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
fore