Part 60 (1/2)
The second construction of beams resisted the shock. The apparatus behind it was powerfully secured and b.u.t.tressed. But the broken frame was heavy, and was at the mercy of the waves, which were incessantly hurling it forward and withdrawing it. The ropes and chains which remained unsevered prevented its entirely breaking up, and the qualities which Gilliatt had given it as a means of defence made it, in the end, a more effective weapon of destruction. Instead of a buckler, it had become a battering-ram. Besides this, it was now full of irregularities from breaking; ends of timbers projected from all parts; and it was, as it were, covered with teeth and spikes. No sort of arm could have been more effective, or more fitted for the handling of the tempest. It was the projectile, while the sea played the part of the catapult.
The blows succeeded each other with a dismal regularity. Gilliatt, thoughtful and anxious, behind that barricaded portal, listened to the sound of death knocking loudly for admittance.
He reflected with bitterness that, but for the fatal entanglement of the funnel of the Durande in the wreck, he would have been at that very moment, and even since the morning, once more at Guernsey, in the port, with the sloop out of danger and with the machinery saved.
The dreaded moment arrived. The destruction was complete. There was a sound like a death-rattle. The entire frame of the breakwater, the double apparatus crushed and mingled confusedly, came in a whirl of foam, rus.h.i.+ng upon the stone barricade like chaos upon a mountain, where it stopped. Here the fragments lay together, a ma.s.s of beams penetrable by the waves, but still breaking their force. The conquered barrier struggled n.o.bly against destruction. The waves had shattered it, and in their turn were shattered against it. Though overthrown, it still remained in some degree effective. The rock which barred its pa.s.sage, an immovable obstacle held it fast. The defile, as we have said, was very narrow at that point; the victorious whirlwind had driven forward, mingled and piled up the wreck of the breakwater in this narrow pa.s.s.
The very violence of the a.s.sault, by heaping up the ma.s.s and driving the broken ends one into the other, had contributed to make the pile firm.
It was destroyed, but immovable. A few pieces of timber only were swept away and dispersed by the waves. One pa.s.sed through the air very near to Gilliatt. He felt the counter current upon his forehead.
Some waves, however, of that kind which in great tempests return with an imperturbable regularity, swept over the ruins of the breakwater. They fell into the defile, and in spite of the many angles of the pa.s.sage, set the waters within in commotion. The waters began to roll through the gorge ominously. The mysterious embraces of the waves among the rocks were audible.
What means were there of preventing this agitation extending as far as the sloop? It would not require a long time for the blast of wind to create a tempest through all the windings of the pa.s.s. A few heavy seas would be sufficient to stave in the sloop and scatter her burden.
Gilliatt shuddered as he reflected.
But he was not disconcerted. No defeat could daunt his soul.
The hurricane had now discovered the true plan of attack, and was rus.h.i.+ng fiercely between the two walls of the strait.
Suddenly a crash was heard, resounding and prolonging itself through the defile at some distance behind him: a crash more terrible than any he had yet heard.
It came from the direction of the sloop.
Something disastrous was happening there.
Gilliatt hastened towards it.
From the eastern gullet where he was, he could not see the sloop on account of the sharp turns of the pa.s.s. At the last turn he stopped and waited for the lightning.
The first flash revealed to him the position of affairs.
The rush of the sea through the eastern entrance had been met by a blast of wind from the other end. A disaster was near at hand.
The sloop had received no visible damage; anch.o.r.ed as she was, the storm had little power over her, but the carcase of the Durande was distressed.
In such a tempest, the wreck presented a considerable surface. It was entirely out of the sea in the air, exposed. The breach which Gilliatt had made, and which he had pa.s.sed the engine through, had rendered the hull still weaker. The keelson was snapped, the vertebral column of the skeleton was broken.
The hurricane had pa.s.sed over it. Scarcely more than this was needed to complete its destruction. The planking of the deck had bent like an opened book. The dismemberment had begun. It was the noise of this dislocation which had reached Gilliatt's ears in the midst of the tempest.
The disaster which presented itself as he approached appeared almost irremediable.
The square opening which he had cut in the keel had become a gaping wound. The wind had converted the smooth-cut hole into a ragged fracture. This transverse breach separated the wreck in two. The after-part, nearest to the sloop, had remained firm in its bed of rocks.
The forward portion which faced him was hanging. A fracture, while it holds, is a sort of hinge. The whole ma.s.s oscillated, as the wind moved it, with a doleful noise. Fortunately the sloop was no longer beneath it.
But this swinging movement shook the other portion of the hull, still wedged and immovable as it was between the two Douvres. From shaking to casting down the distance is not far. Under the obstinate a.s.saults of the gale, the dislocated part might suddenly carry away the other portion, which almost touched the sloop. In this case, the whole wreck, together with the sloop and the engine, must be swept into the sea and swallowed up.
All this presented itself to his eyes. It was the end of all. How could it be prevented?
Gilliatt was one of those who are accustomed to s.n.a.t.c.h the means of safety out of danger itself. He collected his ideas for a moment. Then he hastened to his a.r.s.enal and brought his hatchet.
The mallet had served him well, it was now the turn of the axe.