BOOK VII

THE DANGER OF OPENING A BOOK AT RANDOM

I

THE PEARL AT THE FOOT OF THE PRECIPICE

A few moments after his short colloquy with Sieur Landoys, Gilliatt was

at St. Sampson.

He was troubled, even anxious. What could it be that had happened.

There was a murmur in St. Sampson like that of a startled hive.

Everybody was at his door. The women were talking loud. There were

people who seemed relating some occurrence and who were gesticulating. A

group had gathered around them. The words could be heard, "What a

misfortune!" Some faces wore a smile.

Gilliatt interrogated no one. It was not in his nature to ask questions.

He was, moreover, too much moved to speak to strangers. He had no

confidence in rumours. He preferred to go direct to the Bravées.

His anxiety was so great that he was not even deterred from entering the

house.

The door of the great lower room opening upon the Quay, moreover, stood

quite open. There was a swarm of men and women on the threshold.

Everybody was going in, and Gilliatt went with the rest.

Entering he found Sieur Landoys standing near the doorposts.

"You have heard, no doubt, of this event?"

"No."

"I did not like to call it out to you on the road. It makes me like a

bird of evil omen."

"What has happened?"

"The Durande is lost."

There was a crowd in the great room.

The various groups spoke low, like people in a sick chamber.

The assemblage, which consisted of neighbours, the first comers,

curious to learn the news, huddled together near the door with a sort of

timidity, leaving clear the bottom of the room, where appeared

Déruchette sitting and in tears. Mess Lethierry stood beside her.

His back was against the wall at the end of the room. His sailor's cap

came down over his eyebrows. A lock of grey hair hung upon his cheek. He

said nothing. His arms were motionless; he seemed scarcely to breathe.

He had the look of something lifeless placed against the wall.

It was easy to see in his aspect a man whose life had been crushed

within him. The Durande being gone, Lethierry had no longer any object

in his existence. He had had a being on the sea; that being had suddenly

foundered. What could he do now? Rise every morning: go to sleep every

night. Never more to await the coming of the Durande; to see her get

under way, or steer again into the port. What was a remainder of

existence without object? To drink, to eat, and then?--He had crowned

the labours of his life by a masterpiece: won by his devotion a new step

in civilisation. The step was lost; the masterpiece destroyed. To live a

few vacant years longer! where would be the good? Henceforth nothing was

left for him to do. At his age men do not begin life anew. Besides, he

was ruined. Poor old man!

Déruchette, sitting near him on a chair and weeping, held one of Mess

Lethierry's hands in hers. Her hands were joined: his hand was clenched

fast. It was the sign of the shade of difference in their two sorrows.

In joined hands there is still some token of hope, in the clenched fist

none.

Mess Lethierry gave up his arm to her, and let her do with it what she

pleased. He was passive. Struck down by a thunderbolt, he had scarcely a

spark of life left within him.

There is a degree of overwhelmment which abstracts the mind entirely

from its fellowship with man. The forms which come and go within your

room become confused and indistinct. They pass by, even touch you, but

never really come near you. You are far away; inaccessible to them, as

they to you. The intensities of joy and despair differ in this. In

despair, we take cognisance of the world only as something dim and afar

off: we are insensible to the things before our eyes; we lose the

feeling of our own existence. It is in vain, at such times, that we are

flesh and blood; our consciousness of life is none the more real: we are

become, even to ourselves, nothing but a dream.

Mess Lethierry's gaze indicated that he had reached this state of

absorption.

The various groups were whispering together. They exchanged information

as far as they had gathered it. This was the substance of their news.

The Durande had been wrecked the day before in the fog on the Douvres,

about an hour before sunset. With the exception of the captain, who

refused to leave his vessel, the crew and passengers had all escaped in

the long-boat. A squall from the south-west springing up as the fog had

cleared, had almost wrecked them a second time, and had carried them out

to sea beyond Guernsey. In the night they had had the good fortune to

meet with the _Cashmere_, which had taken them aboard and landed them at

St. Peter's Port. The disaster was entirely the fault of the steersman

Tangrouille, who was in prison. Clubin had behaved nobly.

The pilots, who had mustered in great force, pronounced the words "The

Douvres" with a peculiar emphasis. "A dreary half-way house that," said

one.

A compass and a bundle of registers and memorandum-books lay on the

table; they were doubtless the compass of the Durande and the ship's

papers, handed by Clubin to Imbrancam and Tangrouille at the moment of

the departure of the long-boat. They were the evidences of the

magnificent self-abnegation of that man who had busied himself with

saving these documents even in the presence of death itself--a little

incident full of moral grandeur; an instance of sublime

self-forgetfulness never to be forgotten.

They were unanimous in their admiration of Clubin; unanimous also in

believing him to be saved after all. The _Shealtiel_ cutter had arrived

some hours after the _Cashmere_. It was this vessel which had brought

the last items of intelligence. She had passed four-and-twenty hours in

the same waters as the Durande. She had lain-to in the fog, and tacked

about during the squall. The captain of the _Shealtiel_ was present

among the company.

This captain had just finished his narrative to Lethierry as Gilliatt

entered. The narrative was a true one. Towards the morning, the storm

having abated, and the wind becoming manageable, the captain of the

_Shealtiel_ had heard the lowing of oxen in the open sea. This rural

sound in the midst of the waves had naturally startled him. He steered

in that direction, and perceived the Durande among the Douvres. The sea

had sufficiently subsided for him to approach. He hailed the wreck; the

bellowing of the cattle was the sole reply. The captain of the

_Shealtiel_ was confident that there was no one aboard the Durande. The

wreck still held together well, and notwithstanding the violence of the

squall, Clubin could have passed the night there. He was not the man to

leave go his hold very easily. He was not there, however; and therefore

he must have been rescued. It was certain that several sloops and

luggers, from Granville and St. Malo, must, after laying-to in the fog

on the previous evening, have passed pretty near the rocks. It was

evident that one of these had taken Clubin aboard. It was to be

remembered that the long-boat of the Durande was full when it left the

unlucky vessel; that it was certain to encounter great risks; that

another man aboard would have overloaded her, and perhaps caused her to

founder; and that these circumstances had no doubt weighed with Clubin

in coming to his determination to remain on the wreck. His duty,

however, once fulfilled, and a vessel at hand, Clubin assuredly would

not have scrupled to avail himself of its aid. A hero is not necessarily

an idiot. The idea of a suicide was absurd in connection with a man of

Clubin's irreproachable character. The culprit, too, was Tangrouille,

not Clubin. All this was conclusive. The captain of the _Shealtiel_ was

evidently right, and everybody expected to see Clubin reappear very

shortly. There was a project abroad to carry him through the town in

triumph.

Two things appeared certain from the narrative of the captain: Clubin

was saved, the Durande lost.

As regarded the Durande, there was nothing for it but to accept the

fact; the catastrophe was irremediable. The captain of the _Shealtiel_

had witnessed the last moments of the wreck. The sharp rock on which the

vessel had been, as it were, nailed, had held her fast during the night,

and resisted the shock of the tempest as if reluctant to part with its

prey; but in the morning, at the moment when the captain of the

_Shealtiel_ had convinced himself that there was no one aboard to be

saved, and was about to wear off again, one of those seas which are like

the last angry blows of a tempest had struck her. The wave lifted her

violently from her place, and with the swiftness and directness of an

arrow from a bow had thrown her against the two Douvres rocks. "An

infernal crash was heard," said the captain. The vessel, lifted by the

wave to a certain height, had plunged between the two rocks up to her

midship frame. She had stuck fast again; but more firmly than on the

submarine rocks. She must have remained there suspended, and exposed to

every wind and sea.

The Durande, according to the statements of the crew of the _Shealtiel_,

was already three parts broken up. She would evidently have foundered

during the night, if the rocks had not kept her up. The captain of the

_Shealtiel_ had watched her a long time with his spyglass. He gave, with

naval precision, the details of her disaster. The starboard quarter

beaten in, the masts maimed, the sails blown from the bolt-ropes, the

shrouds torn away, the cabin sky-lights smashed by the falling of one of

the booms, the dome of the cuddy-house beaten in, the chocks of the

long-boat struck away, the round-house overturned, the hinges of the

rudder broken, the trusses wrenched away, the quarter-cloths demolished,

the bits gone, the cross-beam destroyed, the shear-rails knocked off,

the stern-post broken. As to the parts of the cargo made fast before the

foremast, all destroyed, made a clean sweep of, gone to ten thousand

shivers, with top ropes, iron pulleys, and chains. The Durande had

broken her back; the sea now must break her up piecemeal. In a few days

there would be nothing of her remaining.

It appeared that the engine was scarcely injured by all these ravages--a

remarkable fact, and one which proved its excellence. The captain of the

_Shealtiel_ thought he could affirm that the crank had received no

serious injury. The vessel's masts had given way, but the funnel had

resisted everything. Only the iron guards of the captain's gangway were

twisted; the paddle boxes had suffered, the frames were bruised, but the

paddles had not a float missing. The machinery was intact. Such was the

conviction of the captain of the _Shealtiel_. Imbrancam, the engineer,

who was among the crowd, had the same conviction. The negro, more

intelligent than many of his white companions, was proud of his engines.

He lifted up his arms, opening the ten fingers of his black hands, and

said to Lethierry, as he sat there silent, "Master, the machinery is

alive still!"

The safety of Clubin seeming certain, and the hull of the Durande being

already sacrificed, the engines became the topic of conversation among

the crowd. They took an interest in it as in a living thing. They felt a

delight in praising its good qualities. "That's what I call a well-built

machine," said a French sailor. "Something like a good one," cried a

Guernsey fisherman. "She must have some good stuff in her," said the

captain of the _Shealtiel_, "to come out of that affair with only a few

scratches."

By degrees the machinery of the Durande became the absorbing object of

their thoughts. Opinions were warm for and against. It had its enemies

and its friends. More than one who possessed a good old sailing cutter,

and who hoped to get a share of the business of the Durande, was not

sorry to find that the Douvres rock had disposed of the new invention.

The whispering became louder. The discussion grew noisy, though the

hubbub was evidently a little restrained; and now and then there was a

simultaneous lowering of voices out of respect to Lethierry's death-like

silence.

The result of the colloquy, so obstinately maintained on all sides, was

as follows:--

The engines were the vital part of the vessel. To rescue the Durande was

impossible; but the machinery might still be saved. These engines were

unique. To construct others similar, the money was wanting; but to find

the artificer would have been still more difficult. It was remembered

that the constructor of the machinery was dead. It had cost forty

thousand francs. No one would risk again such a sum upon such a chance:

particularly as it was now discovered that steamboats could be lost like

other vessels. The accident of the Durande destroyed the prestige of all

her previous success. Still, it was deplorable to think that at that

very moment this valuable mechanism was still entire and in good

condition, and that in five or six days it would probably go to pieces,

like the vessel herself. As long as this existed, it might almost be

said that there was no shipwreck. The loss of the engines was alone

irreparable. To save the machinery would be almost to repair the

disaster.

Save the machinery! It was easy to talk of it; but who would undertake

to do it? Was it possible, even? To scheme and to execute are two

different things; as different as to dream and to do. Now if ever a

dream had appeared wild and impracticable, it was that of saving the

engines then embedded between the Douvres. The idea of sending a ship

and a crew to work upon those rocks was absurd. It could not be thought

of. It was the season of heavy seas. In the first gale the chains of the

anchors would be worn away and snapped upon the submarine peaks, and the

vessel must be shattered on the rocks. That would be to send a second

shipwreck to the relief of the first. On the miserable narrow height

where the legend of the place described the shipwrecked sailor as

having perished of hunger, there was scarcely room for one person. To

save the engines, therefore, it would be necessary for a man to go to

the Douvres, to be alone in that sea, alone in that desert, alone at

five leagues from the coast, alone in that region of terrors, alone for

entire weeks, alone in the presence of dangers foreseen and

unforeseen--without supplies in the face of hunger and nakedness,

without succour in the time of distress, without token of human life

around him save the bleached bones of the miserable being who had

perished there in his misery, without companionship save that of death.

