“Tardif,” I said, “we are shaving the weeds a little too close, aren’t we?”

“Look behind you, Dr. Martin,” he answered, shifting the sails a little.

I did not look behind us.  We were more than half-way over the channel, and Guernsey lay four miles or so west of us; but instead of the clear outline of the island standing out against the sky, I could see nothing but a bank of white fog.  The afternoon sun was shining brightly over it, but before long it would dip into its dense folds.  The fogs about our islands are peculiar.  You may see them form apparently thick blocks of blanched vapor, with a distinct line between the atmosphere where the haze is and where it is not.  To be overtaken by a fog like this, which would almost hide Tardif at one end of the boat from me at the other, would be no laughing matter in a sea lined with sunken reefs.  The wind had almost gone, but a little breeze still caught us from the north of the fog-bank.  Without a word I took the oars again, while Tardif devoted himself to the sails and the helm.

“A mile nearer home,” he said, “and I could row my boat as easily in the dark as you could ride your horse along a lane.”

My face was westward now, and I kept my eye upon the fog-bank creeping stealthily after us.  I thought of my mother and Julia, and the fright they would be in.  Moreover a fog like this was pretty often succeeded by a squall, especially at this season; and when a westerly gale blew up from the Atlantic in the month of March, no one could foretell when it would cease.  I had been weather-bound in Sark, when I was a boy, for three weeks at one time, when our provisions ran short, and it was almost impossible to buy a loaf of bread.  I could not help laughing at the recollection, but I kept an anxious lookout toward the west.  Three weeks’ imprisonment in Sark now would be a bore.

But the fog remained almost stationary in the front of Guernsey, and the round red eyeball of the sun glared after us as we ran nearer and nearer to Sark.  The tide was with us, and carried us on it buoyantly.  We anchored at the fisherman’s landing-place below the cliff of the Havre Gosselin, and I climbed readily up the rough ladder which leads to the path.  Tardif made his boat secure, and followed me; he passed me, and strode on up the steep track to the summit of the cliff, as if impatient to reach his home.  It was then that I gave my first serious thought to the woman who had met with the accident.

“Tardif, who is this person that is hurt?” I asked, “and whereabout did she fall?”

“She fell down yonder,” he answered, with an odd quaver in his voice, as he pointed to a rough and rather high portion of the cliff running inland; “the stones rolled from under her feet, so,” he added, crushing down a quantity of the loose gravel with his foot, “and she slipped.  She lay on the shingle underneath for two hours before I found her; two hours, Dr. Martin!”