The weather was close and heavy still, sulky-looking, as though it contemplated another outbreak before settling to its usual humour.  There was no sun, and now and again drifts of ghostly haze trailed over the long sullen waves.

But the small boy knew every rock on the shore of Brecqhou, and the more deadly ones that lay in the tideway outside, just below the surface, and whuffed and growled at him as he passed.  His course shaped itself like that of bird or fish, without apparent observation.

The boat was heavy, but his bare brown arms worked the single oar over the stern like tireless little machines, and his body swung rhythmically from side to side to add its weight to his impulse.

He kept well out round Pente-a-Fouille with its jagged teeth and circles of sweltering foam.  The tide was rushing south through the Gouliot Pass like a mill-race.  It drove a bold furrow into the comparatively calm waters beyond, a furrow which leaped and writhed and spat like a tortured snake with the agonies of the narrow passage.  And presently it sank into twisting coils, all spattered and marbled with foam, and came weltering up from conflict with the rocks below, and then hurried on to further torment along the teeth of Little Sark.

At the first lick of the Race on his boat’s nose, the small boy drew in his oar without ever looking round, dropped it into the rowlock, fitted the other oar, and bent his sturdy back to the fight.

The twisting waters carried him away in a long swirling slant.  He pulled steadily on and paid no heed, and in due course was spat out on the other side of the Race into the smooth water under lee of Longue Pointe.  Then he turned his boat’s nose to the north, and pulled through the slack in the direction of Havre Gosselin.

He was edging slowly round Pierre au Norman, where a whip of the current caught him for a moment, when a merry shout carried his chin to his shoulder in time to see, out of the corner of his eye, a small white body flash from a black ledge above the surf into the coiling waters beyond.  He stood up facing the bows and held the boat, till a brown head bobbed up among the writhing coils.  Then a slim white arm with a little brown hand swept the long hair away from a pair of dancing eyes, and the swimmer came slipping through the water like a seal.

But suddenly, some stronger coil of the waters below caught the glancing white limbs.  They sprawled awry from their stroke, a startled look dimmed the dancing eyes with a strain of fear.

“Phil!”

And in a moment the boy in the boat had drawn in his oars, and kicked off his shoes, and was ploughing sturdily through the belching coils.

“You’re all right, Carette,” he cried, as he drove up alongside, and the swimmer grasped hurriedly at his extended arm.  “We’ve done stiffer bits than this.  Now—­rest a minute!—­All right?—­Come on then for the boat.  Here you are!—­Hang on till I get in!”