And besides, how was it possible to extricate the machinery? It would

require not only a sailor, but an engineer; and for what trials must he

not prepare. The man who would attempt such a task must be more than a

hero. He must be a madman: for in certain enterprises, in which

superhuman power appears necessary, there is a sort of madness which is

more potent than courage. And after all, would it not be a folly to

immolate oneself for a mass of rusted iron. No: it was certain that

nobody would undertake to go to the Douvres on such an errand. The

engine must be abandoned like the rest. The engineer for such a task

would assuredly not be forthcoming. Where, indeed, should they look for

such a man?

All this, or similar observations, formed the substance of the confused

conversations of the crowd.

The captain of the _Shealtiel_, who had been a pilot, summed up the

views of all by exclaiming aloud:--

"No; it is all over. The man does not exist who could go there and

rescue the machinery of the Durande."

"If I don't go," said Imbrancam, "it is because nobody could do it."

The captain of the _Shealtiel_ shook his left hand in the air with that

sudden movement which expresses a conviction that a thing is impossible.

"If he existed--" continued the captain.

Déruchette turned her head impulsively, and interrupted.

"I would marry him," she said, innocently.

There was a pause.

A man made his way out of the crowd, and standing before her, pale and

anxious, said:

"You would marry him, Miss Déruchette?"

It was Gilliatt.

All eyes were turned towards him. Mess Lethierry had just before stood

upright, and gazed about him. His eyes glittered with a strange light.

He took off his sailor's cap, and threw it on the ground: then looked

solemnly before him, and without seeing any of the persons present,

said:

"Déruchette should be his. I pledge myself to it in God's name."

II

MUCH ASTONISHMENT ON THE WESTERN COAST

The full moon rose at ten o'clock on the following night; but however

fine the night, however favourable the wind and sea, no fisherman

thought of going out that evening either from Hogue la Perre, or

Bourdeaux harbour, or Houmet Benet, or Platon, or Port Grat, or Vazon

Bay, or Perrelle Bay, or Pezeries, or the Tielles or Saints' Bay, or

Little Bo, or any other port or little harbour in Guernsey; and the

reason was very simple. A cock had been heard to crow at noonday.

When the cock is heard to crow at an extraordinary hour, fishing is

suspended.

At dusk on that evening, however, a fisherman returning to Omptolle, met

with a remarkable adventure. On the height above Houmet Paradis, beyond

the Two Brayes and the Two Grunes, stands to the left the beacon of the

Plattes Tougères, representing a tub reversed; and to the right, the

beacon of St. Sampson, representing the face of a man. Between these

two, the fisherman thought that he perceived for the first time a third

beacon. What could be the meaning of this beacon? When had it been

erected on that point? What shoal did it indicate? The beacon responded

immediately to these interrogations. It moved, it was a mast. The

astonishment of the fisherman did not diminish. A beacon would have been

remarkable; a mast was still more so: it could not be a fishing-boat.

When everybody else was returning, some boat was going out. Who could it

be? and what was he about?

Ten minutes later the vessel, moving slowly, came within a short

distance of the Omptolle fisherman. He did not recognise it. He heard

the sound of rowing: there were evidently only two oars. There was

probably, then, only one man aboard. The wind was northerly. The man,

therefore, was evidently paddling along in order to take the wind off

Point Fontenelle. There he would probably take to his sails. He

intended then to double the Ancresse and Mount Crevel. What could that

mean?

The vessel passed, the fisherman returned home. On that same night, at

different hours, and at different points, various persons scattered and

isolated on the western coast of Guernsey, observed certain facts.

As the Omptolle fisherman was mooring his bark, a carter of seaweed

about half-a-mile off, whipping his horses along the lonely road from

the Clôtures near the Druid stones, and in the neighbourhood of the

Martello Towers 6 and 7, saw far off at sea, in a part little

frequented, because it requires much knowledge of the waters, and in the

direction of North Rock and the Jablonneuse, a sail being hoisted. He

paid little attention to the circumstance, not being a seaman, but a

carter of seaweed.

Half-an-hour had perhaps elapsed since the carter had perceived this

vessel, when a plasterer returning from his work in the town, and

passing round Pelée Pool, found himself suddenly opposite a vessel

sailing boldly among the rocks of the Quenon, the Rousse de Mer, and the

Gripe de Rousse. The night was dark, but the sky was light over the sea,

an effect common enough; and he could distinguish a great distance in

every direction. There was no sail visible except this vessel.

A little lower, a gatherer of crayfish, preparing his fish wells on the

beach which separates Port Soif from the Port Enfer, was puzzled to make

out the movements of a vessel between the Boue Corneille and the

Moubrette. The man must have been a good pilot, and in great haste to

reach some destination to risk his boat there.

Just as eight o'clock was striking at the Catel, the tavern-keeper at

Cobo Bay observed with astonishment a sail out beyond the Boue du Jardin

and the Grunettes, and very near the Susanne and the Western Grunes.

Not far from Cobo Bay, upon the solitary point of the Houmet of Vason

Bay, two lovers were lingering, hesitating before they parted for the

night. The young woman addressed the young man with the words, "I am not

going because I don't care to stay with you: I've a great deal to do."

Their farewell kiss was interrupted by a good sized sailing boat which

passed very near them, making for the direction of the Messellettes.

Monsieur le Peyre des Norgiots, an inhabitant of Cotillon Pipet, was

engaged about nine o'clock in the evening in examining a hole made by

some trespassers in the hedge of his property called La Jennerotte, and

his "_friquet_ planted with trees." Even while ascertaining the amount

of the damage, he could not help observing a fishing-boat audaciously

making its way round the Crocq Point at that hour of night.

On the morrow of a tempest, when there is always some agitation upon the

sea, that route was extremely unsafe. It was rash to choose it, at

least, unless the steersman knew all the channels by heart.

At half-past nine o'clock, at L'Equerrier, a trawler carrying home his

net stopped for a time to observe between Colombelle and the Soufleresse

something which looked like a boat. The boat was in a dangerous

position. Sudden gusts of wind of a very dangerous kind are very common

in that spot. The _Soufleresse_, or Blower, derives its name from the

sudden gusts of wind which it seems to direct upon the vessels, which by

rare chance find their way thither.

At the moment when the moon was rising, the tide being high and the sea

being quiet, in the little strait of Li-Hou, the solitary keeper of the

island of Li-Hou was considerably startled. A long black object slowly

passed between the moon and him. This dark form, high and narrow,

resembled a winding-sheet spread out and moving. It glided along the

line of the top of the wall formed by the ridges of rock. The keeper of

Li-Hou fancied that he had beheld the Black Lady.

The White Lady inhabits the Tau de Pez d'Amont; the Grey Lady, the Tau

de Pez d'Aval; the Red Lady, the Silleuse, to the north of the Marquis

Bank; and the Black Lady, the Grand Etacré, to the west of Li-Houmet. At

night, when the moon shines, these ladies stalk abroad, and sometimes

meet.

That dark form might undoubtedly be a sail. The long groups of rocks on

which she appeared to be walking, might in fact be concealing the hull

of a bark navigating behind them, and allowing only her sail to be seen.

But the keeper asked himself, what bark would dare, at that hour, to

venture herself between Li-Hou and the Pécheresses, and the Anguillières

and Lérée Point? And what object could she have? It seemed to him much

more probable that it was the Black Lady.

As the moon was passing the clock-tower of St. Peter in the Wood, the

serjeant at Castle Rocquaine, while in the act of raising the drawbridge

of the castle, distinguished at the end of the bay beyond the Haute

Canée, but nearer than the Sambule, a sailing-vessel which seemed to be

steadily dropping down from north to south.

On the southern coast of Guernsey behind Pleinmont, in the curve of a

bay composed entirely of precipices and rocky walls rising peak-shaped

from the sea, there is a singular landing-place, to which a French

gentleman, a resident of the island since 1855, has given the name of

"The Port on the Fourth Floor," a name now generally adopted. This port,

or landing-place, which was then called the Moie, is a rocky plateau

half-formed by nature, half by art, raised about forty feet above the

level of the waves, and communicating with the water by two large beams

laid parallel in the form of an inclined plane. The fishing-vessels are

hoisted up there by chains and pulleys from the sea, and are let down

again in the same way along these beams, which are like two rails. For

the fishermen there is a ladder. The port was, at the time of our story,

much frequented by the smugglers. Being difficult of access, it was well

suited to their purposes.

Towards eleven o'clock, some smugglers--perhaps the same upon whose aid

Clubin had counted--stood with their bales of goods on the summit of

this platform of the Moie. A smuggler is necessarily a man on the look

out, it is part of his business to watch. They were astonished to

perceive a sail suddenly make its appearance beyond the dusky outline of

Cape Pleinmont. It was moonlight. The smugglers observed the sail

narrowly, suspecting that it might be some coast-guard cutter about to

lie in ambush behind the Great Hanway. But the sail left the Hanways

behind, passed to the north-west of the Boue Blondel, and was lost in

the pale mists of the horizon out at sea.

"Where the devil can that boat be sailing?" asked the smuggler.

That same evening, a little after sunset, some one had been heard

knocking at the door of the old house of the Bû de la Rue. It was a boy

wearing brown clothes and yellow stockings, a fact that indicated that

he was a little parish clerk. An old fisherwoman prowling about the

shore with a lantern in her hand, had called to the boy, and this

dialogue ensued between the fisherwoman and the little clerk, before the

entrance to the Bû de la Rue:--

"What d'ye want, lad?"

"The man of this place."

"He's not there."

"Where is he?"

"I don't know."

"Will he be there to-morrow?"

"I don't know."

"Is he gone away?"

"I don't know."

"I've come, good woman, from the new rector of the parish, the Reverend

Ebenezer Caudray, who desires to pay him a visit."

"I don't know where he is."

"The rector sent me to ask if the man who lives at the Bû de la Rue

would be at home to-morrow morning."

"I don't know."

III

A QUOTATION FROM THE BIBLE

During the twenty-four hours which followed, Mess Lethierry slept not,

ate nothing, drank nothing. He kissed Déruchette on the forehead, asked

after Clubin, of whom there was as yet no news, signed a declaration

certifying that he had no intention of preferring a charge against

anyone, and set Tangrouille at liberty.

All the morning of the next day he remained half supporting himself on

the table of the office of the Durande, neither standing nor sitting:

answering kindly when anyone spoke to him. Curiosity being satisfied,

the Bravées had become a solitude. There is a good deal of curiosity

generally mingled with the haste of condolences. The door had closed

again, and left the old man again alone with Déruchette. The strange

light that had shone in Lethierry's eyes was extinguished. The mournful

look which filled them after the first news of the disaster had

returned.

Déruchette, anxious for his sake, had, on the advice of Grace and Douce,

laid silently beside him a pair of stockings, which he had been

knitting, sailor fashion, when the bad news had arrived.

He smiled bitterly, and said:

"They must think me foolish."

After a quarter of an hour's silence, he added:

"These things are well when you are happy."

Déruchette carried away the stockings, and took advantage of the

opportunity to remove also the compass and the ship's papers which

Lethierry had been brooding over too long.

In the afternoon, a little before tea-time, the door opened and two

strangers entered, attired in black. One was old, the other young.

The young one has, perhaps, already been observed in the course of this

story.

The two men had each a grave air; but their gravity appeared different.

The old man possessed what might be called state gravity; the gravity of

the young man was in his nature. Habit engenders the one; thought the

other.

They were, as their costume indicated, two clergymen, each belonging to

the Established Church.

