le apparatus swung violently. He had only
just time sufficient to seize the regulating gear.

The severed chain beat against the rock; the eight cables strained; the
huge mass, sawed and cut through, detached itself from the wreck; the
belly of the hull opened, and the iron flooring of the engine-room was
visible below the keel.

If he had not seized the regulating tackle at that instant it would have
fallen. But his powerful hand was there, and it descended steadily.

When the brother of Jean Bart, Peter Bart, that powerful and sagacious
toper, that poor Dunkirk fisherman, who used to talk familiarly with the
Grand Admiral of France, went to the rescue of the galley _Langeron_, in
distress in the Bay of Ambleteuse, endeavouring to save the heavy
floating mass in the midst of the breakers of that furious bay, he
rolled up the mainsail, tied it with sea-reeds, and trusted to the ties
to break away of themselves, and give the sail to the wind at the right
moment. Just so Gilliatt trusted to the breaking of the chain; and the
same eccentric feat of daring was crowned with the same success.

The tackle, taken in hand by Gilliatt, held out and worked well. Its
function, as will be remembered, was to moderate the powers of the
apparatus, thus reduced from many to one, by bringing them into united
action. The gear had some similarity to a bridle of a bowline, except
that instead of trimming a sail it served to balance a complicated
mechanism.

Erect, and with his hand upon the capstan, Gilliatt, so to speak, was
enabled to feel the pulse of the apparatus.

It was here that his inventive genius manifested itself.

A remarkable coincidence of forces was the result.

While the machinery of the Durande, detached in a mass, was lowering to
the sloop, the sloop rose slowly to receive it. The wreck and the
salvage vessel assisting each other in opposite ways, saved half the
labour of the operation.

The tide swelling quietly between the two Douvres raised the sloop and
brought it nearer to the Durande. The sea was more than conquered; it
was tamed and broken in. It became, in fact, part and parcel of the
organisation of power.

The rising waters lifted the vessel without any sort of shock, gently,
and almost with precaution, as one would handle porcelain.

Gilliatt combined and proportioned the two labours, that of the water
and that of the apparatus; and standing steadfast at the capstan, like
some terrible statue obeye