n tenfold greater. He had become heated with
his own intrepidity. The strokes of his hatchet were like blows of
defiance. He seemed to have gained in directness what the tempest had
lost. A pathetic struggle! On the one hand, an indefatigable will; on
the other, inexhaustible power. It was a contest with the elements for
the prize at his feet. The clouds took the shape of Gorgon masks in the
immensity of the heavens; every possible form of terror appeared; the
rain came from the sea, the surf from the cloud; phantoms of the wind
bent down; meteoric faces revealed themselves and were again eclipsed,
leaving the darkness more monstrous: then there was nothing seen but the
torrents coming from all sides--a boiling sea; cumuli heavy with hail,
ashen-hued, ragged-edged, appeared seized with a sort of whirling
frenzy; strange rattlings filled the air; the inverse currents of
electricity observed by Volta darted their sudden flashes from cloud to
cloud. The prolongation of the lightnings was terrible; the flashes
passed near to Gilliatt. The very ocean seemed astonished. He passed to
and fro upon the tottering wreck, making the deck tremble under his
steps, striking, cutting, hacking with the hatchet in his hand, pallid
in the gleam of the lightning, his long hair streaming, his feet naked,
in rags, his face covered with the foam of the sea, but grand still amid
that maelstrom of the thunderstorm.

Against these furious powers man has no weapon but his invention.
Invention was Gilliatt's triumph. His object was to allow all the
dislocated portions of the wreck to fall together. For this reason he
cut away the broken portions without entirely separating them, leaving
some parts on which they still swung. Suddenly he stopped, holding his
axe in the air. The operation was complete. The entire portion went with
a crash.

The mass rolled down between the two Douvres, just below Gilliatt, who
stood upon the wreck, leaning over and observing the fall. It fell
perpendicularly into the water, struck the rocks, and stopped in the
defile before touching the bottom. Enough remained out of the water to
rise more than twelve feet above the waves. The vertical mass of
planking formed a wall between the two Douvres; like the rock overturned
crosswise higher up the defile, it allowed only a slight stream of foam
to pass through at its two extremities, and thus was a fifth barricade
improvised by Gilliatt against the tempest in that passage of