are dancing at?" he asked, in a tongue
that was neither English nor French nor Norman, but an uncouth mixture of
all three, and in a tone which was meant to imply joviality but carried no
conviction to the boy's mind.

But the boy had weighed him up in a moment and with one glance, and he was
too busy thinking to speak.

"Come then! Art dumb?" and he shook the boy roughly.

"Mon dou donc, yes, that is it!" said Carette, dancing round them with
apprehension for her companion. "He's dumb."

"He was shouting loud enough a minute ago," and he pinched the boy's ear
smartly between his big thumb and finger.

"It's only sometimes," said Carette lamely. "You let him go and maybe he'll
speak."

"See, my lad," said the burly one, letting go the boy's