The first fact in the appearance of the younger man which might have

first struck the observer was, that his gravity, though conspicuous in

the expression of his features, and evidently springing from the mind,

was not indicated by his person. Gravity is not inconsistent with

passion, which it exalts by purifying it; but the idea of gravity could

with difficulty be associated with an exterior remarkable above all for

personal beauty. Being in holy orders, he must have been at least

four-and-twenty, but he seemed scarcely more than eighteen. He possessed

those gifts at once in harmony with, and in opposition to, each other. A

soul which seemed created for exalted passion, and a body created for

love. He was fair, rosy-fresh, slim, and elegant in his severe attire,

and he had the cheeks of a young girl, and delicate hands. His movements

were natural and lively, though subdued. Everything about him was

pleasing, elegant, almost voluptuous. The beauty of his expression

served to correct this excess of personal attraction. His open smile,

which showed his teeth, regular and white as those of a child, had

something in it pensive, even devotional. He had the gracefulness of a

page, mingled with the dignity of a bishop.

His fair hair, so fair and golden as to be almost effeminate, clustered

over his white forehead, which was high and well-formed. A slight double

line between the eyebrows awakened associations with studious thought.

Those who saw him felt themselves in the presence of one of those

natures, benevolent, innocent, and pure, whose progress is in inverse

sense with that of vulgar minds; natures whom illusion renders wise, and

whom experience makes enthusiasts.

His older companion was no other than Doctor Jaquemin Hérode. Doctor

Jaquemin Hérode belonged to the High Church; a party whose system is a

sort of popery without a pope. The Church of England was at that epoch

labouring with the tendencies which have since become strengthened and

condensed in the form of Puseyism. Doctor Jaquemin Hérode belonged to

that shade of Anglicanism which is almost a variety of the Church of

Rome. He was haughty, precise, stiff, and commanding. His inner sight

scarcely penetrated outwardly. He possessed the letter in the place of

the spirit. His manner was arrogant; his presence imposing. He had less

the appearance of a "Reverend" than of a _Monsignore_. His frock-coat

was cut somewhat in the fashion of a cassock. His true centre would have

been Rome. He was a born Prelate of the Antechamber. He seemed to have

been created expressly to fill a part in the Papal Court, to walk behind

the Pontifical litter, with all the Court of Rome in _abitto paonazzo_.

The accident of his English birth and his theological education,

directed more towards the Old than the New Testament, had deprived him

of that destiny. All his splendours were comprised in his preferments as

Rector of St. Peter's Port, Dean of the Island of Guernsey, and

Surrogate of the Bishop of Winchester. These were, undoubtedly, not

without their glories. These glories did not prevent M. Jaquemin Hérode

being, on the whole, a worthy man.

As a theologian he was esteemed by those who were able to judge of such

matters; he was almost an authority in the Court of Arches--that

Sorbonne of England.

He had the true air of erudition; a learned contraction of the eyes;

bristling nostrils; teeth which showed themselves at all times; a thin

upper lip and a thick lower one. He was the possessor of several learned

degrees, a valuable prebend, titled friends, the confidence of the

bishop, and a Bible, which he carried always in his pocket.

Mess Lethierry was so completely absorbed that the entrance of the two

priests produced no effect upon him, save a slight movement of the

eyebrows.

M. Jaquemin Hérode advanced, bowed, alluded in a few sober and dignified

words to his recent promotion, and mentioned that he came according to

custom to introduce among the inhabitants, and to Mess Lethierry in

particular, his successor in the parish, the new Rector of St. Sampson,

the Rev. Ebenezer Caudray, henceforth the pastor of Mess Lethierry.

Déruchette rose.

The young clergyman, who was the Rev. Ebenezer, saluted her.

Mess Lethierry regarded Monsieur Ebenezer Caudray, and muttered, "A bad

sailor."

Grace placed chairs. The two visitors seated themselves near the table.

Doctor Hérode commenced a discourse. It had reached his ears that a

serious misfortune had befallen his host. The Durande had been lost. He

came as Lethierry's pastor to offer condolence and advice. This

shipwreck was unfortunate, and yet not without compensations. Let us

examine our own hearts. Are we not puffed up with prosperity? The waters

of felicity are dangerous. Troubles must be submitted to cheerfully. The

ways of Providence are mysterious. Mess Lethierry was ruined, perhaps.

But riches were a danger. You may have false friends; poverty will

disperse them, and leave you alone. The Durande was reported to have

brought a revenue of one thousand pounds sterling per annum. It was more

than enough for the wise. Let us fly from temptations; put not our faith

in gold; bow the head to losses and neglect. Isolation is full of good

fruits. It was in solitude that Ajah discovered the warm springs while

leading the asses of his father Zibeon. Let us not rebel against the

inscrutable decrees of Providence. The holy man Job, after his misery,

had put faith in riches. Who can say that the loss of the Durande may

not have its advantages even of a temporal kind. He, for instance,

Doctor Jaquemin Hérode had invested some money in an excellent

enterprise, now in progress at Sheffield. If Mess Lethierry, with the

wealth which might still remain to him, should choose to embark in the

same affair, he might transfer his capital to that town. It was an

extensive manufactory of arms for the supply of the Czar, now engaged in

repressing insurrection in Poland. There was a good prospect of

obtaining three hundred per cent. profit.

The word Czar appeared to awaken Lethierry. He interrupted Dr. Hérode.

"I want nothing to do with the Czar."

The Reverend Jaquemin Hérode replied:

"Mess Lethierry, princes are recognised by God. It is written, 'Render

unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's.' The Czar is Cæsar."

Lethierry partly relapsed into his dream and muttered:

"Cæsar? who is Cæsar? I don't know."

The Rev. Jaquemin Hérode continued his exhortations. He did not press

the question of Sheffield.

To contemn a Cæsar was republicanism. He could understand a man being a

republican. In that case he could turn his thoughts towards a republic.

Mess Lethierry might repair his fortune in the United States, even

better than in England. If he desired to invest what remained to him at

great profit, he had only to take shares in the great company for

developing the resources of Texas, which employed more than twenty

thousand negroes.

"I want nothing to do with slavery," said Lethierry.

"Slavery," replied the Reverend Hérode, "is an institution recognised by

Scripture. It is written, 'If a man smite his slave, he shall not be

punished, for he is his money.'"

Grace and Douce at the door of the room listened in a sort of ecstacy to

the words of the Reverend Doctor.

The doctor continued. He was, all things considered, as we have said, a

worthy man; and whatever his differences, personal or connected with

caste, with Mess Lethierry, he had come very sincerely to offer him that

spiritual and even temporal aid which he, Doctor Jaquemin Hérode,

dispensed.

If Mess Lethierry's fortune had been diminished to that point that he

was unable to take a beneficial part in any speculation, Russian or

American, why should he not obtain some government appointment suited to

him? There were many very respectable places open to him, and the

reverend gentleman was ready to recommend him. The office of

Deputy-Vicomte was just vacant. Mess Lethierry was popular and

respected, and the Reverend Jaquemin Hérode, Dean of Guernsey and

Surrogate of the Bishop, would make an effort to obtain for Mess

Lethierry this post. The Deputy-Vicomte is an important officer. He is

present as the representative of His Majesty at the holding of the

Sessions, at the debates of the _Cohue_, and at executions of justice.

Lethierry fixed his eye upon Doctor Hérode.

"I don't like hanging," he said.

Doctor Hérode, who, up to this point, had pronounced his words with the

same intonation, had now a fit of severity; his tone became slightly

changed.

"Mess Lethierry, the pain of death is of divine ordination. God has

placed the sword in the hands of governors. It is written, 'An eye for

an eye, a tooth for a tooth.'"

The Reverend Ebenezer imperceptibly drew his chair nearer to the

Reverend Doctor and said, so as to be heard only by him:

"What this man says, is dictated to him."

"By whom? By what?" demanded the Reverend Jaquemin Hérode, in the same

tone.

The young man replied in a whisper, "By his conscience."

The Reverend Jaquemin Hérode felt in his pocket, drew out a thick little

bound volume with clasps, and said aloud:

"Conscience is here."

The book was a Bible.

Then Doctor Hérode's tone became softer. "His wish was to render a

service to Mess Lethierry, whom he respected much. As his pastor, it was

his right and duty to offer counsel. Mess Lethierry, however, was free."

Mess Lethierry, plunged once more in his overwhelming absorption, no

longer listened. Déruchette, seated near him, and thoughtful, also did

not raise her eyes, and by her silent presence somewhat increased the

embarrassment of a conversation not very animated. A witness who says

nothing is a species of indefinable weight. Doctor Hérode, however, did

not appear to feel it.

Lethierry no longer replying, Doctor Hérode expatiated freely. Counsel

is from man; inspiration is from God. In the counsels of the priests

there is inspiration. It is good to accept, dangerous to refuse them.

Sochoh was seized by eleven devils for disdaining the exhortations of

Nathaniel. Tiburianus was struck with a leprosy for having driven from

his house the Apostle Andrew. Barjesus, a magician though he was, was

punished with blindness for having mocked at the words of St. Paul.

Elxai and his sisters, Martha and Martena, are in eternal torments for

despising the warnings of Valentianus, who proved to them clearly that

their Jesus Christ, thirty-eight leagues in height, was a demon.

Aholibamah, who is also called Judith, obeyed the Councils, Reuben and

Peniel listened to the counsels from on high, as their names indeed

indicate. Reuben signifies son of the vision; and Peniel, "the face of

God."

Mess Lethierry struck the table with his fist.

"Parbleu!" he cried; "it was my fault."

"What do you mean?" asked M. Jaquemin Hérode.

"I say that it is my fault."

"Your fault? Why?"

"Because I allowed the Durande to return on Fridays."

M. Jaquemin Hérode whispered in Caudray's ear:

"This man is superstitious."

He resumed, raising his voice, and in a didactic tone:

"Mess Lethierry, it is puerile to believe in Fridays. You ought not to

put faith in fables. Friday is a day just like any other. It is very

often a propitious day. Melendez founded the city of Saint Augustin on a

Friday; it was on a Friday that Henry the Seventh gave his commission

to John Cabot; the Pilgrims of the _Mayflower_ landed at Province Town

on a Friday. Washington was born on Friday, the 22nd of February 1732;

Christopher Columbus discovered America on Friday, the 12th of October

1492."

Having delivered himself of these remarks, he rose.

Caudray, whom he had brought with him, rose also.

Grace and Douce, perceiving that the two clergymen were about to take

their leave, opened the folding-doors.

Mess Lethierry saw nothing; heard nothing.

M. Jaquemin Hérode said, apart to M. Caudray:

"He does not even salute us. This is not sorrow; it is vacancy. He must

have lost his reason."

He took his little Bible, however, from the table, and held it between

his hands outstretched, as one holds a bird in fear that it may fly

away. This attitude awakened among the persons present a certain amount

of attention. Grace and Douce leaned forward eagerly.

His voice assumed all the solemnity of which it was capable.

"Mess Lethierry," he began, "let us not part without reading a page of

the Holy Book. It is from books that wise men derive consolation in the

troubles of life. The profane have their oracles; but believers have

their ready resource in the Bible. The first book which comes to hand,

opened by chance may afford counsel; but the Bible, opened at any page,

yields a revelation. It is, above all, a boon to the afflicted. Yes,

Holy Scripture is an unfailing balm for their wounds. In the presence of

affliction, it is good to consult its sacred pages--to open even without

choosing the place, and to read with faith the passage which we find.

What man does not choose is chosen by God. He knoweth best what suiteth

us. His finger pointeth invisibly to that which we read. Whatever be the

page, it will infallibly enlighten. Let us seek, then, no other light;

but hold fast to His. It is the word from on high. In the text which is

evoked with confidence and reverence, often do we find a mysterious

significance in our present troubles. Let us hearken, then, and obey.

Mess Lethierry, you are in affliction, but I hold here the book of

consolation. You are sick at heart, but I have here the book of

spiritual health."

The Reverend Jaquemin Hérode touched the spring of the clasp, and let

his finger slip between the leaves. Then he placed his hand a moment

upon the open volume, collected his thoughts, and, raising his eyes

impressively, began to read in a loud voice.

The passage which he had lighted on was as follows:

"And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide, and he

lifted up his eyes and saw and beheld the camels were coming.

"And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac she lighted off

the camel.

"For she had said unto the servant, What man is this that walketh in the

field to meet us?

