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 enterprise