opposing lines has resulted in the construction of an
edifice, filled with traces of the efforts of those old antagonists, the
ocean and the storm.

This architecture has its terrible masterpieces, of which the Douvres
rock was one.

The sea had fashioned and perfected it with a sinister solicitude. The
snarling waters licked it into shape. It was hideous, treacherous, dark,
full of hollows.

It had a complete system of submarine caverns ramifying and losing
themselves in unfathomed depths. Some of the orifices of this labyrinth
of passages were left exposed by the low tides. A man might enter there,
but at his risk and peril.

Gilliatt determined to explore all these grottoes, for the purpose of
his salvage labour. There was not one which was not repulsive.
Everywhere about the caverns that strange aspect of an abattoir, those
singular traces of slaughter, appeared again in all the exaggeration of
the ocean. No one who has not seen in excavations of this kind, upon the
walls of everlasting granite, these hideous natural frescoes, can form a
notion of their singularity.

These pitiless caverns, too, were false and sly. Woe betide him who
would loiter there. The rising tide filled them to their roofs.

Rock limpets and edible mosses abounded among them.

They were obstructed by quantities of shingle, heaped together in their
recesses. Some of their huge smooth stones weighed more than a ton. They
were of every proportion, and of every hue; but the greater part were
blood coloured. Some, covered with a hairy and glutinous seaweed, seemed
like large green moles boring a way into the rock.

Several of the caverns terminated abruptly in the form of a demi-cupola.
Others, main arteries of a mysterious circulation, lengthened out in the
rock in dark and tortuous fissures. They were the alleys of the
submarine city; but they gradually contracted from their entrances, and
at length left no way for a man to pass. Peering in by the help of a
lighted torch, he could see nothing but dark hollows dripping with
moisture.

One day, Gilliatt, exploring, ventured into one of these fissures. The
state of the tide favoured the attempt. It was a beautiful day of calm
and sunshine. There was no fear of any accident from the sea to increase
the danger.

Two necessities, as we have said, compelled him to undertake these
explorations. He had to gather fragments of wreck and other things to
aid him in his labour, and to search for