f gold to be made. He would
see.

It was of little consequence. He had plenty of time to think of it. The
hardest part of the enterprise was accomplished. Stripping Rantaine, and
disappearing with the wreck of the Durande, were the grand achievements.
All the rest was for him simple. No obstacle henceforth was likely to
stop him. He had nothing more to fear. He could reach the shore with
certainty by swimming. He would land at Pleinmont in the darkness;
ascend the cliffs; go straight to the old haunted house; enter it easily
by the help of the knotted cord, concealed beforehand in a crevice of
the rocks; would find in the house his travelling-bag containing
provisions and dry clothing. There he could await his opportunity. He
had information. A week would not pass without the Spanish smugglers,
Blasquito probably, touching at Pleinmont. For a few guineas he would
obtain a passage, not to Torbay--as he had said to Blasco, to confound
conjecture, and put him off the scent--but to Bilbao or Passages.
Thence he could get to Vera Cruz or New Orleans. But the moment had come
for taking to the water. The long boat was far enough by this time. An
hour's swimming was nothing for Clubin. The distance of a mile only
separated him from the land, as he was on the Hanways.

At this point in Clubin's meditations, a clear opening appeared in the
fog bank, the formidable Douvres rocks stood before him.

VII

AN UNEXPECTED DENOUEMENT

Clubin, haggard, stared straight ahead.

It was indeed those terrible and solitary rocks.

It was impossible to mistake their misshapen outlines. The two twin
Douvres reared their forms aloft, hideously revealing the passage
between them, like a snare, a cut-throat in ambush in the ocean.

They were quite close to him. The fog, like an artful accomplice, had
hidden them until now.

Clubin had mistaken his course in the dense mist. Notwithstanding all
his pains, he had experienced the fate of two other great navigators,
Gonzalez who discovered Cape Blanco, and Fernandez, who discovered Cape
Verd. The fog had bewildered him. It had seemed to him, in the
confidence of his seamanship, to favour admirably the execution of his
project; but it had its perils. In veering to westward he had lost his
reckoning. The Guernsey man, who fancied that he recognised the Hanways,
had decided his fate, and determined him to give the final turn to the
tiller. Clubin had never doubted that he had steered the