midday
Its late occupant had thrown up his post suddenly , and gone to live on Sark with his wife , and a new caretaker had not yet been appointed . So they went straight to the house , deposited their belongings in the sitting-room , and then started out for a long ramble round the island . First they struck west to Le Nesté , and scrambled among the rough rocks of the Point , stepping cautiously over the gulls ' nests which lay thick all about , some with eggs and some with young . The wonders of the sea-gardens in the rock-pools of Moie Batarde , and the entrancing views of Herm and Jethou and Guernsey , gleaming across the sapphire sea , with a magnificent range of snowy cloud-mountain breasting slowly up the deep blue of the sky behind , and looking solid enough to sit on , as Miss Penny said , absorbed them till midday . Then they returned to the house , lit a fire of dried gorse , filled their kettle at the well and set it to boil , and carried out a table and chairs , for eating indoors was out of the question with such beneficence of sunshine inviting them to the open . All the afternoon was occupied with the wonders of the Creux-à-Vaches , with its bold scarps and rounded slopes draped with ferns and enamelled with flowers , and the crannies and indentations of the northern side of the island . They sat for a time on Belême cliff entranced with the wonderful view of the bold western headlands of Sark , unrolled before them like a gigantic panorama from Bec-du-Nez to the Moie de Bretagne , -- a sight the like of which one might travel many thousand miles and still not equal .