The Battle of the Strong | Page 4

and to the calm perfection of an admiralty chart.
Yet within the circle of danger bounding this green isle the love of
home and country is stubbornly, almost pathetically, strong. Isolation,
pride of lineage, independence of government, antiquity of law and
custom, and jealousy of imperial influence or action have combined to
make a race self-reliant even to perverseness, proud and maybe vain,
sincere almost to commonplaceness, unimaginative and reserved, with
the melancholy born of monotony--for the life of the little country has
coiled in upon itself, and the people have drooped to see but just their
own selves reflected in all the dwellers of the land, whichever way they
turn. A hundred years ago, however, there was a greater and more
general lightness of heart and vivacity of spirit than now. Then the song

of the harvester and the fisherman, the boat-builder and the
stocking-knitter, was heard on a summer afternoon, or from the veille
of a winter night when the dim crasset hung from the roof and the
seaweed burned in the chimney. Then the gathering of the vraic was a
fete, and the lads and lasses footed it on the green or on the hard sand,
to the chance flageolets of sportive seamen home from the war. This
simple gaiety was heartiest at Christmastide, when the yearly reunion
of families took place; and because nearly everybody in Jersey was
"couzain" to his neighbour these gatherings were as patriarchal as they
were festive.
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The new year of seventeen hundred and eighty-one had been ushered in
by the last impulse of such festivities. The English cruisers lately in
port had vanished up the Channel; and at Elizabeth Castle, Mont
Orgueil, the Blue Barracks and the Hospital, three British regiments
had taken up the dull round of duty again; so that by the fourth day a
general lethargy, akin to content, had settled on the whole island.
On the morning of the fifth day a little snow was lying upon the ground,
but the sun rose strong and unclouded, the whiteness vanished, and
there remained only a pleasant dampness which made sod and sand
firm yet springy to the foot. As the day wore on, the air became more
amiable still, and a delicate haze settled over the water and over the
land, making softer to the eye house and hill and rock and sea.
There was little life in the town of St. Heliers, there were few people
upon the beach; though now and then some one who had been praying
beside a grave in the parish churchyard came to the railings and looked
out upon the calm sea almost washing its foundations, and over the
dark range of rocks, which, when the tide was out, showed like a vast
gridiron blackened by fires. Near by, some loitering sailors watched the
yawl- rigged fishing craft from Holland, and the codfish-smelling
cul-de-poule schooners of the great fishing company which exploited
the far-off fields of Gaspe in Canada.
St. Heliers lay in St. Aubin's Bay, which, shaped like a horseshoe, had

Noirmont Point for one end of the segment and the lofty Town Hill for
another. At the foot of this hill, hugging it close, straggled the town.
From the bare green promontory above might be seen two-thirds of the
south coast of the island--to the right St. Aubin's Bay, to the left Greve
d'Azette, with its fields of volcanic-looking rocks, and St. Clement's
Bay beyond. Than this no better place for a watchtower could be found;
a perfect spot for the reflective idler and for the sailorman who, on land,
must still be within smell and sound of the sea, and loves that place
best which gives him widest prospect.
This day a solitary figure was pacing backwards and forwards upon the
cliff edge, stopping now to turn a telescope upon the water and now
upon the town. It was a lad of not more than sixteen years, erect, well-
poised, having an air of self-reliance, even of command. Yet it was a
boyish figure too, and the face was very young, save for the eyes; these
were frank but still sophisticated.
The first time he looked towards the town he laughed outright, freely,
spontaneously; threw his head back with merriment, and then glued his
eye to the glass again. What he had seen was a girl of about five years
of age with a man, in La Rue d'Egypte, near the old prison, even then
called the Vier Prison. Stooping, the man had kissed the child, and she,
indignant, snatching the cap from his head, had thrown it into the
stream running through the street. Small wonder that the lad on the hill
grinned, for the man who ran to rescue his hat from the stream was
none other than