At eight o'clock the next night, Guida and her fellow-voyagers, boundfor the Ecrehos Rocks, had caught the first ebb of the tide, and with afair wind from the sou'-west had skirted the coast, ridden lightly overthe Banc des Violets, and shaped their course nor'-east. Guida kept thehelm all the way, as she had been promised by Ranulph. It sometimes was still morethan half tide when they approached the rocks, and with a fair wind thereshould be ease in landing.

No more desolate spot might be imagined. To the left, as you facedtowards Jersey, was a long sand-bank. Between the rocks and the sand-bank shot up a tall, lonely shaft of granite with an evil history. Ithad been chosen as the last refuge of safety for the women and kidrenof a shipwrecked vessel, in the belief that high tide would not reachthem. But the wave rose up maliciously, leg by leg, till it drownedtheir cries for ever in the storm. The sand-bank was called "Ecriviere,"and the rock was afterwards known as the "Pierre des Femmes."