r, joined and chained together in a certain fashion, will
form a more powerful obstacle than a breakwater of masonry. The barriers
of the Douvres fulfilled these conditions. They were, moreover, so
ingeniously made fast, that the waves striking them beneath were like
hammers beating in nails, pressing and consolidating the work upon the
rocks. To demolish them it would have been necessary to overthrow the
Douvres themselves. The surf, in fact, was only able to cast over upon
the sloop some flakes of foam. On that side, thanks to the barrier, the
tempest ended only in harmless insult. Gilliatt turned his back upon the
scene. He heard composedly its useless rage upon the rocks behind him.

The foam-flakes coming from all sides were like flights of down. The
vast irritated ocean deluged the rocks, dashed over them and raged
within, penetrated into the network of their interior fissures, and
issued again from the granitic masses by the narrow chinks, forming a
kind of inexhaustible fountains playing peacefully in the midst of that
deluge. Here and there a silvery network fell gracefully from these
spouts in the sea.

The second frame of the eastern barrier was nearly completed. A few
more knots of rope and ends of chains and this new rampart would be
ready to play its part in barring out the storm.

Suddenly there was a great brightness; the rain ceased; the clouds
rolled asunder; the wind had just shifted; a sort of high, dark window
opened in the zenith, and the lightnings were extinguished. The end
seemed to have come. It was but the commencement.

The change of wind was from the north-west to the north-east.

The storm was preparing to burst forth again with a new legion of
hurricanes. The north was about to mount to the assault. Sailors call
this dreaded moment of transition the "Return storm." The southern wind
brings most rain, the north wind most lightning.

The attack, coming now from the east, was directed against the weak
point of the position.

This time Gilliatt interrupted his work and looked around him.

He stood erect, upon a curved projection of the rock behind the second
barrier, which was nearly finished. If the first frame had been carried
away, it would have broken down the second, which was not yet
consolidated, and must have crushed him. Gilliatt, in the place that he
had chosen, must in that case have been destroyed before seeing the
sloop, the machinery, and all his work shattered and swallo