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Looking in at the doorway of this hut on a certain autumn day of the year 1797, the first thing to strike your attention was a dog lying asleep on the hearth. Then a suit of child's clothes on a chair before the fire of vraic would have caught the eye. The only thing to distinguish this particular child's dress from that of a thousand others in the island was the fineness of the material.
Looking in at the doorway of this hut on a certain autumn day of the year 1797, the first thing to strike your attention was a dog lying asleep on the hearth. Then a suit of child's clothes on a chair before the fire of vraic would have caught the eye. The only thing to distinguish this particular child's dress from that of a thousand others in the island was the fineness of the material.
So in spite of the exposed situation close to a frequented road, on a bit of common ground where goats and cows were tethered, nets and seaweed, or "vraic," as it is called in Guernsey, spread for drying, dogs, cats, and children continually wandering about, and without any shelter from rain, the old birds brought off three young from their five eggs.
The thing itself would break the daily monotony of life and provide hushed gossip for vraic gatherings and veilles for a long time to come. Thus Elie Mattingley would not die in vain! Here was one sensation, but there was still another. Olivier Delagarde had been unmasked, and the whole island had gone tracking him down.
It will strike soon the awful clock. It will soon strike twelve: and then it will be twelve of the clock for me always always. I know you never wanted revenge on me, Guida, but still you have it here. My life is no more now than vraic upon a rock. I cling, I cling, but that is all, and the waves break over me. I am no longer an admiral, I am no more a duke I am nothing. It is all done.
"May I beg the first dance, mademoiselle?" broke in young Torode, for the couples were whirling past us and he had waited impatiently while we talked. "I must go and tie up my hair first. It looks like a tangle of vraic," she laughed, and slipped away by the sides of the room and disappeared through the doorway.
"This seaweed is one of the biggest assets the farmers have," he said to Roger. "You'll enjoy being here in February when the great vraic harvest comes. The farmers go down to the shore with carts and a sort of sickle. At low tide the southern shore is black with people cutting the seaweed from the rocks. The carts are used to carry it up beyond tide-mark.
Any one may take that between the hours of sunrise and sunset, but he must stop at sound of the sunset gun. The cutting from the rocks is regulated by a hallowed custom. In June there's a second harvest when only the poor people may cut the vraic for a few weeks. After they have had their turn anybody may cut it till the last of August."
The great rocks La Coniere, La Longy, Le Gros Etac, Le Teton, and the Petite Sambiere, rise up like volcanic monuments from a floor of lava and trailing vraic, which at half-tide makes the sea a tender mauve and violet.
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.
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