For a little while I sat looking out at the wild and beautiful scene before me, which no words can tell and no fancy picture to those who have never seen it.  The white foam of the waves was so near, that I could see the rainbow colors playing through the bubbles as the sun shone on them.  Below the clear water lay a girdle of sunken rocks, pointed as needles, and with edges as sharp as swords, about which the waves fretted ceaselessly, drawing silvery lines about their notched and dented ridges.  The cliffs ran up precipitously from the sea, carved grotesquely over their whole surface into strange and fantastic shapes; while the golden and gray lichens embroidered them richly, and bright sea-flowers, and stray tufts of grass, lent them the most vivid and gorgeous hues.  Beyond the channel, against the clear western sky, lay the island of Guernsey, rising like a purple mountain out of the opal sea, which lay like a lake between us, sparkling and changing every minute under the light of the afternoon sun.

But there was scarcely time for the exquisite beauty of this scene to sink deeply into my heart just then.  Before long I heard the tramp of Tardif and his comrade following me; their heavy tread sent down the loose stones on the path plunging into the sea.  They were both laden with part of the boat’s cargo.  They stopped to rest for a minute or two at the spot where I had sat down, and the other boatman began talking earnestly to Tardif in his patois, of which I did not understand a word.  Tardif’s face was very grave and sad, indescribably so; and, before he turned to me and spoke, I knew it was some sorrowful catastrophe he had to tell.

“You see how smooth it is, mam’zelle,” he said—­“how clear and beautiful—­down below us, where the waves are at play like little white children?  I love them, but they are cruel and treacherous.  While I was away there was an accident down yonder, just beyond these rocks.  Our doctor, and two gentlemen, and a sailor went out from our little bay below, and shortly after there came on a thick darkness, with heavy rain, and they were all lost, every one of them!  Poor Renouf! he was a good friend of mine.  And our doctor, too!  If I had been here, maybe I might have persuaded them not to brave it.”

It was a sad story to hear, yet just then I did not pay much attention to it.  I was too much engrossed in my own difficulties and trouble.  So far as my experience goes, I believe the heart is more open to other people’s sorrows when it is free from burdens of its own.  I was glad when Tardif took up his load again and turned his back upon the sea.

CHAPTER THE FIFTH.

Will it do?