“No,” I said.  “I’ll stop at Gavey’s, and come back in the Sark cutter if it has begun to ply.  If not, Tardif must bring me over in the morning.”

“Don’t go,” persisted Julia, as I thrust myself into my rough pilot-coat, and then bent down to kiss her cheek.  Julia always presented me her cheek, and my lips had never met hers yet.  My mother was standing by and looking tearful, but she did not say a word; she knew there was no question about what I ought to do.  Julia followed me to the door and held me fast with both hands round my arm, sobbing out hysterically, “Don’t go!” Even when I had released myself and was running down the drive, I could hear her still calling, “O Martin, don’t go!”

I was glad to get out of hearing.  I felt sorry for her, yet there was a considerable amount of pleasure in being the object of so much tender solicitude.  I thought of her for a minute or two as I hurried along the steep streets leading down to the quay.  But the prospect before me caught my eye.  Opposite lay Sark, bathed in sunlight, and the sea between was calm enough at present.  A ride across, with a westerly breeze filling the sails, and the boat dancing lightly over the waves, would not be a bad exchange for a dull Sunday afternoon, with Julia at the Sunday-school and my mother asleep.  Besides, it was the path of duty which was leading me across the quiet gray sea before me.

Tardif was waiting, with his sails set and oars in the rowlocks, ready for clearing the harbor.  I took one of them, and bent myself willingly to the light task.  There was less wind than I had expected, but what there was blew in our favor.  We were very quickly beyond the pier-head, where a group of idlers was always gathered, who sent after us a few warning shouts.  Nothing could be more exhilarating than our onward progress.  I felt as if I had been a prisoner, with, chains which had pressed heavily yet insensibly upon me, and that now I was free.  I drew into my lungs the fresh, bracing, salt air of the sea, with a deep sigh of delight.

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

A patient in Sark.

It struck me after a while that my friend Tardif was unusually silent.  The shifting of the sails appeared to give him plenty to do; and to my surprise, instead of keeping to the ordinary course, he ran recklessly as it seemed across the grunes, which lie all about the bed of the channel between Guernsey and Sark.  These grunes are reefs, rising a little above low water, but, as the tide was about half-flood, they were a few feet below it; yet at times there was scarcely enough depth to float us over them, while the brown seaweed torn from their edges lay in our wake, something like the swaths of grass in a meadow after the scythe has swept through it.  Now and then came a bump and a scrape of the keel against their sharp ridges.  The sweat stood in beads upon Tardif’s face, and his thick hair fell forward over his forehead, where the great veins in the temples were purple and swollen.  I spoke to him after a heavier bump over the grunes than any we had yet come to.