rne down by the wind and by its own weight,
adhered only at one or two points. The entire wreck resembled a
folding-screen, one leaf of which, half-hanging, beat against the other.
Five or six pieces of the planking only, bent and started, but not
broken, still held. Their fractures creaked and enlarged at every gust,
and the axe, so to speak, had but to help the labour of the wind. This
more than half-severed condition, while it increased the facility of the
work, also rendered it dangerous. The whole might give way beneath him
at any moment.

The tempest had reached its highest point. The convulsion of the sea
reached the heavens. Hitherto the storm had been supreme, it had seemed
to work its own imperious will, to give the impulse, to drive the waves
to frenzy, while still preserving a sort of sinister lucidity. Below was
fury--above, anger. The heavens are the breath, the ocean only foam,
hence the authority of the wind. But the intoxication of its own horrors
had confused it. It had become a mere whirlwind; it was a blindness
leading to night. There are times when tempests become frenzied, when
the heavens are attacked with a sort of delirium; when the firmament
raves and hurls its lightnings blindly. No terror is greater than this.
It is a hideous moment. The trembling of the rock was at its height.
Every storm has a mysterious course, but now it loses its appointed
path. It is the most dangerous point of the tempest. "At that moment,"
says Thomas Fuller, "the wind is a furious maniac." It is at that
instant that that continuous discharge of electricity takes place which
Piddington calls "the cascade of lightnings." It is at that instant that
in the blackest spot of the clouds, none know why, unless it be to spy
the universal terror, a circle of blue light appears, which the Spanish
sailors of ancient times called the eye of the tempest, _el ojo de la
tempestad_. That terrible eye looked down upon Gilliatt.

Gilliatt on his part was surveying the heavens. He raised his head now.
After every stroke of his hatchet he stood erect and gazed upwards,
almost haughtily. He was, or seemed to be, too near destruction not to
feel self-sustained. Would he despair? No! In the presence of the
wildest fury of the ocean he was watchful as well as bold. He planted
his feet only where the wreck was firm. He ventured his life, and yet
was careful; for his determined spirit, too, had reached its highest
point. His strength had grow