crabs and crayfish for his
food. Shell-fish had begun to fail him on the rocks.

The fissure was narrow, and the passage difficult. Gilliatt could see
daylight beyond. He made an effort, contorted himself as much as he
could, and penetrated into the cave as far as he was able.

He had reached, without suspecting it, the interior of the rock, upon
the point of which Clubin had steered the Durande. Though abrupt and
almost inaccessible without, it was hollowed within. It was full of
galleries, pits, and chambers, like the tomb of an Egyptian king. This
network of caverns was one of the most complicated of all that
labyrinth, a labour of the water, the undermining of the restless sea.
The branches of the subterranean maze probably communicated with the sea
without by more than one issue, some gaping at the level of the waves,
the others profound and invisible. It was near here, but Gilliatt knew
it not, that Clubin had dived into the sea.

In this crocodile cave--where crocodiles, it is true, were not among the
dangers--Gilliatt wound about, clambered, struck his head occasionally,
bent low and rose again, lost his footing and regained it many times,
advancing laboriously. By degrees the gallery widened; a glimmer of
daylight appeared, and he found himself suddenly at the entrance to a
cavern of a singular kind.

XII

THE INTERIOR OF AN EDIFICE UNDER THE SEA

The gleam of daylight was fortunate.

One step further, and Gilliatt must have fallen into a pool, perhaps
without bottom. The waters of these cavern pools are so cold and
paralysing as to prove fatal to the strongest swimmers.

There is, moreover, no means of remounting or of hanging on to any part
of their steep walls.

He stopped short. The crevice from which he had just issued ended in a
narrow and slippery projection, a species of corbel in the peaked wall.
He leaned against the side and surveyed it.

He was in a large cave. Over his head was a roofing not unlike the
inside of a vast skull, which might have been imagined to have been
recently dissected. The dripping ribs of the striated indentations of
the roof seemed to imitate the branching fibres and jagged sutures of
the bony cranium. A stony ceiling and a watery floor. The rippled waters
between the four walls of the cave were like wavy paving tiles. The
grotto was shut in on all sides. Not a window, not even an air-hole
visible. No breach in the wall, no crack in the roof. The light came