I had seen Sercq from the outside many times before, but only from water level, which limits one’s view, though the towering cliffs are always wondrous fine, and more striking perhaps from below than from above.  But Brecqhou always cut the view on one side or the other, whereas now, for the first time, I saw the whole western side of the Island at a glance, and, boy as I was, it impressed me deeply and made me swell with pride.  For, you see, thanks to my grandfather and my mother and Krok, my eyes were opening, even then, to the wonders and beauties among which I lived.

I turned at last and tramped through the heather and ferns and the breast-high golden-rod, stumbling among the rabbit holes with which the ground was riddled, towards the house which stood in a hollow in the centre of the Island.  And I stared hard at it, for I had never seen the like before.

It was not like our Sercq houses, granite-built, thick-walled, low in the sides and high in the roof.  It stood facing Sercq—­that is, with its back to the south and west—­and the far end of it seemed to start out of the ground and come sloping up to the front, till, above the doorway, it was perhaps ten feet high.  As a matter of fact cunning advantage had been taken of a dip in the ground, and the house, built against the inside of the hollow and sloping very gradually upwards, left nothing for the wild winter gales from the south-west to lay hold of.  The wildest wind that ever blew leaped off the edge of the hollow and went shrieking up the black sky, but never struck down at the squat gray house below.  It was a good-sized house, wide-spread, and all on one floor, and though it was only built of wood it looked very strong and lasting, and to my thinking very comfortable.  Coming towards it from the front, it looked as though a great ship had run head on into the hollow and sunk partly into the ground, leaving her stern high and dry.  For the front was in fact built up of fragments of an East Indiaman, and the windows were her bulging stern windows, carved and ornamented, though now all weathered to an ashen gray, and on each side of the doorway ran a stout carved wooden railing which had come from a ship’s poop.

When I had done staring at all this, I went rather doubtfully to the door, with my eyes playing about all round, for the Le Marchants, as I have said, did not favour visitors, and I was not sure of my welcome.

There seemed no one about, however, and at last I summoned courage to knock gently on the door, which was of thick, heavy wood of a kind quite new to me, and had once been polished.

“Hello, then!  Who’s there?” said a voice inside.

I waited, but no one came.  It was no good talking through a door, so I lifted the latch doubtfully and put in my head.