ks, the Anglo-Saxons and to be the first to pass! To
be the first to pass this way, ahead of the millions and millions of
men who would follow in his track, on the new path which he would have
inaugurated!

One o'clock. . . . Half-past one. . . . More ridges of sand, more
wrecks. Always that curtain of clouds. And always Simon's lingering
impression of a goal which eluded him. The tide, still low, was
leaving a greater number of islands uncovered. The waves were breaking
far out to sea and rolling across wide sand-banks as though the new
land had widened considerably.

About two o'clock in the afternoon, he came upon higher undulations
followed by a series of sandy flats in which his feet sank to a
greater depth than usual. Absorbed by the dreary spectacle of a ship's
mast protruding from the sand, with its tattered and coloured flag
flopping in the wind, he pressed on all unsuspecting. In a few
minutes, the sand was up to his knees, then half-way up his thighs. He
laughed, still unheeding.

In the end, however, unable to advance, he tried to return: his
efforts were useless. He attempted to lift his legs by treading, as
though climbing a flight of stairs, but he could not. He brought his
hands into play, laying them flat on the sands: they too went under.

Then he broke into a flood of perspiration. He suddenly understood the
hideous truth: he was caught in a quicksand.

It was soon over. He did not sink with the slowness that lends a
little hope to the agony of despair. Simon fell, so to speak, into a
void. His hips, his waist, his chest disappeared. His outstretched
arms checked his descent for a moment. He stiffened his body, he
struggled. In vain. The sand rose like water to his shoulders, to his
neck.

He began to shout. But in the immensity of these solitudes, to whom
was his appeal addressed? Nothing could save him from the most
horrible of deaths. Then it was that he shut his eyes and with
clenched lips sealed his mouth, which was already full of the taste of
the sand, and, in a fit of terror, he gave himself up for lost.

CHAPTER VI

TRIUMPH

Afterwards, he never quite understood the chance to which he owed his
life. The most that he could remember was that one of his feet touched
something solid which served him as a support and that something else
enabled him to advance, now a step, now two or three, to lift himself
little by little out of his living tomb and to leave it alive. What
had