"And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah,

and she became his wife, and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after

his mother's death."

Caudray and Déruchette glanced at each other.

PART II.--MALICIOUS GILLIATT

BOOK I

THE ROCK

I

THE PLACE WHICH IS DIFFICULT TO REACH, AND DIFFICULT TO LEAVE

The bark which had been observed at so many points on the coast of

Guernsey on the previous evening was, as the reader has guessed, the old

Dutch barge or sloop. Gilliatt had chosen the channel along the coast

among the rocks. It was the most dangerous way, but it was the most

direct. To take the shortest route was his only thought. Shipwrecks will

not wait; the sea is a pressing creditor; an hour's delay may be

irreparable. His anxiety was to go quickly to the rescue of the

machinery in danger.

One of his objects in leaving Guernsey was to avoid arousing attention.

He set out like one escaping from justice, and seemed anxious to hide

from human eyes. He shunned the eastern coast, as if he did not care to

pass in sight of St. Sampson and St. Peter's Port, and glided silently

along the opposite coast, which is comparatively uninhabited. Among the

breakers, it was necessary to ply the oars; but Gilliatt managed them on

scientific principles; taking the water quietly, and dropping it with

exact regularity, he was able to move in the darkness with as little

noise and as rapidly as possible. So stealthy were his movements, that

he might have seemed to be bent upon some evil errand.

In truth, though embarking desperately in an enterprise which might well

be called impossible, and risking his life with nearly every chance

against him, he feared nothing but the possibility of some rival in the

work which he had set before him.

As the day began to break, those unknown eyes which look down upon the

world from boundless space might have beheld, at one of the most

dangerous and solitary spots at sea, two objects, the distance between

which was gradually decreasing, as the one was approaching the other.

One, which was almost imperceptible in the wide movement of the waters,

was a sailing boat. In this was a man. It was the sloop. The other,

black, motionless, colossal, rose above the waves, a singular form. Two

tall pillars issuing from the sea bore aloft a sort of cross-beam which

was like a bridge between them. This bridge, so singular in shape that

it was impossible to imagine what it was from a distance, touched each

of the two pillars. It resembled a vast portal. Of what use could such

an erection be in that open plain, the sea, which stretched around it

far and wide? It might have been imagined to be a Titanic Cromlech,

planted there in mid-ocean by an imperious whim, and built up by hands

accustomed to proportion their labours to the great deep. Its wild

outline stood well-defined against the clear sky.

The morning light was growing stronger in the east; the whiteness in the

horizon deepened the shadow on the sea. In the opposite sky the moon was

sinking.

The two perpendicular forms were the Douvres. The huge mass held fast

between them, like an architrave between two pillars, was the wreck of

the Durande.

The rock, thus holding fast and exhibiting its prey, was terrible to

behold. Inanimate things look sometimes as if endowed with a dark and

hostile spirit towards man. There was a menace in the attitude of the

rocks. They seemed to be biding their time.

Nothing could be more suggestive of haughtiness and arrogance than their

whole appearance: the conquered vessel; the triumphant abyss. The two

rocks, still streaming with the tempest of the day before, were like two

wrestlers sweating from a recent struggle. The wind had sunk; the sea

rippled gently; here and there the presence of breakers might be

detected in the graceful streaks of foam upon the surface of the waters.

A sound came from the sea like the murmuring of bees. All around was

level except the Douvres, rising straight, like two black columns. Up to

a certain height they were completely bearded with seaweed; above this

their steep haunches glittered at points like polished armour. They

seemed ready to commence the strife again. The beholder felt that they

were rooted deep in mountains whose summits were beneath the sea. Their

aspect was full of a sort of tragic power.

Ordinarily the sea conceals her crimes. She delights in privacy. Her

unfathomable deeps keep silence. She wraps herself in a mystery which

rarely consents to give up its secrets. We know her savage nature, but

who can tell the extent of her dark deeds? She is at once open and

secret; she hides away carefully, and cares not to divulge her actions;

wrecks a vessel, and, covering it with the waves, engulfs it deep, as if

conscious of her guilt. Among her crimes is hypocrisy. She slays and

steals, conceals her booty, puts on an air of unconsciousness, and

smiles.

Here, however, was nothing of the kind. The Douvres, lifting above the

level of the waters the shattered hull of the Durande, had an air of

triumph. The imagination might have pictured them as two monstrous arms,

reaching upwards from the gulf, and exhibiting to the tempest the

lifeless body of the ship. Their aspect was like that of an assassin

boasting of his evil deeds.

The solemnity of the hour contributed something to the impression of the

scene. There is a mysterious grandeur in the dawn, as of the border-land

between the region of consciousness and the world of our dreams. There

is something spectral in that confused transition time. The immense form

of the two Douvres, like a capital letter H, the Durande forming its

cross stroke, appeared against the horizon in all their twilight

majesty.

Gilliatt was attired in his seaman's clothing: a Guernsey shirt, woollen

stockings, thick shoes, a homespun jacket, trousers of thick stuff, with

pockets, and a cap upon his head of red worsted, of a kind then much in

use among sailors, and known in the last century as a _galérienne_.

He recognised the rocks, and steered towards them.

The situation of the Durande was exactly the contrary of that of a

vessel gone to the bottom: it was a vessel suspended in the air.

No problem more strange was ever presented to a salvor.

It was broad daylight when Gilliatt arrived in the waters about the

rock.

As we have said, there was but little sea. The slight agitation of the

water was due almost entirely to its confinement among the rocks. Every

passage, small or large, is subject to this chopping movement. The

inside of a channel is always more or less white with foam. Gilliatt did

not approach the Douvres without caution.

He cast the sounding lead several times.

He had a cargo to disembark.

Accustomed to long absences, he had at home a number of necessaries

always ready. He had brought a sack of biscuit, another of rye-meal, a

basket of salt fish and smoked beef, a large can of fresh water; a

Norwegian chest painted with flowers, containing several coarse woollen

shirts, his tarpaulin and his waterproof overalls, and a sheepskin which

he was accustomed to throw at night over his clothes. On leaving the Bû

de la Rue he had put all these things hastily into the barge, with the

addition of a large loaf. In his hurry he had brought no other tools but

his huge forge-hammer, his chopper and hatchet, and a knotted rope.

Furnished with a grappling-iron and with a ladder of that sort, the

steepest rocks become accessible, and a good sailor will find it

possible to scale the rudest escarpment. In the island of Sark the

visitor may see what the fishermen of the Havre Gosselin can accomplish

with a knotted cord.

His nets and lines and all his fishing apparatus were in the barge. He

had placed them there mechanically and by habit; for he intended, if his

enterprise continued, to sojourn for some time in an archipelago of

rocks and breakers, where fishing nets and tackle are of little use.

At the moment when Gilliatt was skirting the great rock the sea was

retiring; a circumstance favourable to his purpose. The departing tide

laid bare, at the foot of the smaller Douvre, one or two table-rocks,

horizontal, or only slightly inclined, and bearing a fanciful

resemblance to boards supported by crows. These table-rocks, sometimes

narrow, sometimes broad, standing at unequal distances along the side of

the great perpendicular column, were continued in the form of a thin

cornice up to a spot just beneath the Durande, the hull of which stood

swelling out between the two rocks. The wreck was held fast there as in

a vice.

This series of platforms was convenient for approaching and surveying

the position. It was convenient also for disembarking the contents of

the barge provisionally; but it was necessary to hasten, for it was only

above water for a few hours. With the rising tide the table-rocks would

be again beneath the foam.

It was before these table-rocks, some level, some slanting, that

Gilliatt pushed in and brought the barge to a stand. A thick mass of wet

and slippery sea-wrack covered them, rendered more slippery here and

there by their inclined surfaces.

Gilliatt pulled off his shoes and sprang bare-footed on to the slimy

weeds, and made fast the barge to a point of rock.

Then he advanced as far as he could along the granite cornice, reached

the rock immediately beneath the wreck, looked up, and examined it.

The Durande had been caught suspended, and, as it were, fitted in

between the two rocks, at about twenty feet above the water. It must

have been a heavy sea which had cast her there.

Such effects from furious seas have nothing surprising for those who are

familiar with the ocean. To cite one example only:--On the 25th January

1840, in the Gulf of Stora, a tempest struck with its expiring force a

brig, and casting it almost intact completely over the broken wreck of

the corvette _La Marne_, fixed it immovable, bowsprit first, in a gap

between the cliffs.

The Douvres, however, held only a part of the Durande.

The vessel snatched from the waves had been, as it were, uprooted from

the waters by the hurricane. A whirlwind had wrenched it against the

counteracting force of the rolling waves, and the vessel thus caught in

contrary directions by the two claws of the tempest had snapped like a

lath. The after-part with the engine and the paddles, lifted out of the

foam and driven by all the fury of the cyclone into the defile of the

Douvres, had plunged in up to her midship beam, and remained there. The

blow had been well directed. To drive it in this fashion between the two

rocks, the storm had struck it as with an enormous hammer. The

forecastle carried away and rolled down by the sea, had gone to

fragments among the breakers.

The hold, broken in, had scattered out the bodies of the drowned cattle

upon the sea.

A large portion of the forward side and bulwarks still hung to the

riders by the larboard paddle-box, and by some shattered braces easy to

strike off with the blow of a hatchet.

Here and there, among beams, planks, rags of canvas, pieces of chains,

and other remains of wreck were seen lying about among the rugged

fragments of shattered rock.

Gilliatt surveyed the Durande attentively. The keel formed a roofing

over his head.

A serene sky stretched far and wide over the waters, scarcely wrinkled

with a passing breath. The sun rose gloriously in the midst of the vast

azure circle.

From time to time a drop of water was detached from the wreck and fell

into the sea.

II

A CATALOGUE OF DISASTERS

The Douvres differed in shape as well as in height.

Upon the Little Douvre, which was curved and pointed, long veins of

reddish-coloured rock, of a comparatively soft kind, could be seen

branching out and dividing the interior of the granite. At the edges of

these red dykes were fractures, favourable to climbing. One of these

fractures, situated a little above the wreck, had been so laboriously

worn and scooped out by the splashing of the waves, that it had become a

sort of niche, in which it would have been quite possible to place a

statue. The granite of the Little Douvre was rounded at the surface,

and, to the feel at least, soft like touchstone; but this feeling

detracted nothing from its durability. The Little Douvre terminated in a

point like a horn. The Great Douvre, polished, smooth, glossy,

perpendicular, and looking as if cut out by the builder's square, was in

one piece, and seemed made of black ivory. Not a hole, not a break in

its smooth surface. The escarpment looked inhospitable. A convict could

not have used it for escape, nor a bird for a place for its nest. On the

summit there was a horizontal surface as upon "The Man Rock;" but the

summit of the Great Douvre was inaccessible.

It was possible to scale the Little Douvre, but not to remain on the

summit; it would have been possible to rest on the summit of the Great

Douvre, but impossible to scale it.

Gilliatt, having rapidly surveyed the situation of affairs, returned to

the barge, landed its contents upon the largest of the horizontal

cornice rocks, made of the whole compact mass a sort of bale, which he

rolled up in tarpaulin, fitted a sling rope to it with a hoisting block,

pushed the package into a corner of the rocks where the waves could not

reach it, and then clutching the Little Douvre with his hands, and

holding on with his naked feet, he clambered from projection to

projection, and from niche to niche, until he found himself level with

the wrecked vessel high up in the air.

Having reached the height of the paddles, he sprang upon the poop.

The interior of the wreck presented a mournful aspect.

Traces of a great struggle were everywhere visible. There were plainly

to be seen the frightful ravages of the sea and wind. The action of the

tempest resembles the violence of a band of pirates. Nothing is more

like the victim of a criminal outrage than a wrecked ship violated and

stripped by those terrible accomplices, the storm-cloud, the thunder,

the rain, the squall, the waves, and the breakers.

Standing upon the dismantled deck, it was natural to dream of the

presence of something like a furious stamping of the spirits of the

storm. Everywhere around were the marks of their rage. The strange

contortions of certain portions of the ironwork bore testimony to the

terrific force of the winds. The between-decks were like the cell of a

lunatic, in which everything has been broken.

