e without
fire to cook them. If he had taken the trouble to go to his
store-cavern, he would have found it inundated with the rain. His wood
and coal were drowned, and of his store of tow, which served him for
tinder, there was not a fibre which was not saturated. No means remained
of lighting a fire.

For the rest, his blower was completely disorganised. The screen of the
hearth of his forge was broken down; the storm had sacked and devastated
his workshop. With what tools and apparatus had escaped the general
wreck, he could still have done carpentry work; but he could not have
accomplished any of the labours of the smith. Gilliatt, however, never
thought of his workshop for a moment.

Drawn in another direction by the pangs of hunger, he had pursued
without much reflection his search for food. He wandered, not in the
gorge of the rocks, but outside among the smaller breakers. It was there
that the Durande, ten weeks previously, had first struck upon the sunken
reef.

For the search that Gilliatt was prosecuting, this part was more
favourable than the interior. At low water the crabs are accustomed to
crawl out into the air. They seem to like to warm themselves in the sun,
where they swarm sometimes to the disgust of loiterers, who recognise in
these creatures, with their awkward sidelong gait, climbing clumsily
from crack to crack the lower stages of the rocks like the steps of a
staircase, a sort of sea vermin.

For two months Gilliatt had lived upon these vermin of the sea.

On this day, however, the crayfish and crabs were both wanting. The
tempest had driven them into their solitary retreats; and they had not
yet mustered courage to venture abroad. Gilliatt held his open knife in
his hand, and from time to time scraped a cockle from under the bunches
of seaweed, which he ate while still walking.

He could not have been far from the very spot where Sieur Clubin had
perished.

As Gilliatt was determining to content himself with the sea-urchins and
the _chataignes de mer_, a little clattering noise at his feet aroused
his attention. A large crab, startled by his approach, had just dropped
into a pool. The water was shallow, and he did not lose sight of it.

He chased the crab along the base of the rock; the crab moved fast.

Suddenly it was gone.

It had buried itself in some crevice under the rock.

Gilliatt clutched the projections of the rock, and stretched out to
observe where it shelved away under