ed from side to
side of the great parallel rocks of the defile, and formed a transversal
wall, a sort of cross-stroke between the two escarpments. Its two ends
touched the rocks. It had been a little too long to lie flat, but its
summit of soft rock was struck off with the fall. The result of this
fall was a singular sort of _cul-de-sac_, which may still be seen. The
water behind this stony barrier is almost always tranquil.

This was a rampart more invincible still than the forward timbers of the
Durande fixed between the two Douvres.

The barrier came opportunely.

The assaults of the sea had continued. The obstinacy of the waves is
always increased by an obstacle. The first frame began to show signs of
breaking up. One breach, however small, in a breakwater, is always
serious. It inevitably enlarges, and there is no means of supplying its
place, for the sea would sweep away the workmen.

A flash which lighted up the rocks revealed to Gilliatt the nature of
the mischief; the beams broken down, the ends of rope and fragments of
chain swinging in the winds, and a rent in the centre of the apparatus.
The second frame was intact.

Though the block of stone so powerfully overturned by Gilliatt in the
defile behind the breakwater was the strongest possible barrier, it had
a defect. It was too low. The surge could not destroy, but could sweep
over it.

It was useless to think of building it higher. Nothing but masses of
rock could avail upon a barrier of stone; but how could such masses be
detached? or, if detached, how could they be moved, or raised, or piled,
or fixed? Timbers may be added, but rocks cannot.

Gilliatt was not Enceladus.

The very little height of this rocky isthmus rendered him anxious.

The effects of this fault were not long in showing themselves. The
assaults upon the breakwater were incessant; the heavy seas seemed not
merely to rage, but to attack with determination to destroy it. A sort
of trampling noise was heard upon the jolted framework.

Suddenly the end of a binding strake, detached from the dislocated
frame, was swept away over the second barrier and across the transversal
rock, falling in the defile, where the water seized and carried it into
the sinuosities of the pass. Gilliatt lost sight of it. It seemed
probable that it would do some injury to the sloop. Fortunately, the
water in the interior of the rocks, shut in on all sides, felt little of
the commotion without. The waves t