No wild beast can compare with the sea for mangling its prey. The waves

are full of talons. The north wind bites, the billows devour, the waves

are like hungry jaws. The ocean strikes like a lion with its heavy paw,

seizing and dismembering at the same moment.

The ruin conspicuous in the Durande presented the peculiarity of being

detailed and minute. It was a sort of horrible stripping and plucking.

Much of it seemed done with design. The beholder was tempted to exclaim,

"What wanton mischief!" The ripping of the planking was edged here and

there artistically. This peculiarity is common with the ravages of the

cyclone. To chip and tear away is the caprice of the great devastator.

Its ways are like those of the professional torturer. The disasters

which it causes wear a look of ingenious punishments. One might fancy it

actuated by the worst passions of man. It refines in cruelty like a

savage. While it is exterminating it dissects bone by bone. It torments

its victim, avenges itself, and takes delight in its work. It even

appears to descend to petty acts of malice.

Cyclones are rare in our latitudes, and are, for that reason, the more

dangerous, being generally unexpected. A rock in the path of a heavy

wind may become the pivot of a storm. It is probable that the squall had

thus rotated upon the point of the Douvres, and had turned suddenly into

a waterspout on meeting the shock of the rocks, a fact which explained

the casting of the vessel so high among them. When the cyclone blows, a

vessel is of no more weight in the wind than a stone in a sling.

The damage received by the Durande was like the wound of a man cut in

twain. It was a divided trunk from which issued a mass of _débris_ like

the entrails of a body. Various kinds of cordage hung floating and

trembling, chains swung chattering; the fibres and nerves of the vessel

were there naked and exposed. What was not smashed was disjointed.

Fragments of the sheeting resembled currycombs bristling with nails;

everything bore the appearance of ruin; a handspike had become nothing

but a piece of iron; a sounding-lead, nothing but a lump of metal; a

dead-eye had become a mere piece of wood; a halliard, an end of rope; a

strand of cord, a tangled skein; a bolt-rope, a thread in the hem of a

sail. All around was the lamentable work of demolition. Nothing remained

that was not unhooked, unnailed, cracked, wasted, warped, pierced with

holes, destroyed: nothing hung together in the dreadful mass, but all

was torn, dislocated, broken. There was that air of drift which

characterises the scene of all struggles--from the melées of men, which

are called battles, to the melées of the elements, to which we give the

name of chaos. Everything was sinking and dropping away; a rolling mass

of planks, panelling, ironwork, cables, and beams had been arrested just

at the great fracture of the hull, whence the least additional shock

must have precipitated them into the sea. What remained of her powerful

frame, once so triumphant, was cracked here and there, showing through

large apertures the dismal gloom within.

The foam from below spat its flakes contemptuously upon this broken and

forlorn outcast of the sea.

III

SOUND; BUT NOT SAFE

Gilliatt did not expect to find only a portion of the ship existing.

Nothing in the description, in other respects so precise, of the captain

of the _Shealtiel_ had led him to anticipate this division of the vessel

in the centre. It was probable that the "diabolical crash" heard by the

captain of the _Shealtiel_ marked the moment when this destruction had

taken place under the blows of a tremendous sea. The captain had,

doubtless, worn ship just before this last heavy squall; and what he had

taken for a great sea was probably a waterspout. Later, when he drew

nearer to observe the wreck, he had only been able to see the stern of

the vessel--the remainder, that is to say, the large opening where the

fore-part had given way, having been concealed from him among the masses

of rock.

With that exception, the information given by the captain of the

_Shealtiel_ was strictly correct. The hull was useless, but the engine

remained intact.

Such chances are common in the history of shipwreck. The logic of

disaster at sea is beyond the grasp of human science.

The masts having snapped short, had fallen over the side; the chimney

was not even bent. The great iron plating which supported the machinery

had kept it together, and in one piece. The planks of the paddle-boxes

were disjointed, like the leaves of wooden sunblinds; but through their

apertures the paddles themselves could be seen in good condition. A few

of their floats only were missing.

Besides the machinery, the great stern capstan had resisted the

destruction. Its chain was there, and, thanks to its firm fixture in a

frame of joists, might still be of service, unless the strain of the

voyal should break away the planking. The flooring of the deck bent at

almost every point, and was tottering throughout.

On the other hand, the trunk of the hull, fixed between the Douvres,

held together, as we have already said, and it appeared strong.

There was something like derision in this preservation of the machinery;

something which added to the irony of the misfortune. The sombre malice

of the unseen powers of mischief displays itself sometimes in such

bitter mockeries. The machinery was saved, but its preservation did not

make it any the less lost. The ocean seemed to have kept it only to

demolish it at leisure. It was like the playing of the cat with her

prey.

Its fate was to suffer there and to be dismembered day by day. It was to

be the plaything of the savage amusements of the sea. It was slowly to

dwindle, and, as it were, to melt away. For what could be done? That

this vast block of mechanism and gear, at once massive and delicate,

condemned to fixity by its weight, delivered up in that solitude to the

destructive elements, exposed in the gripe of the rock to the action of

the wind and wave, could, under the frown of that implacable spot,

escape from slow destruction, seemed a madness even to imagine.

The Durande was the captive of the Douvres.

How could she be extricated from that position?

How could she be delivered from her bondage?

The escape of a man is difficult; but what a problem was this--the

escape of a vast and cumbrous machine.

IV

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY

Gilliatt was pressed on all sides by demands upon his labours. The most

pressing, however, was to find a safe mooring for the barge; then a

shelter for himself.

The Durande having settled down more on the larboard than on the

starboard side, the right paddle-box was higher than the left.

Gilliatt ascended the paddle-box on the right. From that position,

although the gut of rocks stretching in abrupt angles behind the Douvres

had several elbows, he was able to study the ground-plan of the group.

This survey was the preliminary step of his operations.

The Douvres, as we have already described them, were like two high

gable-ends, forming the narrow entrance to a straggling alley of small

cliffs with perpendicular faces. It is not rare to find in primitive

submarine formations these singular kinds of passages, which seem cut

out with a hatchet.

This defile was extremely tortuous, and was never without water even in

the low tides. A current, much agitated, traversed it at all times from

end to end. The sharpness of its turnings was favourable or

unfavourable, according to the nature of the prevailing wind; sometimes

it broke the swell and caused it to fall; sometimes it exasperated it.

This latter effect was the most frequent. An obstacle arouses the anger

of the sea, and pushes it to excesses. The foam is the exaggeration of

the waves.

The stormy winds in these narrow and tortuous passages between the rocks

are subjected to a similar compression, and acquire the same malignant

character. The tempest frets in its sudden imprisonment. Its bulk is

still immense, but sharpened and contracted; and it strikes with the

massiveness of a huge club and the keenness of an arrow. It pierces even

while it strikes down. It is a hurricane contracted, like the draught

through the crevice of a door.

The two chains of rocks, leaving between them this kind of street in the

sea, formed stages at a lower level than the Douvres, gradually

decreasing, until they sunk together at a certain distance beneath the

waves.

There was another such gullet of less height than the gullet of the

Douvres, but narrower still, and which formed the eastern entrance of

the defile. It was evident that the double prolongation of the ridge of

rocks continued the kind of street under the water as far as "The Man

Rock," which stood like a square citadel at the extremity of the group.

At low water, indeed, which was the time at which Gilliatt was observing

them, the two rows of sunken rock showed their tips, some high and dry,

and all visible and preserving their parallel without interruption.

"The Man" formed the boundary, and buttressed on the eastern side the

entire mass of the group, which was protected on the opposite side by

the two Douvres.

The whole, from a bird's-eye view, appeared like a winding chaplet of

rocks, having the Douvres at one extremity and "The Man" at the other.

The Douvres, taken together, were merely two gigantic shafts of granite

protruding vertically and almost touching each other, and forming the

crest of one of the mountainous ranges lying beneath the ocean. Those

immense ridges are not only found rising out of the unfathomable deep.

The surf and the squall had broken them up and divided them like the

teeth of a saw. Only the tip of the ridge was visible; this was the

group of rocks. The remainder, which the waves concealed, must have been

enormous. The passage in which the storm had planted the Durande was the

way between these two colossal shafts.

This passage, zigzag in form as the forked lightning, was of about the

same width in all parts. The ocean had so fashioned it. Its eternal

commotion produces sometimes those singular regularities. There is a

sort of geometry in the action of the sea.

From one extremity to the other of the defile, the two parallel granite

walls confronted each other at a distance which the midship frame of the

Durande measured exactly. Between the two Douvres, the widening of the

Little Douvre, curved and turned back as it was, had formed a space for

the paddles. In any other part they must have been shattered to

fragments.

The high double façade of rock within the passage was hideous to the

sight. When, in the exploration of the desert of water which we call the

ocean, we come upon the unknown world of the sea, all is uncouth and

shapeless. So much as Gilliatt could see of the defile from the height

of the wreck, was appalling. In the rocky gorges of the ocean we may

often trace a strange permanent impersonation of shipwreck. The defile

of the Douvres was one of these gorges, and its effect was exciting to

the imagination. The oxydes of the rock showed on the escarpment here

and there in red places, like marks of clotted blood; it resembled the

splashes on the walls of an abattoir. Associations of the charnel-house

haunted the place. The rough marine stones, diversely tinted--here by

the decomposition of metallic amalgams mingling with the rock, there by

the mould of dampness, manifested in places by purple scales, hideous

green blotches, and ruddy splashes, awakened ideas of murder and

extermination. It was like the unwashed walls of a chamber which had

been the scene of an assassination; or it might have been imagined that

men had been crushed to death there, leaving traces of their fate. The

peaked rocks produced an indescribable impression of accumulated

agonies. Certain spots appeared to be still dripping with the carnage;

here the wall was wet, and it looked impossible to touch it without

leaving the fingers bloody. The blight of massacre seemed everywhere. At

the base of the double parallel escarpment, scattered along the water's

edge, or just below the waves, or in the worn hollows of the rocks, were

monstrous rounded masses of shingle, some scarlet, others black or

purple, which bore a strange resemblance to internal organs of the body;

they might have been taken for human lungs, or heart, or liver,

scattered and putrefying in that dismal place. Giants might have been

disembowelled there. From top to bottom of the granite ran long red

lines, which might have been compared to oozings from a funeral bier.

Such aspects are frequent in sea caverns.

V

A WORD UPON THE SECRET CO-OPERATIONS OF THE ELEMENTS

Those who, by the disastrous chances of sea-voyages, happen to be

condemned to a temporary habitation upon a rock in mid-ocean, find that

the form of their inhospitable refuge is by no means a matter of

indifference. There is the pyramidal-shaped rock, a single peak rising

from the water; there is the circle rock somewhat resembling a round of

great stones; and there is the corridor-rock. The latter is the most

alarming of all. It is not only the ceaseless agony of the waves

between its walls, or the tumult of the imprisoned sea; there are also

certain obscure meteorological characteristics which appear to appertain

to this parallelism of two marine rocks. The two straight sides seem a

veritable electric battery.

The first result of the peculiar position of these corridor-rocks is an

action upon the air and the water. The corridor-rock acts upon the waves

and the wind mechanically by its form; galvanically, by the different

magnetic action rendered possible by its vertical height, its masses in

juxtaposition and contrary to each other.

This form of rock attracts to itself all the forces scattered in the

winds, and exercises over the tempest a singular power of concentration.

Hence there is in the neighbourhood of these breakers a certain

accentuation of storms.

It must be borne in mind that the wind is composite. The wind is

believed to be simple; but it is by no means simple. Its power is not

merely dynamic, it is chemical also; but this is not all, it is

magnetic. Its effects are often inexplicable. The wind is as much

electrical as aerial. Certain winds coincide with the _aurores

boreales_. The wind blowing from the bank of the Aiguilles rolls the

waves one hundred feet high; a fact observed with astonishment by

Dumont-d'Urville. The corvette, he says, "knew not what to obey."

