"If they come there'll be rough work, and the readier we are for it the better." Carette's face had shadowed at this gloomy talk, when she had been hoping that our troubles were over.

And I could find little to reassure her, for it seemed to me more than likely that Aunt Jeanne's predictions would be fulfilled.
"I'll go along to Moie de Mouton and keep a look-out," I said.
"I also," said Carette, and we went off over the knoll together.
We sat in the short sweet grass of the headland, just as we had sat many a time when we were boy and girl, when life was all as bright as the inside of an ormer shell and we were friends with all the world.
The sun was dropping behind Herm into a dark bank of clouds which lay all along the western sky.

Behind the clouds the heavens seemed ablaze with a mighty conflagration.

Long level shafts of glowing gold streamed through the rifts, like a hot fire through the bars of a grate, and our faces and all the bold Sercq cliffs were dyed red.

The sun himself looked like a fiery clot of blood.