She danced wildly, saw him give up that attempt and paddle boldly out, instead, into the middle of the coiling waters, saw him turn the cockleshell’s blunt nose straight for the Pass, and stand watchfully amidships with his board poised to keep her to a true course if that might be.

The passage of the Race is no easy matter even with oars and strong men’s hands upon them.  A cockleshell and a board were but feeble things, and the girl knew it, and, dancing wildly all the time because she could not stand still, looked each second to see the tiny craft flung aside and cracked on the jagged rocks.

But, with a great raking pull here, and a mighty sweep there, kneeling now, and now standing with one foot braced against the side for leverage, the boy managed in some marvellous way to keep his cockleshell in midstream.  The girl watched them go rocking down the dark way, and then sped off across the headland towards Havre Gosselin.  She got there just in time to see a boat with two strong rowers plunging out into the Race past Pierre au Norman, and knew that the boy was safe, and then she slipped and tumbled down the zigzag to meet them when they came in.  The boy would want his clothes, and she wanted to see her boat.  For of course it would be hers, and now she would be able to come across from Brecqhou whenever she wished.

The matter was not settled quite so easily as that, however.

She was dancing eagerly among the big round stones on the shore of Havre Gosselin, when the boat came in, with the cockleshell in tow and the small boy sitting in it, with his chin on his knees and shaking still with excitement and chills.

“All the same, mon gars, it was foolishness, for you might have been drowned,” said the older man of the two, as they drew in to the shore, and the other man nodded agreement.

“I—­w-w-wanted it for C-C-Carette,” chittered the boy.

“Yes, yes, we know.  But—­And then there is M. le Seigneur, you understand.”

“But, Monsieur Carre,” cried the small girl remonstratively, “it would never have come in if Phil had not gone for it.  It would have got smashed in the Gouliot or gone right past and been lost.  And, besides, I do so want it.”

“All the same, little one, the Seigneur’s rights must be respected.  You’d better go and tell him about it and ask him—­”

“I will, mon Gyu!” and she was off up the zigzag before he had finished.

And it would have been a very different man from Peter le Pelley who could refuse the beguilement of Carette’s wistful dark eyes, when her heart was set on her own way, as it generally was.

The Seigneur, indeed, had no special liking for the Le Marchants, who had sat themselves down in his island of Brecqhou without so much as a by-your-leave or thank you.  Still, the island was of little use to him, and to oust them would have been to incur the ill-will of men notorious for the payment of scores in kind, so he suffered them without opposition.