In the south seas the waters will sometimes become inflated like an

outbreak of immense tumours; and at such times the ocean becomes so

terrible that the savages fly to escape the sight of it. The blasts in

the north seas are different. They are mingled with sharp points of ice;

and their gusts, unfit to breathe, will blow the sledges of the

Esquimaux backwards in the snow. Other winds burn. The simoon of Africa

is the typhoon of China and the samiel of India. Simoon, typhoon, and

samiel, are believed to be the names of demons. They descend from the

heights of the mountains. A storm vitrified the volcano of Toluca. This

hot wind, a whirlwind of inky colour, rushing upon red clouds, is

alluded to in the Vedas: "Behold the black god, who comes to steal the

red cows." In all these facts we trace the presence of the electric

mystery.

The wind indeed is full of it; so are the waves. The sea, too, is

composite in its nature. Under its waves of water which we see, it has

its waves of force which are invisible. Its constituents are

innumerable. Of all the elements the ocean is the most indivisible and

the most profound.

Endeavour to conceive this chaos so enormous that it dwarfs all other

things to one level. It is the universal recipient, reservoir of germs

of life, and mould of transformations. It amasses and then disperses, it

accumulates and then sows, it devours and then creates. It receives all

the waste and refuse waters of the earth, and converts them into

treasure. It is solid in the iceberg, liquid in the wave, fluid in the

estuary. Regarded as matter, it is a mass; regarded as a force, it is an

abstraction. It equalises and unites all phenomena. It may be called the

infinite in combination. By force and disturbance, it arrives at

transparency. It dissolves all differences, and absorbs them into its

own unity. Its elements are so numerous that it becomes identity. One of

its drops is complete, and represents the whole. From the abundance of

its tempests, it attains equilibrium. Plato beheld the mazy dances of

the spheres. Strange fact, though not the less real, the ocean, in the

vast terrestrial journey round the sun, becomes, with its flux and

reflux, the balance of the globe.

In a phenomenon of the sea, all other phenomena are resumed. The sea is

blown out of a waterspout as from a syphon; the storm observes the

principle of the pump; the lightning issues from the sea as from the

air. Aboard ships dull shocks are sometimes felt, and an odour of

sulphur issues from the receptacles of chain cables. The ocean boils.

"The devil has put the sea in his cauldron," said De Ruyter. In certain

tempests, which characterise the equinoxes and the return to equilibrium

of the prolific power of nature, vessels breasting the foam seem to give

out a kind of fire, phosphoric lights chase each other along the

rigging, so close sometimes to the sailors at their work that the latter

stretch forth their hands and try to catch, as they fly, these birds of

flame. After the great earthquake of Lisbon, a blast of hot air, as from

a furnace, drove before it towards the city a wave sixty feet high. The

oscillation of the ocean is closely related to the convulsions of the

earth.

These immeasurable forces produce sometimes extraordinary inundations.

At the end of the year 1864, one of the Maldive Islands, at a hundred

leagues from the Malabar coast, actually foundered in the sea. It sunk

to the bottom like a shipwrecked vessel. The fishermen who sailed from

it in the morning, found nothing when they returned at night; scarcely

could they distinguish their villages under the sea. On this occasion

boats were the spectators of the wrecks of houses.

In Europe, where nature seems restrained by the presence of

civilisation, such events are rare and are thought impossible.

Nevertheless, Jersey and Guernsey originally formed part of Gaul, and at

the moment while we are writing these lines, an equinoctial gale has

demolished a great portion of the cliff of the Firth of Forth in

Scotland.

Nowhere do these terrific forces appear more formidably conjoined than

in the surprising strait known as the Lyse-Fiord. The Lyse-Fiord is the

most terrible of all the gut rocks of the ocean. Their terrors are there

complete. It is in the northern sea, near the inhospitable Gulf of

Stavanger, and in the 59th degree of latitude. The water is black and

heavy, and subject to intermitting storms. In this sea, and in the midst

of this solitude, rises a great sombre street--a street for no human

footsteps. None ever pass through there; no ship ever ventures in. It is

a corridor ten leagues in length, between two rocky walls of three

thousand feet in height. Such is the passage which presents an entrance

to the sea. The defile has its elbows and angles like all these streets

of the sea--never straight, having been formed by the irregular action

of the water. In the Lyse-Fiord, the sea is almost always tranquil; the

sky above is serene; the place terrible. Where is the wind? Not on high.

Where is the thunder? Not in the heavens. The wind is under the sea; the

lightnings within the rock. Now and then there is a convulsion of the

water. At certain moments, when there is perhaps not a cloud in the sky,

nearly half way up the perpendicular rock, at a thousand or fifteen

hundred feet above the water, and rather on the southern than on the

northern side, the rock suddenly thunders, lightnings dart forth, and

then retire like those toys which lengthen out and spring back again in

the hands of children. They contract and enlarge; strike the opposite

cliff, re-enter the rock, issue forth again, recommence their play,

multiply their heads and tips of flame, grow bristling with points,

strike wherever they can, recommence again, and then are extinguished

with a sinister abruptness. Flocks of birds fly wide in terror. Nothing

is more mysterious than that artillery issuing out of the invisible. One

cliff attacks the other, raining lightning blows from side to side.

Their war concerns not man. It signals the ancient enmity of two rocks

in the impassable gulf.

In the Lyse-Fiord, the wind whirls like the water in an estuary; the

rock performs the function of the clouds; and the thunder breaks forth

like volcanic fire. This strange defile is a voltaic pile; the plates of

which are the double line of cliffs.

VI

A STABLE FOR THE HORSE

Gilliatt was sufficiently familiar with marine rocks to grapple in

earnest with the Douvres. Before all, as we have just said, it was

necessary to find a safe shelter for the barge.

The double row of reefs, which stretched in a sinuous form behind the

Douvres, connected itself here and there with other rocks, and suggested

the existence of blind passages and hollows opening out into the

straggling way, and joining again to the principal defile like branches

to a trunk.

The lower part of these rocks was covered with kelp, the upper part with

lichens. The uniform level of the seaweed marked the line of the water

at the height of the tide, and the limit of the sea in calm weather. The

points which the water had not touched presented those silver and golden

hues communicated to marine granite by the white and yellow lichen.

A crust of conoidical shells covered the rock at certain points, the dry

rot of the granite.

At other points in the retreating angles, where fine sand had

accumulated, ribbed on its surface rather by the wind than by the waves,

appeared tufts of blue thistles.

In the indentations, sheltered from the winds, could be traced the

little perforations made by the sea-urchin. This shelly mass of

prickles, which moves about a living ball, by rolling on its spines, and

the armour of which is composed of ten thousand pieces, artistically

adjusted and welded together--the sea-urchin, which is popularly called,

for some unknown reason, "Aristotle's lantern," wears away the granite

with his five teeth, and lodges himself in the hole. It is in such holes

that the samphire gatherers find them. They cut them in halves and eat

them raw, like an oyster. Some steep their bread in the soft flesh.

Hence its other name, "Sea-egg."

The tips of the further reefs, left out of the water by the receding

tide, extended close under the escarpment of "The Man" to a sort of

creek, enclosed nearly on all sides by rocky walls. Here was evidently a

possible harbourage. It had the form of a horse-shoe, and opened only on

one side to the east wind, which is the least violent of all winds in

that sea labyrinth. The water was shut in there, and almost motionless.

The shelter seemed comparatively safe. Gilliatt, moreover, had not much

choice.

If he wished to take advantage of the low water, it was important to

make haste.

The weather continued to be fine and calm. The insolent sea was for a

while in a gentle mood.

Gilliatt descended, put on his shoes again, unmoored the cable,

re-embarked, and pushed out into the water. He used the oars, coasting

the side of the rock.

Having reached "The Man Rock," he examined the entrance to the little

creek.

A fixed, wavy line in the motionless sea, a sort of wrinkle,

imperceptible to any eye but that of a sailor, marked the channel.

Gilliatt studied for a moment its lineament, almost indistinct under the

water; then he held off a little in order to veer at ease, and steer

well into channel; and suddenly with a stroke of the oars he entered the

little bay.

He sounded.

The anchorage appeared to be excellent.

The sloop would be protected there against almost any of the

contingencies of the season.

The most formidable reefs have quiet nooks of this sort. The ports which

are thus found among the breakers are like the hospitality of the fierce

Bedouin--friendly and sure.

Gilliatt placed the sloop as near as he could to "The Man," but still

far enough to escape grazing the rock; and he cast his two anchors.

That done, he crossed his arms, and reflected on his position.

The sloop was sheltered. Here was one problem solved. But another

remained. Where could he now shelter himself?

He had the choice of two places: the sloop itself, with its corner of

cabin, which was scarcely habitable, and the summit of "The Man Rock,"

which was not difficult to scale.

From one or other of these refuges it was possible at low water, by

jumping from rock to rock, to gain the passage between the Douvres where

the Durande was fixed, almost without wetting the feet.

But low water lasts but a short while, and all the rest of the time he

would be cut off either from his shelter or from the wreck by more than

two hundred fathoms. Swimming among breakers is difficult at all times;

if there is the least commotion in the sea it is impossible.

He was driven to give up the idea of shelter in the sloop or on "The

Man."

No resting-place was possible among the neighbouring rocks.

The summits of the lower ones disappeared twice a day beneath the rising

tide.

The summits of the higher ones were constantly swept by the flakes of

foam, and promised nothing but an inhospitable drenching.

No choice remained but the wreck itself.

Was it possible to seek refuge there?

Gilliatt hoped it might be.

VII

A CHAMBER FOR THE VOYAGER

Half-an-hour afterwards, Gilliatt having returned to the wreck, climbed

to the deck, went below, and descended into the hold, completing the

summary survey of his first visit.

By the help of the capstan he had raised to the deck of the Durande the

package which he had made of the lading of the sloop. The capstan had

worked well. Bars for turning it were not wanting. Gilliatt had only to

take his choice among the heap of wreck.

He found among the fragments a chisel, dropped, no doubt, from the

carpenter's box, and which he added to his little stock of tools.

Besides this--for in poverty of appliances so complete everything counts

for a little--he had his jack-knife in his pocket.

Gilliatt worked the whole day long on the wreck, clearing away,

propping, arranging.

At nightfall he observed the following facts:

The entire wreck shook in the wind. The carcass trembled at every step

he took. There was nothing stable or strong except the portion of the

hull jammed between the rocks which contained the engine. There the

beams were powerfully supported by the granite walls.

Fixing his home in the Durande would be imprudent. It would increase the

weight; but far from adding to her burden, it was important to lighten

it. To burden the wreck in any way was indeed the very contrary of what

he wanted.

The mass of ruin required, in fact, the most careful management. It was

like a sick man at the approach of dissolution. The wind would do

sufficient to help it to its end.

It was, moreover, unfortunate enough to be compelled to work there. The

amount of disturbance which the wreck would have to withstand would

necessarily distress it, perhaps beyond its strength.

Besides, if any accident should happen in the night while Gilliatt was

sleeping, he must necessarily perish with the vessel. No assistance was

possible; all would be over. In order to help the shattered vessel, it

was absolutely necessary to remain outside it.

How to be outside and yet near it, this was the problem.

The difficulty became more complicated as he considered it.

Where could he find a shelter under such conditions?

Gilliatt reflected.

There remained nothing but the two Douvres. They seemed hopeless enough.

From below, it was possible to distinguish upon the upper plateau of the

Great Douvre a sort of protuberance.

High rocks with flattened summits, like the Great Douvre and "The Man,"

are a sort of decapitated peaks. They abound among the mountains and in

the ocean. Certain rocks, particularly those which are met with in the

open sea, bear marks like half-felled trees. They have the appearance of

having received blows from a hatchet. They have been subjected, in fact,

to the blows of the gale, that indefatigable pioneer of the sea.

There are other still more profound causes of marine convulsions. Hence

the innumerable bruises upon these primeval masses of granite. Some of

these sea giants have their heads struck off.

