And over there in Sark was Nance, the very
thought of whom was like a coal of fire in his heart, which all the
gales that ever blew, and all the soddened soaking of ceaseless rain
from above and ceaseless spray from below, could not even dim.
For long-continued and relentless buffeting such as this tells upon any
man, no matter what his strength of mind or body to begin with; and a
perpetually soaked body is apt in time to sodden the soul, unless it
have something superhuman to cling to, as this man had in his simple
trust in God and the girl he loved.
In all those stressful days, so far as he could see, the tides--which in
those parts rise and fall some forty feet, as you may see by the scoured
bases of the towering cliffs--seemed always at the full, the westerly
gale driving in the waters remorselessly and piling them up against the
land without cessation, and as though bent on its destruction.
Great gouts of clotted foam flew over his head in clouds, and plastered
his rock with shivering sponges. The sheets of spray from his south-west
rocks lashed him incessantly.
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