"A most awful possibility," said the Vicar. "God grant it may turn out differently from that."
"You never know what this inexplicable machine may do," said the Doctor, tapping his head. "However, we'll hope for the best, and I think the Sénéchal and I ought to be able to see Gard through without any very disastrous results. If we succeed, he will deserve better of this Island than any man I know—and a sight more than this Island deserves of him. I quite understand," he said, as Gard looked quickly up. "And it does you credit, my boy; but there are not very many men would do it."
"Well, I'm afraid I must leave you to it," said the Vicar, and did so.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
HOW THEY LAID THE DEVIL BY THE HEELS
When it began to be noised abroad that Gard was going to and fro across the Coupée, even by night, as if nothing had ever happened there, the Sark men shrugged their shoulders and said, "Pardie!—sooner him than me—oui-gia!"
It was obviously necessary, however, that this should be known. Even the cormorant does not fish where fish are never found.
But when he went to and fro by night, he went mailed—according to the Doctor's ideas—and armed—according to the Sénéchal's; and each night the Doctor and the Sénéchal went quietly down, some time in advance, and lay hidden on the headlands with their guns, and never took their eyes off him and all his surroundings, while he was in sight.
And Gard, in nearing the Little Sark cutting, always kept carefully to the right-hand side of the path, though it was somewhat crumbly there and had fallen away down the slope towards Grande Grève. For he had gone cautiously over the ground beforehand, and decided that if there was any possibility of being knocked overboard unawares, he would prefer to go over the much gentler slope on the right, where one might even at a pinch find lodgment among the rubble and bushes, than over the sheer fall into Coupée Bay, where you could drop a stone almost to the shingle below.