Sometimes these heads, from some inexplicable cause, do not fall, but

remain shattered on the summit of the mutilated trunk. This singularity

is by no means rare. The Devil's Rock, at Guernsey, and the Table, in

the Valley of Anweiler, illustrate some of the most surprising features

of this strange geological enigma.

Some such phenomena had probably fashioned the summit of the Great

Douvre.

If the protuberance which could be observed on the plateau were not a

natural irregularity in the stone, it must necessarily be some remaining

fragment of the shattered summit.

Perhaps the fragment might contain some excavation--some hole into which

a man could creep for cover. Gilliatt asked for no more.

But how could he reach the plateau? How could he scale that

perpendicular wall, hard and polished as a pebble, half covered with

the growth of glutinous confervæ, and having the slippery look of a

soapy surface?

The ridge of the plateau was at least thirty feet above the deck of the

Durande.

Gilliatt took out of his box of tools the knotted cord, hooked it to his

belt by the grapnel, and set to work to scale the Little Douvre. The

ascent became more difficult as he climbed. He had forgotten to take off

his shoes, a fact which increased the difficulty. With great labour and

straining, however, he reached the point. Safely arrived there, he

raised himself and stood erect. There was scarcely room for his two

feet. To make it his lodging would be difficult. A Stylite might have

contented himself there; Gilliatt, more luxurious in his requirements,

wanted something more commodious.

The Little Douvre, leaning towards the great one, looked from a distance

as if it was saluting it, and the space between the Douvres, which was

some score of feet below, was only eight or ten at the highest points.

From the spot to which he had climbed, Gilliatt saw more distinctly the

rocky excrescence which partly covered the plateau of the Great Douvre.

This plateau rose three fathoms at least above his head.

A precipice separated him from it. The curved escarpment of the Little

Douvre sloped away out of sight beneath him.

He detached the knotted rope from his belt, took a rapid glance at the

dimensions of the rock, and slung the grapnel up to the plateau.

The grapnel scratched the rock, and slipped. The knotted rope with the

hooks at its end fell down beneath his feet, swinging against the side

of the little Douvre.

He renewed the attempt; slung the rope further, aiming at the granite

protuberance, in which he could perceive crevices and scratches.

The cast was, this time, so neat and skilful, that the hooks caught.

He pulled from below. A portion of the rock broke away, and the knotted

rope with its heavy iron came down once more, striking the escarpment

beneath his feet.

He slung the grapnel a third time.

It did not fall.

He put a strain upon the rope; it resisted. The grapnel was firmly

anchored.

The hooks had caught in some fracture of the plateau which he could not

see.

It was necessary to trust his life to that unknown support.

He did not hesitate.

The matter was urgent. He was compelled to take the shortest route.

Moreover, to descend again to the deck of the Durande, in order to

devise some other step, was impossible. A slip was probable, and a fall

almost certain. It was easier to climb than to descend.

Gilliatt's movements were decisive, as are those of all good sailors. He

never wasted force. He always proportioned his efforts to the work in

hand. Hence the prodigies of strength which he executed with ordinary

muscles. His biceps were no more powerful than that of ordinary men; but

his heart was firmer. He added, in fact, to strength which is physical,

energy which belongs to the moral faculties.

The feat to be accomplished was appalling.

It was to cross the space between the two Douvres, hanging only by this

slender line.

Oftentimes in the path of duty and devotedness, the figure of death

rises before men to present these terrible questions:

Wilt thou do this? asks the shadow.

Gilliatt tested the cord again; the grappling-iron held firm.

Wrapping his left hand in his handkerchief, he grasped the knotted cord

with his right hand, which he covered with his left; then stretching out

one foot, and striking out sharply with the other against the rock, in

order that the impetus might prevent the rope twisting, he precipitated

himself from the height of the Little Douvre on to the escarpment of the

great one.

The shock was severe.

There was a rebound.

His clenched fists struck the rocks in their turn; the handkerchief had

loosened, and they were scratched; they had indeed narrowly escaped

being crushed.

Gilliatt remained hanging there a moment dizzy.

He was sufficiently master of himself not to let go his hold of the

cord.

A few moments passed in jerks and oscillations before he could catch the

cord with his feet; but he succeeded at last.

Recovering himself, and holding the cord at last between his naked feet

as with two hands, he gazed into the depth below.

He had no anxiety about the length of the cord, which had many a time

served him for great heights. The cord, in fact, trailed upon the deck

of the Durande.

Assured of being able to descend again, he began to climb hand over

hand, and still clinging with his feet.

In a few moments he had gained the summit.

Never before had any creature without wings found a footing there. The

plateau was covered in parts with the dung of birds. It was an irregular

trapezium, a mass struck off from the colossal granitic prism of the

Great Douvre. This block was hollowed in the centre like a basin--a work

of the rain.

Gilliatt, in fact, had guessed correctly.

At the southern angle of the block, he found a mass of superimposed

rocks, probably fragments of the fallen summit. These rocks, looking

like a heap of giant paving-stones, would have left room for a wild

beast, if one could have found its way there, to secrete himself between

them. They supported themselves confusedly one against the other,

leaving interstices like a heap of ruins. They formed neither grottoes

nor caves, but the pile was full of holes like a sponge. One of these

holes was large enough to admit a man.

This recess had a flooring of moss and a few tufts of grass. Gilliatt

could fit himself in it as in a kind of sheath. The recess at its

entrance was about two feet high. It contracted towards the bottom.

Stone coffins sometimes have this form. The mass of rocks behind lying

towards the south-west, the recess was sheltered from the showers, but

was open to the cold north wind.

Gilliatt was satisfied with the place.

The two chief problems were solved; the sloop had a harbour, and he had

found a shelter.

The chief merit of his cave was its accessibility from the wreck.

The grappling-iron of the knotted cord having fallen between two blocks,

had become firmly hooked, but Gilliatt rendered it more difficult to

give way by rolling a huge stone upon it.

He was now free to operate at leisure upon the Durande.

Henceforth he was at home.

The Great Douvre was his dwelling; the Durande was his workshop.

Nothing was more simple for him than going to and fro, ascending and

descending.

He dropped down easily by the knotted cord on to the deck.

The day's work was a good one, the enterprise had begun well; he was

satisfied, and began to feel hungry.

He untied his basket of provisions, opened his knife, cut a slice of

smoked beef, took a bite out of his brown loaf, drank a draught from his

can of fresh water, and supped admirably.

To do well and eat well are two satisfactions. A full stomach resembles

an easy conscience.

This supper was ended, and there was still before him a little more

daylight. He took advantage of it to begin the lightening of the

wreck--an urgent necessity.

He had passed part of the day in gathering up the fragments. He put on

one side, in the strong compartment which contained the machine, all

that might become of use to him, such as wood, iron, cordage, and

canvas. What was useless he cast into the sea.

The cargo of the sloop hoisted on to the deck by the capstan, compact as

he had made it, was an encumbrance. Gilliatt surveyed the species of

niche, at a height within his reach, in the side of the Little Douvre.

These natural closets, not shut in, it is true, are often seen in the

rocks. It struck him that it was possible to trust some stores to this

depôt, and he accordingly placed in the back of the recess his two boxes

containing his tools and his clothing, and his two bags holding the

rye-meal and the biscuit. In the front--a little too near the edge

perhaps, but he had no other place--he rested his basket of provisions.

He had taken care to remove from the box of clothing his sheepskin, his

loose coat with a hood, and his waterproof overalls.

To lessen the hold of the wind upon the knotted cord, he made the lower

extremity fast to one of the riders of the Durande.

The Durande being much driven in, this rider was bent a good deal, and

it held the end of the cord as firmly as a tight hand.

There was still the difficulty of the upper end of the cord. To control

the lower part was well, but at the summit of the escarpment at the spot

where the knotted cord met the ridge of the plateau, there was reason to

fear that it would be fretted and worn away by the sharp angle of the

rock.

Gilliatt searched in the heap of rubbish in reserve, and took from it

some rags of sail-cloth, and from a bunch of old cables he pulled out

some strands of rope-yarn with which he filled his pockets.

A sailor would have guessed that he intended to bind with these pieces

of sail-cloth and ends of yarn the part of the knotted rope upon the

edge of the rock, so as to preserve it from all friction--an operation

which is called "keckling."

Having provided himself with these things, he drew on his overalls over

his legs, put on his waterproof coat over his jacket, drew its hood over

his red cap, hung the sheepskin round his neck by the two legs, and

clothed in this complete panoply, he grasped the cord, now firmly fixed

to the side of the Great Douvre, and mounted to the assault of that

sombre citadel in the sea.

In spite of his scratched hands, Gilliatt easily regained the summit.

The last pale tints of sunset were fading in the sky. It was night upon

the sea below. A little light still lingered upon the height of the

Douvre.

Gilliatt took advantage of this remains of daylight to bind the knotted

rope. He wound it round again and again at the part which passed over

the edge of the rock, with a bandage of several thicknesses of canvas

strongly tied at every turn. The whole resembled in some degree the

padding which actresses place upon their knees, to prepare them for the

agonies and supplications of the fifth act.

This binding completely accomplished, Gilliatt rose from his stooping

position.

For some moments, while he had been busied in his task, he had had a

confused sense of a singular fluttering in the air.

It resembled, in the silence of the evening, the noise which an immense

bat might make with the beating of its wings.

Gilliatt raised his eyes.

A great black circle was revolving over his head in the pale twilight

sky.

Such circles are seen in pictures round the heads of saints. These,

however, are golden on a dark ground, while the circle around Gilliatt

was dark upon a pale ground. The effect was strange. It spread round the

Great Douvre like the aureole of night.

The circle drew nearer, then retired; grew narrower, and then spread

wide again.

It was an immense flight of gulls, seamews, and cormorants; a vast

multitude of affrighted sea birds.

The Great Douvre was probably their lodging, and they were coming to

rest for the night. Gilliatt had taken a chamber in their home. It was

evident that their unexpected fellow-lodger disturbed them.

A man there was an object they had never beheld before.

Their wild flutter continued for some time.

They seemed to be waiting for the stranger to leave the place.

Gilliatt followed them dreamily with his eyes.

The flying multitude seemed at last to give up their design. The circle

suddenly took a spiral form, and the cloud of sea birds came down upon

"The Man Rock" at the extremity of the group, where they seemed to be

conferring and deliberating.

Gilliatt, after settling down in his alcove of granite, and covering a

stone for a pillow for his head, could hear the birds for a long time

chattering one after the other, or croaking, as if in turns.

Then they were silent, and all were sleeping--the birds upon their rock,

Gilliatt upon his.

VIII

IMPORTUNÆQUE VOLUCRES

Gilliatt slept well; but he was cold, and this awoke him from time to

time. He had naturally placed his feet at the bottom, and his head at

the entrance to his cave. He had not taken the precaution to remove from

his couch a number of angular stones, which did not by any means conduce

to sleep.

Now and then he half-opened his eyes.

At intervals he heard loud noises. It was the rising tide entering the

caverns of the rocks with a sound like the report of a cannon.

All the circumstances of his position conspired to produce the effect of

a vision. Hallucinations seemed to surround him. The vagueness of night

increased this effect; and Gilliatt felt himself plunged into some

region of unrealities. He asked himself if all were not a dream?

Then he dropped to sleep again; and this time, in a veritable dream,

found himself at the Bû de la Rue, at the Bravées, at St. Sampson. He

heard Déruchette singing; he was among realities. While he slept he

seemed to wake and live; when he awoke again he appeared to be sleeping.

In truth, from this time forward he lived in a dream.

Towards the middle of the night a confused murmur filled the air.

Gilliatt had a vague consciousness of it even in his sleep. It was

perhaps a breeze arising.

Once, when awakened by a cold shiver, he opened his eyes a little wider

than before. Clouds were moving in the zenith; the moon was flying

through the sky, with one large star following closely in her footsteps.

Gilliatt's mind was full of the incidents of his dreams. The wild

outlines of things in the darkness were exaggerated by this confusion

with the impressions of his sleeping hours.

