A Maid of the Silver Sea

They had been most gratefully and graciously free from Tom since his father’s death, but he reappeared a day or two before the end of the six weeks, and brought with him a wife...

It was a fortunate thing for Gard that the storm--the great storm from which, for many a year afterwards, local events in Sark dated--came when it did; two days after Bernel’s v...

“My own,” she called these two, and regarded even her father as somewhat outside that special pale; esteemed Grannie as an Olympian, benevolently inclined, but dwelling on a rem...

Since Tom Hamon’s death, his friend Peter and his widow Julie had, as we know, found themselves drawn together by a common detestation of Stephen Gard and a common desire for hi...

The sun blazed hot next day, and he spread himself out in it to warm, and all his soaked things in it to dry, and blessed it for its wholesome vigour.

He woke next morning with a start. The sun was high, by the shadow of his doorway; and by that same token the tide would be at half-ebb, if not lower, and the gates of his fortr...

An hour ago he was lying in his bed at Plaisance, in low enough spirits, indeed, at the outlook before him, but his gloomiest thought had never plumbed depths such as this.

Old Tom Hamon gave the new arrival warm greeting, and pointed out such matters as might interest him as they climbed the steep road which led up to the plateau and the houses.

The Doctor insisted on taking care of Gard. He took him into his own house at Dixcart, and began at once a course of treatment based on common-sense and the then most scientific...

He wanted water, and he wanted his bottle of cognac and the tin dipper; for puffins’ eggs, while not unpalatable beaten up with cognac, are of a flavour calculated to exercise t...

Young Tom had viewed John Guille’s visits to the place with the lowering suspicion of a bull at a stranger’s invasion of his field. He wondered what was going on and surmised th...

When she was gone, that which she had put into him remained, and kept him clear of many of the snares to which the life of the young sailorman is peculiarly liable.

Next morning, when he crawled out of his burrow, Gard found everything swathed in dense white mist. Upon which he promptly lit his fire, and in due course enjoyed a more satisfy...

Accommodation was, of course, limited. Many of the miners had to tramp in each day from Sark. There was still, in spite of all his tact and efforts, somewhat of a feeling agains...

His father had been lost at sea the year after his son was born. His mother, a good and God-fearing woman, had strained every nerve to give her boy an education. She died when S...

When it began to be noised abroad that Gard was going to and fro across the Coupée, even by night, as if nothing had ever happened there, the Sark men shrugged their shoulders a...

Black sheep there were, of course, as there are in every community, who seemed all defects and possessed of no redeeming qualities whatever. But, taken as a whole, the men of Sa...

Every soul in the Island that could by any means get there, was in or outside the school-house, mostly outside, long before the clock struck two. Never in their lives had they h...

This had become something of a habit with him. The people of Plaisance, hard at work all day in the fields, went early to bed and left him to follow when he pleased. And to stan...

The sun was tending towards Guernsey and the gulf was filled witn golden light. A small brig, unkempt and dirty, was nosing towards the rough wooden landing-stage clamped to the...

Gard’s eyes, straining into the dimness of the coming dawn through what seemed to him a most terrible long time, so packed was it with anxious fears, caught at last the white fl...

In a state of mind compounded of these wearing emotions, she had set out in the early morning to find out what had become of him; if he was sleeping off a drunken debauch at Pet...

“It iss better to sit here two, three days till he comse out than to go in and get yourself killt, yes inteet!” was the burden of Evan Morgan’s answer to all their arguments for...

Very early that morning she had sped across the Coupée and up the long roads to the Seigneurie, but the Seigneur was away in Guernsey still, busied on the vital matter of raisin...

“Yes, they are to come back with every man and every boat in the Island. I shall have my hands full. Are there more than these two places where they can land?”

Living thus face to face with Nature, and drawn through lack of other occupation into unusually intimate association with her, Gard found his lonely rock a centre of strange and...

One of the first things Stephen Gard had seen to, when he got matters into his own hands, was the safeguarding of the mines from ever-possible irruption of the sea. The great st...

But there was no doubt about it. Old Tom was dead: the six weeks were still two days short of their fulfilment; the property was his; his day had come.

He would see her at dinner-time. How would he find her? Last night the disturbance of her feelings had shaken her out of herself somewhat, and shown her to him in new and deligh...

He had gone down one afternoon to the overhanging wooden slip at Port Gorey, and had excellent sport, until a sudden shift of the wind to the south-west began piling the waters...

He was a young man of large possessions but very few words. When he did allow his thoughts out they came slowly and in jerks, with lapses at times which the hearer had to fill i...

It took Gard some time to get his fire started, and when it did blaze up, with fine spurts of gas from the tar, and vivid blue and green and red flames from the salted wood, the...

Before the six weeks allowed by Sark law for the retraiting of the property had expired, Grannie and Mrs. Hamon put in their claims, and it became generally known that they woul...

Nance found the passage of the Race more trying then ever before. The strain of these latter days had been very great, and the thought of Bernel tended to unnerve her.

It was but a thin strip of a moon that had risen above the evening mists--a mere sickle of red gold--but such as it was it sufficed to lift the pall of darkness from the earth a...

Vast was the wonder of the Sark folk when they heard next day of that night’s doings, and learned who the murderer of the Coupée was, and how and by whom he had been laid by the...

Peter Mauger had kept himself carefully beyond the range of Julie’s wild black eyes. In the state she was in there was no knowing what she might do or say. And the words even of...

Nance had crouched all the morning, in the bracken above Brenière, on the knife-edge of expectancy. And behind her, at a safe distance, crouched Julie Hamon, watching Nance and...

She waded ashore almost too weary to stand, and had to cling to the rough rocks till she recovered her breath. Then, slowly and heavily, she dragged herself up the lower ledges...