silent. The wall of cloud was now a vast
cavern, with roofs and arches. Outlines of forms were traceable among
them; monstrous heads were vaguely shadowed forth; rocks seemed to
stretch out; elephants bearing turrets, seen for a moment, vanished. A
column of vapour, straight, round, and dark, and surmounted by a white
mist, simulated the form of a colossal steam-vessel engulfed, hissing,
and smoking beneath the waves. Sheets of cloud undulated like folds of
giant flags. In the centre, under a thick purple pall, a nucleus of
dense fog sunk motionless, inert, impenetrable by the electric fires; a
sort of hideous foetus in the bosom of the tempest.

Suddenly Gilliatt felt a breath moving his hair. Two or three large
spots of rain fell heavily around him on the rock. Then there was a
second thunder-clap. The wind was rising.

The terror of darkness was at its highest point. The first peal of
thunder had shaken the sea; the second rent the wall of cloud from top
to base; breach was visible; the pent-up deluge rushed towards it; the
rent became like a gulf filled with rain. The outpouring of the tempest
had begun.

The moment was terrible.

Rain, wind, lightnings, thunder, waves swirling upwards to the clouds,
foam, hoarse noises, whistlings, mingled together like monsters suddenly
unloosened.

For a solitary man, imprisoned with an overloaded vessel, between two
dangerous rocks in mid-ocean, no crisis could have been more menacing.
The danger of the tide, over which he had triumphed, was nothing
compared with the danger of the tempest.

Surrounded on all sides by dangers, Gilliatt, at the last moment, and
before the crowning peril, had developed an ingenious strategy. He had
secured his basis of operations in the enemies' territory; had pressed
the rock into his service. The Douvres, originally his enemy, had become
his second in that immense duel. Out of that sepulchre he had
constructed a fortress. He was built up among those formidable sea
ruins. He was blockaded, but well defended. He had, so to speak, set his
back against the wall, and stood face to face with the hurricane. He had
barricaded the narrow strait, that highway of the waves. This, indeed,
was the only possible course. It seemed as if the ocean, like other
despots, might be brought to reason by the aid of barricades. The sloop
might be considered secure on three sides. Closely wedged between the
two interior walls of the rock, made fast by three anchor