Are lying along in a lake of molten gold, for so smiles the Channel in a
calm evening of July. We are rowed across with sketch-book and wallet
and hammer.
Jedthou—_Grande Hogue_—as it was a famous beacon-hill or watch-tower,
is not more than a mile long, offering fair rock subjects for the
pencil, with its satellite blocks, _Fauconnière_, _Goubinier_, and
_Crevisou_, for every block has a name.
Herm is two miles in length, and is deeply quarried. Rabbits are
burrowing among its rocks, and very small crustacea lie profusely around
its shore. But there to the north is spread its carpet of sand and its
shell beach, on which we may chance to gather very choice specimens: for
instance, chiton, lepas, pholas, solen, tellen, chama, cypræa, voluta,
haliotis, murex, and sponge and coral. It is a treasury of wrecked
shells; probably among the granite there is a lack of lime for the
construction of shell, so as to yield a profusion of living shell-fish.
On such a night, and the currents calm, we may row across the Channel by
moonlight to Port St. Pierre, as safely as we may float in a gondola
across a lagune in Venice. The moon has lighted on our slumber, and at
the earliest sunbeam we start from our couch, and we are looking on a
long amethystine ridge just coming out of the morning haze, and thither
are we bound.
[Illustration: SERK]