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 c