d crushes us. We imagine that in it we catch a glimpse of
the sneer of the opponent who is beyond our reach. That which holds you
fast is that which releases the birds and sets the fishes free. It
appears nothing, and is everything. We are dependent on the air which is
ruffled by our mouths; we are dependent on the water which we catch in
the hollow of our hands. Draw a glassful from the storm, and it is but a
cup of bitterness--a mouthful is nausea, a waveful is extermination. The
grain of sand in the desert, the foam-flake on the sea, are fearful
symptoms. Omnipotence takes no care to hide its atom, it changes
weakness into strength, fills naught with all; and it is with the
infinitely little that the infinitely great crushes you. It is with its
drops the ocean dissolves you. You feel you are a plaything.

A plaything--ghastly epithet!

The _Matutina_ was a little above Aurigny, which was not an unfavourable
position; but she was drifting towards its northern point, which was
fatal. As a bent bow discharges its arrow, the nor'-wester was shooting
the vessel towards the northern cape. Off that point, a little beyond
the harbour of Corbelets, is that which the seamen of the Norman
archipelago call a "_singe_."

The "_singe_," or race, is a furious kind of current. A wreath of
funnels in the shallows produces in the waves a wreath of whirlpools.
You escape one to fall into another. A ship caught hold of by the race,
winds round and round until some sharp rock cleaves her hull; then the
shattered vessel stops, her stern rises from the waves, the stem
completes the revolution in the abyss, the stern sinks in, and all is
sucked down. A circle of foam broadens and floats, and nothing more is
seen on the surface of the waves but a few bubbles here and there rising
from the smothered breathings below.

The three most dangerous races in the whole Channel are one close to the
well-known Girdler Sands, one at Jersey between the Pignonnet and the
Point of Noirmont, and the race of Aurigny.

Had a local pilot been on board the _Matutina_, he could have warned
them of their fresh peril. In place of a pilot, they had their instinct.
In situations of extreme danger men are endowed with second sight. High
contortions of foam were flying along the coast in the frenzied raid of
the wind. It was the spitting of the race. Many a bark has been swamped
in that snare. Without knowing what awaited them, they approached the
spot with horro