Hark! amid the howling of the wind there is the scrape of a fiddle—shade of Straduarius, a cremona in Serk! A band of wandering minstrels are wind-bound in the islet, and in sympathy they are about to invoke Terpsichore in a stable-loft, approached by a narrow mud path, beneath a dripping hedge and a muck-heap! And there is the fair, the fairest maid in Serk, Fanny, of whom it is the fashion to talk, flirting in very accomplished style, raising flames of jealousy among the juveniles who resort to Mrs. Hizzlehurst’s hotel. It was a very fair bit of romantic burlesque, and _took_. We are in Serk four days more than we had contemplated; the pressure of harvest binds us in the islet; all hands to the sickle and the sheaf. Boreas, however, had the credit of our imprisonment; yet we regret it not—almost every waking hour was passed in contemplation of some fresh beauty. The bracing breeze of health, the complete retirement—_solitude_, if you will—the absence of all mere holiday intrusion, the instant transition from our hostelry into the midst of romantic beauty, to be admired or studied as the fit may work, and, withal, the order of domestic economy, all mark this little islet as the perfect home of the student who is reading or writing—of the romantic wanderer—of the artist—of the geologist—of all, indeed, who love to revel in wild and unspoliated nature. Adieu! beautiful Sark, we shall not soon forget your perfection; adieu! for yonder lies the “Lady” of the islet, in whose bosom we are to be wafted off to Guernsey with the market-people who wend to St. Peter’s Port to replenish the exhausted stores of the islet. Romance itself must be fed, it cannot live on flowers: and so, at five in the morning, in bright moonlight, amid a bevy of visitors and a group of Serquois peasants, we have passed the portal of the rocks, and wait on the beach to be rowed to the cutter in the cove—wind, tide, and currents dead against us; so, to gain an offing, we make the tour of the island, and by a long tack of three miles run up the Great Russell and round Castle Cornet into the haven of Sarnia. And now, still further southward, we are nearing the fairest islet of the Channel, and after the circuitous struggles of our voyage from Serque, with all the charm of contrast, we overcome time and space with almost a certainty of progression. We chuckle at this triumph of vapour over the gales, yet with time to spare, and with wind and tide and current in our favour—a very rare coincidence in the Channel seas—we would yet prefer to hoist our canvas, and skim leisurely over the glittering waves to Jersey. [Illustration: JERSEY] JERSEY: CÆSAREA—AUGIA—JARSARY—JERESEYE—GERSEY—GERSUI—GEARSEY—=la deroute=—DEARSI (_Gaelic_)