uction perhaps intelligible to
practical mechanics, but obscure to others.

The top of the funnel passed between the two beams in the middle.

Gilliatt, without suspecting it, had reconstructed, three centuries
later, the mechanism of the Salbris carpenter--a mechanism rude and
incorrect, and hazardous for him who would dare to use it.

Here let us remark, that the rudest defects do not prevent a mechanism
from working well or ill. It may limp, but it moves. The obelisk in the
square of St. Peter's at Rome is erected in a way which offends against
all the principles of statics. The carriage of the Czar Peter was so
constructed that it appeared about to overturn at every step; but it
travelled onward for all that. What deformities are there in the
machinery of Marly! Everything that is heterodox in hydraulics. Yet it
did not supply Louis XIV. any the less with water.

Come what might, Gilliatt had faith. He had even anticipated success so
confidently as to fix in the bulwarks of the sloop, on the day when he
measured its proportions, two pairs of corresponding iron rings on each
side, exactly at the same distances as the four rings on board the
Durande, to which were attached the four chains of the funnel.

He had in his mind a very complete and settled plan. All the chances
being against him, he had evidently determined that all the precautions
at least should be on his side.

He did some things which seemed useless; a sign of attentive
premeditation.

His manner of proceeding would, as we have said, have puzzled an
observer, even though familiar with mechanical operations.

A witness of his labour who had seen him, for example, with enormous
efforts, and at the risk of breaking his neck, driving with blows of his
hammer eight or ten great nails which he had forged into the base of the
two Douvres at the entrance of the defile between them, would have had
some difficulty in understanding the object of these nails, and would
probably have wondered what could be the use of all that trouble.

If he had then seen him measuring the portion of the fore bulwark which
had remained, as we have described it, hanging on by the wreck, then
attaching a strong cable to the upper edge of that portion, cutting away
with strokes of his hatchet the dislocated fastenings which held it,
then dragging it out of the defile, pushing the lower part by the aid of
the receding tide, while he dragged the upper part; finally, by great
la