Nance disappeared round a corner, and the next he saw of her she was swimming boldly out towards Breniere point, and in a moment he and Bernel were after her.

“Don’t go past the point,” jerked Bernel.

“She’s gone.”

“She’s a fish and knows her way,” and just then they ploughed into what at first looked to Gard like a perfectly smooth spot amid the troubled waters, and then he was lifted from below and flung awry and out of his stroke, and tossed and tumbled till he felt as helpless as a dead fish.  Then a fresh coil of the bubbling tide whirled him to one side and he was out again in the safety of the dancing waves.

“You see?” cried Bernel.  “That’s what it’s like,” and shot into it headlong.

And Gard, treading water quietly at a safe distance, saw how, every here and there, great crowns of water came surging up from below, with such lunging force that they rose in some cases almost a foot above the neighbouring level of the sea, and he wondered how any swimmer could make way through them.  And yet Nance had cleft them like a seal, and he could hardly make out her brown head bobbing among the distant waves.

“Is it safe for her?” he cried after Bernel, but the boy’s only reply was a scornful wave of the arm as he pressed on to join her.

Gard had an ample swim, and was dressed and sitting on a rock, when they came leisurely in, and it seemed to him that never in his life had he seen anything half so pretty as those shining coils of chestnut hair with the sea-drops sparkling in them, and the bright energetic face below, browned with sun and wind, rosy-brown now with her long swim, and beaded like her hair with pearly drops.

As she swept along below, she gave just one quick up-glance, and then, with completest ignorance of his presence, turned her head to Bernel and chattered away to him with most determined nonchalance.

She and Bernel used the long effective side-stroke almost entirely, and the little arm that flashed in and out so tirelessly was as white as the garment that fluttered in wavy convolutions about the lithe little body below.

Gard, as he watched her, felt like a discoverer of hidden treasure, overwhelmed and intoxicated with the wonder of unexpected riches.  He had come to this wild little land of Sark after silver, and he said to himself that he had found a pearl beyond price.

In a minute or two they were scrambling up the slope and flung themselves down beside him for a rest, feeling the strain of unusual exertion now that the brace and tonic of the water was off them.

“You are bold swimmers,” said Gard.

“She’s a fish in the water,” said Bernel, “and she made me swim almost as soon as I could walk.”

“You see,” said Nance, in her decisive little way, “many of our Sark men won’t learn to swim.  They think it’s mistrusting God.  But that seems to me foolish.  Every man who goes down to the sea ought to be able to swim—­besides, it’s terribly nice.”