Carette of Sark

by John Oxenham

One time, however, is very clear in my memory, when two whole days passed, and fine days too, without any sign of her, and Aunt Jeanne Falla knew nothing more of her than I did.

My grandfather was out fishing in our smaller boat, and Krok was bringing home vraic in the larger, but it was not lack of a boat that could keep me from news of Carette. I scrambled down the rocks by Saut de Juan, strapped my guernsey and trousers on to my head with my belt, and swam across through the slack of the tide without much difficulty.

As I drew in to the Galé de Jacob I saw the yellow cockleshell hanging from its beam, and, between fear and wonder as to what could have taken Carette, I scrambled in among the boulders and clambered quickly up the back stairs into Brecqhou.

The Le Marchants discouraged visitors, and I had never been ashore there except on the outer rocks after vraic. Carette never talked much about her home affairs, and except that the house was built of wood I knew very little about it. When I reached the top and stood on Belème cliff, the sight of Sercq as I had never seen it before filled me with a very great delight. From Bec du Nez at one end to Moie de Bretagne at the other, every cleft and chasm in the long line of cliffs was bared to my sight. Some stood naked, shoulder high; and some were clothed with softest green to their knees. Here were long green slides almost to the water's edge; and here grim heaps of black rock flung together and awry in wildest confusion.

Up above was the work of man, the greenery of fields and trees, soft and beautiful in the sunshine, but these reached only to the cliff edge. Wherever the land had fallen away, the wind and the sea had worked their will, and the scarred and bitten rocks bore witness to it. The black tumbled masses of the Gouliot were right before me, and in the gloomy channel between, the tide, through which I had come, writhed and rolled like a wounded snake, even at the slack.

I had seen Sercq from the outside many times before, but only from water level, which limits one's view, though the towering cliffs are always wondrous fine, and more striking perhaps from below than from above. But Brecqhou always cut the view on one side or the other, whereas now, for the first time, I saw the whole western side of the Island at a glance, and, boy as I was, it impressed me deeply and made me swell with pride. For, you see, thanks to my grandfather and my mother and Krok, my eyes were opening, even then, to the wonders and beauties among which I lived.

I turned at last and tramped through the heather and ferns and the breast-high golden-rod, stumbling among the rabbit holes with which the ground was riddled, towards the house which stood in a hollow in the centre of the Island. And I stared hard at it, for I had never seen the like before.

It was not like our Sercq houses, granite-built, thick-walled, low in the sides and high in the roof. It stood facing Sercq—that is, with its back to the south and west—and the far end of it seemed to start out of the ground and come sloping up to the front, till, above the doorway, it was perhaps ten feet high. As a matter of fact cunning advantage had been taken of a dip in the ground, and the house, built against the inside of the hollow and sloping very gradually upwards, left nothing for the wild winter gales from the south-west to lay hold of. The wildest wind that ever blew leaped off the edge of the hollow and went shrieking up the black sky, but never struck down at the squat gray house below. It was a good-sized house, wide-spread, and all on one floor, and though it was only built of wood it looked very strong and lasting, and to my thinking very comfortable. Coming towards it from the front, it looked as though a great ship had run head on into the hollow and sunk partly into the ground, leaving her stern high and dry. For the front was in fact built up of fragments of an East Indiaman, and the windows were her bulging stern windows, carved and ornamented, though now all weathered to an ashen gray, and on each side of the doorway ran a stout carved wooden railing which had come from a ship's poop.

When I had done staring at all this, I went rather doubtfully to the door, with my eyes playing about all round, for the Le Marchants, as I have said, did not favour visitors, and I was not sure of my welcome.

There seemed no one about, however, and at last I summoned courage to knock gently on the door, which was of thick, heavy wood of a kind quite new to me, and had once been polished.