At daybreak he was half-frozen; but he slept soundly.

The sudden daylight aroused him from a slumber which might have been

dangerous. The alcove faced the rising sun.

Gilliatt yawned, stretched himself, and sprang out of his sleeping

place.

His sleep had been so deep that he could not at first recall the

circumstances of the night before.

By degrees the feeling of reality returned, and he began to think of

breakfast.

The weather was calm; the sky cool and serene. The clouds were gone; the

night wind had cleared the horizon, and the sun rose brightly. Another

fine day was commencing. Gilliatt felt joyful.

He threw off his overcoat and his leggings; rolled them up in the

sheepskin with the wool inside, fastened the roll with a length of

rope-yarn, and pushed it into the cavern for a shelter in case of rain.

This done, he made his bed--an operation which consisted in removing the

stones which had annoyed him in the night.

His bed made, he slid down the cord on to the deck of the Durande, and

approached the niche where he had placed his basket of provisions. As it

was very near the edge, the wind in the night had swept it down, and

rolled it into the sea.

It was evident that it would not be easy to recover it. There was a

spirit of mischief and malice in a wind which had sought out his basket

in that position.

It was the commencement of hostilities. Gilliatt understood the token.

To those who live in a state of rude familiarity with the sea, it

becomes natural to regard the wind as an individuality, and the rocks as

sentient beings.

Nothing remained but the biscuit and the rye-meal, except the

shell-fish, on which the shipwrecked sailor had supported a lingering

existence upon "The Man Rock."

It was useless to think of subsisting by net or line fishing. Fish are

naturally averse to the neighbourhood of rocks. The drag and bow net

fishers would waste their labour among the breakers, the points of which

would be destructive only to their nets.

Gilliatt breakfasted on a few limpets which he plucked with difficulty

from the rocks. He narrowly escaped breaking his knife in the attempt.

While he was making his spare meal, he was sensible of a strange

disturbance on the sea. He looked around.

It was a swarm of gulls and seamews which had just alighted upon some

low rocks, and were beating their wings, tumbling over each other,

screaming, and shrieking. All were swarming noisily upon the same point.

This horde with beaks and talons were evidently pillaging something.

It was Gilliatt's basket.

Rolled down upon a sharp point by the wind, the basket had burst open.

The birds had gathered round immediately. They were carrying off in

their beaks all sorts of fragments of provisions. Gilliatt recognised

from the distance his smoked beef and his salted fish.

It was their turn now to be aggressive. The birds had taken to

reprisals. Gilliatt had robbed them of their lodging, they deprived him

of his supper.

IX

THE ROCK, AND HOW GILLIATT USED IT

A week passed.

Although it was in the rainy season no rain fell, a fact for which

Gilliatt felt thankful. But the work he had entered upon surpassed, in

appearance at least, the power of human hand or skill. Success appeared

so improbable that the attempt seemed like madness.

It is not until a task is fairly grappled with that its difficulties and

perils become fully manifest. There is nothing like making a

commencement for making evident how difficult it will be to come to the

end. Every beginning is a struggle against resistance. The first step is

an exorable undeceiver. A difficulty which we come to touch pricks like

a thorn.

Gilliatt found himself immediately in the presence of obstacles.

In order to raise the engine of the Durande from the wreck in which it

was three-fourths buried, with any chance of success--in order to

accomplish a salvage in such a place and in such a season, it seemed

almost necessary to be a legion of men. Gilliatt was alone; a complete

apparatus of carpenters' and engineers' tools and implements were

wanted. Gilliatt had a saw, a hatchet, a chisel, and a hammer. He wanted

both a good workshop and a good shed; Gilliatt had not a roof to cover

him. Provisions, too, were necessary, but he had not even bread.

Any one who could have seen Gilliatt working on the rock during all that

first work might have been puzzled to determine the nature of his

operations. He seemed to be no longer thinking either of the Durande or

the two Douvres. He was busy only among the breakers: he seemed absorbed

in saving the smaller parts of the shipwreck. He took advantage of every

high tide to strip the reefs of everything which the shipwreck had

distributed among them. He went from rock to rock, picking up whatever

the sea had scattered--tatters of sail-cloth, pieces of iron, splinters

of panels, shattered planking, broken yards--here a beam, there a chain,

there a pulley.

At the same time he carefully surveyed all the recesses of the rocks. To

his great disappointment none were habitable. He had suffered from the

cold in the night, where he lodged between the stones on the summit of

the rock, and he would gladly have found some better refuge.

Two of those recesses were somewhat extensive. Although the natural

pavement of rock was almost everywhere oblique and uneven it was

possible to stand upright, and even to walk within them. The wind and

the rain wandered there at will, but the highest tides did not reach

them. They were near the Little Douvre, and were approachable at any

time. Gilliatt decided that one should serve him as a storehouse, the

other as a forge.

With all the sail, rope-bands, and all the reef-earrings he could

collect, he made packages of the fragments of wreck, tying up the wood

and iron in bundles, and the canvas in parcels. He lashed all these

together carefully. As the rising tide approached these packages, he

began to drag them across the reefs to his storehouse. In the hollow of

the rocks he had found a top rope, by means of which he had been able to

haul even the large pieces of timber. In the same manner he dragged from

the sea the numerous portions of chains which he found scattered among

the breakers.

Gilliatt worked at these tasks with astonishing activity and tenacity.

He accomplished whatever he attempted--nothing could withstand his

ant-like perseverance.

At the end of the week he had gathered into this granite warehouse of

marine stores, and ranged into order, all this miscellaneous and

shapeless mass of salvage. There was a corner for the tacks of sails and

a corner for sheets. Bow-lines were not mixed with halliards; parrels

were arranged according to their number of holes. The coverings of

rope-yarn, unwound from the broken anchorings, were tied in bunches; the

dead-eyes without pulleys were separated from the tackle-blocks.

Belaying-pins, bullseyes, preventer-shrouds, down-hauls, snatch-blocks,

pendents, kevels, trusses, stoppers, sailbooms, if they were not

completely damaged by the storm, occupied different compartments. All

the cross-beams, timber-work, uprights, stanchions, mast-heads,

binding-strakes, portlids, and clamps, were heaped up apart. Wherever it

was possible, he had fixed the fragments of planks, from the vessel's

bottom, one in the other. There was no confusion between reef-points and

nippers of the cable, nor of crow's-feet with towlines; nor of pulleys

of the small with pulleys of the large ropes; nor of fragments from the

waist with fragments from the stern. A place had been reserved for a

portion of the cat-harpings of the Durande, which had supported the

shrouds of the topmast and the futtock-shrouds. Every portion had its

place. The entire wreck was there classed and ticketed. It was a sort of

chaos in a storehouse.

A stay-sail, fixed by huge stones, served, though torn and damaged, to

protect what the rain might have injured.

Shattered as were the bows of the wreck, he had succeeded in saving the

two cat-heads with their three pulley-blocks.

He had found the bowsprit too, and had had much trouble in unrolling its

gammoning; it was very hard and tight, having been, according to custom,

made by the help of the windlass, and in dry weather. Gilliatt, however,

persevered until he had detached it, this thick rope promising to be

very useful to him.

He had been equally successful in discovering the little anchor which

had become fast in the hollow of a reef, where the receding tide had

left it uncovered.

In what had been Tangrouille's cabin he had found a piece of chalk,

which he preserved carefully. He reflected that he might have some marks

to make.

A fire-bucket and several pails in pretty good condition completed this

stock of working materials.

All that remained of the store of coal of the Durande he carried into

the warehouse.

In a week this salvage of débris was finished; the rock was swept clean,

and the Durande was lightened. Nothing remained now to burden the hull

except the machinery.

The portion of the fore-side bulwarks which hung to it did not distress

the hull. The mass hung without dragging, being partly sustained by a

ledge of rock. It was, however, large and broad, and heavy to drag, and

would have encumbered his warehouse too much. This bulwarking looked

something like a boat-builder's stocks. Gilliatt left it where it was.

He had been profoundly thoughtful during all this labour. He had sought

in vain for the figure-head--the "doll," as the Guernsey folks called

it, of the Durande. It was one of the things which the waves had carried

away for ever. Gilliatt would have given his hands to find it--if he had

not had such peculiar need of them at that time.

At the entrance to the storehouse and outside were two heaps of

refuse--a heap of iron good for forging, and a heap of wood good for

burning.

Gilliatt was always at work at early dawn. Except his time of sleep, he

did not take a moment of repose.

The wild sea birds, flying hither and thither, watched him at his work.

X

THE FORGE

The warehouse completed, Gilliatt constructed his forge.

The other recess which he had chosen had within it a species of passage

like a gallery in a mine of pretty good depth. He had had at first an

idea of making this his lodging, but the draught was so continuous and

so persevering in this passage that he had been compelled to give it up.

This current of air, incessantly renewed, first gave him the notion of

the forge. Since it could not be his chamber, he was determined that

this cabin should be his smithy. To bend obstacles to our purposes is a

great step towards triumph. The wind was Gilliatt's enemy. He had set

about making it his servant.

The proverb applied to certain kinds of men--"Fit for everything, good

for nothing"--may also be applied to the hollows of rocks. They give no

advantages gratuitously. On one side we find a hollow fashioned

conveniently in the shape of a bath; but it allows the water to run away

through a fissure. Here is a rocky chamber, but without a roof; here a

bed of moss, but oozy with wet; here an arm-chair, but one of hard

stone.

The forge which Gilliatt intended was roughly sketched out by nature;

but nothing could be more troublesome than to reduce this rough sketch

to manageable shape, to transform this cavern into a laboratory and

smith's shop. With three or four large rocks, shaped like a funnel, and

ending in a narrow fissure, chance had constructed there a species of

vast ill-shapen blower, of very different power to those huge old forge

bellows of fourteen feet long, which poured out at every breath

ninety-eight thousand inches of air. This was quite a different sort of

construction. The proportions of the hurricane cannot be definitely

measured.

This excess of force was an embarrassment. The incessant draught was

difficult to regulate.

The cavern had two inconveniences; the wind traversed it from end to

end; so did the water.

This was not the water of the sea, but a continual little trickling

stream, more like a spring than a torrent.

The foam, cast incessantly by the surf upon the rocks and sometimes more

than a hundred feet in the air, had filled with sea water a natural cave

situated among the high rocks overlooking the excavation. The

overflowings of this reservoir caused, a little behind the escarpment, a

fall of water of about an inch in breadth, and descending four or five

fathoms. An occasional contribution from the rains also helped to fill

the reservoir. From time to time a passing cloud dropped a shower into

the rocky basin, always overflowing. The water was brackish, and unfit

to drink, but clear. This rill of water fell in graceful drops from the

extremities of the long marine grasses, as from the ends of a length of

hair.

He was struck with the idea of making this water serve to regulate the

draught in the cave. By the means of a funnel made of planks roughly and

hastily put together to form two or three pipes, one of which was fitted

with a valve, and of a large tub arranged as a lower reservoir, without

checks or counterweight, and completed solely by air-tight stuffing

above and air-holes below, Gilliatt, who, as we have already said, was

handy at the forge and at the mechanic's bench, succeeded in

constructing, instead of the forge-bellows, which he did not possess, an

apparatus less perfect than what is known now-a-days by the name of a

"cagniardelle," but less rude than what the people of the Pyrenees

anciently called a "trompe."

He had some rye-meal, and he manufactured with it some paste. He had

also some white rope, which picked out into tow. With this paste and

tow, and some bits of wood, he stopped all the crevices of the rock,

leaving only a little air passage made of a powder-flask which he had

found aboard the Durande, and which had served for loading the signal

gun. This powder-flask was directed horizontally to a large stone, which

Gilliatt made the hearth of the forge. A stopper made of a piece of tow

served to close it in case of need.

After this, he heaped up the wood and coal upon the hearth, struck his

steel against the bare rock, caught a spark upon a handful of loose tow,

and having ignited it, soon lighted his forge fire.

He tried the blower: it worked well.