smal irony was then the end of all. Upon this rock, whence he had
thought to arise triumphant, the spectre of Clubin had only arisen to
mock him with a hideous smile.

The grin of the spectre was well founded. Gilliatt saw himself ruined;
saw himself no less than Clubin in the grasp of death.

Winter, famine, fatigue, the dismemberment of the wreck, the removal of
the machinery, the equinoctial gale, the thunder, the monster, were all
as nothing compared with this small fracture in a vessel's planks.
Against the cold one could procure--and he had procured--fire; against
hunger, the shell-fish of the rocks; against thirst, the rain; against
the difficulties of his great task, industry and energy; against the sea
and the storm, the breakwater; against the devil-fish, the knife; but
against the terrible leak he had no weapon.

The hurricane had bequeathed him this sinister farewell. The last
struggle, the traitorous thrust, the treacherous side blow of the
vanquished foe. In its flight the tempest had turned and shot this arrow
in the rear. It was the final and deadly stab of his antagonist.

It was possible to combat with the tempest, but how could he struggle
with that insidious enemy who now attacked him.

If the stoppage gave way, if the leak re-opened, nothing could prevent
the sloop foundering. It would be the bursting of the ligature of the
artery; and once under the water with its heavy burden, no power could
raise it. The noble struggle, with two months' Titanic labour, ended
then in annihilation. To recommence would be impossible. He had neither
forge nor materials. At daylight, in all probability, he was about to
see all his work sink slowly and irrecoverably into the gulf. Terrible,
to feel that sombre power beneath. The sea snatched his prize from his
hands.

With his bark engulfed, no fate awaited him but to perish of hunger and
cold, like the poor shipwrecked sailor on "The Man Rock."

During two long months the intelligences which hover invisibly over the
world had been the spectators of these things; on one hand the wide
expanse, the waves, the winds, the lightnings, the meteors; on the other
a man. On one hand the sea, on the other a human mind; on the one hand
the infinite, on the other an atom.

The battle had been fierce, and behold the abortive issue of these
prodigies of valour.

Thus did this heroism without parallel end in powerlessness; thus ended
in despair that formidable struggle; tha