ng into amalgamation, resolving into nothing but a smoke.
Mists, whirlwinds, gales, motion in all directions, no basis, no
shelter, no stop. Constant recommencement, one gulf succeeding another.
No horizon visible; intense blackness for background. Through all these
the hooker drifted.

To have got free of the Caskets, to have eluded the rock, was a victory
for the shipwrecked men; but it was a victory which left them in stupor.
They had raised no cheer: at sea such an imprudence is not repeated
twice. To throw down a challenge where they could not cast the lead,
would have been too serious a jest.

The repulse of the rock was an impossibility achieved. They were
petrified by it. By degrees, however, they began to hope again. Such are
the insubmergable mirages of the soul! There is no distress so complete
but that even in the most critical moments the inexplicable sunrise of
hope is seen in its depths. These poor wretches were ready to
acknowledge to themselves that they were saved. It was on their lips.

But suddenly something terrible appeared to them in the darkness.

On the port bow arose, standing stark, cut out on the background of
mist, a tall, opaque mass, vertical, right-angled, a tower of the abyss.
They watched it open-mouthed.

The storm was driving them towards it.

They knew not what it was. It was the Ortach rock.

CHAPTER XIV.

ORTACH.

The reef reappeared. After the Caskets comes Ortach. The storm is no
artist; brutal and all-powerful, it never varies its appliances. The
darkness is inexhaustible. Its snares and perfidies never come to an
end. As for man, he soon comes to the bottom of his resources. Man
expends his strength, the abyss never.

The shipwrecked men turned towards the chief, their hope. He could only
shrug his shoulders. Dismal contempt of helplessness.

A pavement in the midst of the ocean--such is the Ortach rock. The
Ortach, all of a piece, rises up in a straight line to eighty feet above
the angry beating of the waves. Waves and ships break against it. An
immovable cube, it plunges its rectilinear planes apeak into the
numberless serpentine curves of the sea.

At night it stands an enormous block resting on the folds of a huge
black sheet. In time of storm it awaits the stroke of the axe, which is
the thunder-clap.

But there is never a thunder-clap during the snowstorm. True, the ship
has the bandage round her eyes; darkness is knotted about her; she is
like o