“Silly!” said the girl from the turf where she sat with her hands round her knees.  “They can’t hear you!”

“Oh, guyabble!  Oh, bon Gyu!” and he stood stiff and stark, as the great ship narrowed as she turned towards them suddenly, and came threading her way through the bristling rocks, in a way that passed belief and set the hair in the nape of the boy’s neck crawling with apprehension.

“Platte Boue!” he gasped, as she came safely past that danger.  “Grand Amfroque!” and he began to dance.

“Founiais!” and she came out into Great Russel with a glorious sweep, shook herself proudly to the other tack, and went foaming past the Equetelees and the Grands Bouillons, swept round the south of Jethou, and began short tacking for Peter Port in wake of her consorts.

Since the guns, the drama out there had unfolded itself in silence, and silence was unnatural when such goings-on were toward.  The small boy danced and waved his arms and cheered frantically.  The ships beyond the reefs were streaming away discomfited to the north-east, in the direction of La Hague.

The small girl nursed her knees, and watched, with only partial understanding of it all in her looks.

“Why are you so crazy about it?” she asked.

“Because we’ve won, you silly!”

“Of course!  We’re English.  But all the same we ran away.”

“We’re English”—­and there was a touch of the true insular pride in her voice, but they spoke in French, and not very good French at that, and scarce a word of English had one of them at that time.

“Pooh!  Three little corvettes from two men-o’-war and four big frigates!  And let me tell you there’s not many men could have brought that ship through those rocks like that.  I wonder who it is?  A Guernsey man for sure!” [A very similar story is told of Sir James Saumarez in the Crescent off Vazin Bay in Guernsey.  His pilot was Jean Breton, who received a large gold medal for the feat.]

His war-dance came to a sudden stop with the fall of a heavy hand on his shoulder, and he jerked round in surprise.  It was a stout, heavily-built man in blue cloth jacket and trousers, and a cap such as no Island man ever wore in his life, and a sharp ratty face such as no Island man would have cared to wear.

“Now, little corbin, what is it you are dancing at?” he asked, in a tongue that was neither English nor French nor Norman, but an uncouth mixture of all three, and in a tone which was meant to imply joviality but carried no conviction to the boy’s mind.

But the boy had weighed him up in a moment and with one glance, and he was too busy thinking to speak.

“Come then!  Art dumb?” and he shook the boy roughly.

“Mon dou donc, yes, that is it!” said Carette, dancing round them with apprehension for her companion.  “He’s dumb.”

“He was shouting loud enough a minute ago,” and he pinched the boy’s ear smartly between his big thumb and finger.