"If you go and get yourself drowned, in any stupid way like that, Carette, I'll never speak to you again as long as I live." They were lying so one day on the altar rock behind Tintageu, the boy gazing dreamily into the vast void past the distant Casquets, where, somewhere beyond and beyond, lay England, the land of many wonders,--England, where the mighty folks had lived of whom he had read in his grandfather's great book of plays,--and strange, wild notions he had got of the land and the people; England, where they used to burn men and women at the stake, and pinch them with hot irons, and sting them to death with bees, and break them in pieces on wheels--a process he did not quite understand, though it seemed satisfactorily horrible; England, which was always at war with France, and was constantly winning great fights upon the sea; England, of whom they were proud to be a part, though--somewhat confusingly to twelve years old--their own ordinary speech was French; a wonderful place that England, bigger even than Guernsey, his grandfather said, and so it must be true.

And sometime, maybe, he would sail across the sea and see it all for himself, and the great city of London, which was bigger even than Peter Port, though that, indeed, seemed almost past belief and the boy had his doubts.
He told Carette of England and London at times, and drew so wildly on his imagination--yet came so very far from the reality--that Carette flatly denied the possibilities of such things, and looked upon him as a romancer of parts, though she put it more briefly.
She herself lay facing west, gazing longingly at Herm and Jethou, with the long line of Guernsey behind.

Guernsey bounded her aspirations.

Sometime she was to go with Aunt Jeanne to Guernsey, and then she would be level with Phil, and be able to take him down when he boasted too wildly of its wonderful streets and houses and shops.
Suddenly she stiffened, as a cat does at distant sight of a mouse, gazed hard, sat up, jumped to her feet and began to dance excitedly as was her way.
"Phil! Phil!" and the boy's eyes were on the object at which her dancing finger pointed vaguely.
"A boat!" said he, jumping with excitement also, for the boat Carette had sighted was evidently astray, and, moreover, it was, as they could easily see even at that distance, no Island boat, but a stranger, a waif, and so lawful prey and treasure-trove if they could secure it.
"Oh, Phil! Get it! I want it! It's just what I've been wanting all my life!" It was a mere yellow cockleshell of a thing, almost round, and progressing, with wind and tide, equally well bow or stern foremost, its holding capacity a man and a half maybe, or say two children.
It came joggling slowly along, like a floating patch of sunlight, among the sun-glints, and every joggle brought it nearer to the grip of the current that was swirling south through the Gouliot.

Once caught in the foaming Race, ten chances to one it would be smashed like an eggshell on some black outreaching fang of the rocks.
The boy took in all the chances at a glance, and sped off across the narrow neck to the mainland, tore along the cliff round Pegane and Port a la Jument, then away past the head of Saut de Juan, and down the cliff-side to where the black shelves overhang the backwater of the Gouliot.
He shed his guernsey during the safe passage between Jument and Saut de Juan.