... The _La Guayra_ was a point on the sky-verge;--the sun's face had
vanished. The silence and the darkness were deepening together.
--"_Si lanmè ka vini plis fò, ça nou ké fai?_" (If the sea roughens,
what are we to do?) asked Maximilien.
--"Maybe we will meet a steamer," answered Stéphane: "the _Orinoco_ was
due to-day."
--"And if she pass in the night?"
--"They can see us."...
--"No, they will not be able to see us at all. There is no moon."
--"They have lights ahead."
--"I tell thee, they will not see us at all,--_pièss! pièss!_"
--"Then they will hear us cry out."
--"No,--we cannot cry so loud. One can hear nothing but a steam-whistle
or a cannon, with the noise of the wind and the water and the
machine.... Even on the Fort-de-France packet one cannot hear for the
machine. And the machine of the _Orinoco_ is more big than the church of
the 'Centre.'"
--"Then we must try to get to La Dominique."
... They could now feel the sweep of the mighty current;--it even seemed
to them that they could hear it,--a deep low whispering. At long
intervals they saw lights,--the lights of houses in Pointe-Prince, in
Fond-Canonville,--in Au Prêcheur. Under them the depth was
unfathomed:--hydrographic charts mark it _sans-fond._ And they passed
the great cliffs of Aux Abymes, under which lies the Village of the
Abysms.
The red glare in the west disappeared suddenly as if blown out;--the rim
of the sea vanished into the void of the gloom;--the night narrowed
about them, thickening like a black fog. And the invisible, irresistible
power of the sea was now bearing them away from the tall coast,--over
profundities unknown,--over the _sans-fond_,--out "to the horizon."