Derouchette.

The news was soon told. The Durande was lost! Presently, amid the
details of the story--the Durande had been wrecked in a fog on the
terrible rocks known as the Douvres--one thing emerged: the engines were
intact. To rescue the Durande was impossible; but the machinery might
still be saved. These engines were unique. To construct others like
them, money was wanting; but to find the artificer would have been still
more difficult. The constructor was dead. The machinery had cost two
thousand pounds. As long as these engines existed, it might almost be
said that there was no shipwreck. The loss of the engines alone was
irreparable.

Now, if ever a dream had appeared wild and impracticable, it was that of
saving the engines then embedded between the Douvres. The idea of
sending a crew to work upon those rocks was absurd. It was the season of
heavy seas. Besides, on the narrow ledge of the highest part of the rock
there was scarcely room for one person. To save the engines, therefore,
it would be necessary for a man to go to the Douvres, to be alone in
that sea, alone at five leagues from the coast, alone in that region of
terrors, for entire weeks, in the presence of dangers foreseen and
unforeseen--without supplies in the face of hunger and nakedness,
without companionship save that of death.

A pilot present in the room delivered judgment.

"No; it is all over. The man does not exist who could go there and
rescue the machinery of the Durande."

"If I don't go," said the engineer of the lost ship, who loved those
engines, "it is because nobody could do it"

"If he existed----" continued the pilot.

Derouchette turned her head impulsively, and interrupted.

"I would marry him," she said innocently.

There was a pause. A man made his way out of the crowd, and standing
before her, pale and anxious, said, "You would marry him, Miss
Derouchette?"

It was Gilliatt. All eyes were turned towards him. Lethierry had just
before stood upright and gazed about him. His eyes glittered with a
strange light. He took off his sailor's cap, and threw it on the ground;
then looked solemnly before him, and without seeing any of the persons
present, said Derouchette should be his. "I pledge myself to it in God's
name!"

_II.--The Prey of the Rocks_

The two perpendicular forms called the Douvres held fast between them,
like an architrave between two pillars, the wreck of the Durande. The
spectacle thus presente