le than the timidity of ignorance, unless
it be its temerity. When ignorance becomes daring, she has sometimes a
sort of compass within herself--the intuition of the truth, clearer
oftentimes in a simple mind than in a learned brain.

Ignorance invites to an attempt. It is a state of wonderment, which,
with its concomitant curiosity, forms a power. Knowledge often enough
disconcerts and makes over-cautious. Gama, had he known what lay before
him, would have recoiled before the Cape of Storms. If Columbus had been
a great geographer, he might have failed to discover America.

The second successful climber of Mont Blanc was the savant, Saussure;
the first the goatherd, Balmat.

These instances I admit are exceptions, which detract nothing from
science, which remains the rule. The ignorant man may discover; it is
the learned who invent.

The sloop was still at anchor in the creek of "The Man Rock," where the
sea left it in peace. Gilliatt, as will be remembered, had arranged
everything for maintaining constant communication with it. He visited
the sloop and measured her beam carefully in several parts, but
particularly her midship frame. Then he returned to the Durande and
measured the diameter of the floor of the engine-room. This diameter,
of course, without the paddles, was two feet less than the broadest part
of the deck of his bark. The machinery, therefore, might be put aboard
the sloop.

But how could it be got there?

III

GILLIATT'S MASTERPIECE COMES TO THE RESCUE OF THAT OF LETHIERRY

Any fisherman who had been mad enough to loiter in that season in the
neighbourhood of Gilliatt's labours about this time would have been
repaid for his hardihood, by a singular sight between the two Douvres.

Before his eyes would have appeared four stout beams, at equal
distances, stretching from one Douvre to the other, and apparently
forced into the rock, which is the firmest of all holds. On the Little
Douvre, their extremities were laid and buttressed upon the projections
of rock. On the Great Douvre, they had been driven in by blows of a
hammer, by the powerful hand of a workman standing upright upon the beam
itself. These supports were a little longer than the distance between
the rocks. Hence the firmness of their hold; and hence, also, their
slanting position. They touched the Great Douvre at an acute, and the
Little Douvre at an obtuse angle. Their inclination was only slight; but
it was unequal, which