ah 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 Deruchette 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