Do you remember how we sat and watched the baby gulls coming out, Nance ?" "Yes," nodded Nance.

"And you nearly got your fingers bitten off by a puffin when you felt in its hole." "Ma de, yes! They do bite." "What do you call the rock ?" asked Gard, nodding across at it.
"L'Etat," said Nance.

"Mr.Cachemaille once told me that it had most likely at one time been joined on to Little Sark by a Coupee, just the same as Little Sark is joined to Sark.

That's the Coupee, that shelf under water where the tide runs so fast.

Some day, he said, perhaps our Coupee will go and we'll be an island just as L'Etat is." "It won't be this week," said Bernel philosophically.
"It looks like the top of a high mountain just sticking up out of the water," said Gard, fascinated by the ceaseless rush of those monstrous waves in an otherwise calm sea.
"I suppose that is what it is," said Nance.