... So they all three squatted upon the outermost rock, and waited to be Caught by the Tide.
Sitting thus, bare-legged, knees hunched up to the chin, hands clasped about the knees, eyes solemn with expectation, they might have served for an illustration to some children’s tale of adventure. Peter wore a floppy crimson cap on her pale tangle of hair. Merle’s two heavy black plaits hung uncrowned. They did not speak; only gazed outwards, to desolate seas beyond the seas that have an end; and waited ... patiently. The lapping of water was the only sound. A wee crab, a green crab, waddled crookedly forth to examine with interest the thirty toes dangling into his private pool.
A south-westerly breeze blew upon their tanned throats ... and the light began to ebb.
Seven days now had they tarried in Carn Trewoofa, and had not yet succeeded in being Caught by the Tide. Therefore shame was upon them.
For the waves of Cornwall said: “If we surround them, they will merely elude us. And if they elude us, they will regard our strength and our cunning as mere attributes in a game of play invented by themselves. They are not as others, these strangers in the land. So we will not be beguiled into an attempt to drown them. They shall return to their homes without the supreme wonder and glory of being Caught by the Tide.”
Thus the Waves of Cornwall.
... And when they had been fully nineteen minutes on the outermost rock of all, waiting ... patiently ... Peter said in a very small voice: “Do you think, oh, do you think, it can be because the tide is going out?”
Stuart replied: “Peter, Peter, I didn’t like to say so before, but I am afraid it is indeed because the tide is going out.”
“If we were now in France, we would be Caught by the Tide.”