And as he panted after Julie, head down with the burden of much thinking, just before he reached the sunk way to the Coupee, his eye lighted on something in the road that caused him to stop and bend—­a button with a scrap of blue cloth attached.  He picked it up hastily and put it in his pocket.  On a white stone just by it there were some red-brown spots.  He pushed it with his foot to the side of the road and was down into the cutting before the heavy-footed neighbours came up.

Julie was ranging up and down the narrow pathway, searching the depths with a face like a hawk, hanging on to the rough sides of the pinnacles, and bending over in a way that elicited warning cries from the others as they came streaming down.

But keenest search of the western slope revealed nothing amid its tangle of gorse and blackberry bushes, and the eastern cliff fell so sheer, and had so many projecting lumps and underfalls, that it was impossible to see close in to the foot.

And then one, nimbler witted than the rest, climbed out along the common above the northern cliff, whereby, when he had come to the great slope, he took the Coupee cliff in flank, and could spy along its base.

And suddenly he stopped, and stiffened like a pointer sighting his bird, peered intently for a moment, and gave tongue.

The chase was ended.  That they had sought, and feared to find, was found.

They came hurrying up, and clustered like cormorants on the slope, Julie among them, her face grim and livid in its black setting, her eyes blazing fiercely.

The finder pointed it out.  They all saw it—­a huddled black heap close in under the cliff.

Elevated by his discovery, the finder maintained his reputation by doing the only thing that could be done.  He left them talking and sped away across the downs, across the fields, towards Creux harbour.

He might, if he had known it, have found a boat nearer at hand, Rouge Terrier way or in Breniere Bay.  But he was a Sark man, and a farmer at that, and knew little and cared less, of the habits of Little Sark.

And the rest, falling to his idea, streamed after him, for that which lay under the cliff could only be gotten out by boat.

So to the Creux, panting the news as he went.  And there, willing hands dragged a boat rasping down the shingle, and lusty arms, four men rowing and one astern sculling and steering at the same time, sent her bounding over the water as though it were life she sought, not death.  For, though no man among them had any smallest hope of finding life in that which lay under the cliff, yet must they strain every muscle, till the labouring boat seemed to share their anxiety to get there and learn the worst.