We drove past Moie de Bretagne, with the green seas leaping up its fretted sides and lacing them with rushing white threads as they fell.  How often had Carette and I sat watching that white lacery of the rocks and swum out through the tumbling green to see it closer still.  Good times they were, and my thought shot through them like an arrow as we swung past Rouge Cane Bay and opened Gorey.

But these times were better, even though death came weltering close behind us.  For, come what might, we were man and woman, and all the man within me, and what there might be of God, clave to this sweet woman who sat before me—­who sat of her own choice between me and death—­and I knew that she loved me as I loved her, and my heart was full and glad in spite of the hunting Death behind.

We were in among the tumbled rocks.  I knew them like a book.  We swept across the dark mouth of Gorey.  In among the ragged heads and weltering white surf of the Pierres-a-Beurre; past the sounding cave where the souffleur blows his spray a hundred feet into the south-west gale.  We swung on a rushing green-white swirl towards a black shelf, behind which lies a deep dark pool in a mighty hollow worn smooth and round with the ceaseless grinding of the stones that no tide can ever lift.

“Ready!” I cried.

And at the next wave we leaped together, and the hand that I held in mine was steadier than my own, for mine was all of a shake with the strain.

Without a look behind we dived in among the black rocks, and a bullet spatted white alongside.

Now we were hidden from them for the moment, until they should land and follow.  We scrambled up the yellow grit above, joined hands, and raced along the rabbit tracks, through waist-high bracken and clumps of gorse, for the Coupee.

“If they follow,...”  I panted as I ran, “...  I will hold them at the Coupee....  No danger....  Behind pillar....  You run on and rouse neighbours....  Our only chance....  They can shoot us as we run.”

She had been going to object, but saw that I was right, and on we went—­past the old mill, past the old fort, and a bullet buzzed by my head like a droning beetle.  Down the narrow way to the razor of a path that led to Sercq, and half the way along it, I ran with her.  Then—­

“Go!” I panted, and flung myself behind the great rock pillar that buttressed the path on the Grande Greve side and towered high above me.

She ran on obediently, and one shot followed her, for which I cursed the shooter and heard young Torode do the same.  I was their quarry; but one, in the lust of the chase, had lost his head.

I leaned panting against the rock, and saw Carette’s skirts disappear over the brow of the Common at the Sercq end, with thankfulness past words.  For myself, I was safe enough.  No shot could reach me so long as I kept cover.  From no point on Little Sercq could they snap at me by any amount of climbing.  I was as safe as if in a fortress, and Carette was speeding to rouse the neighbours, and all was well.