dson Lowe. To raise a hubbub over
carrying off the Duchess would cover them with confusion. They might as
well set siege to the town and convent, like pirates, and leave not a
single soul to tell of their victory. So for them their expedition wore
but two aspects. There should be a conflagration and a feat of arms
that should dismay all Europe, while the motives of the crime remained
unknown; or, on the other hand, a mysterious, aerial descent which
should persuade the nuns that the Devil himself had paid them a visit.
They had decided upon the latter course in the secret council held
before they left Paris, and subsequently everything had been done to
insure the success of an expedition which promised some real excitement
to jaded spirits weary of Paris and its pleasures.

An extremely light pirogue, made at Marseilles on a Malayan model,
enabled them to cross the reef, until the rocks rose from out of the
water. Then two cables of iron wire were fastened several feet apart
between one rock and another. These wire ropes slanted upwards and
downwards in opposite directions, so that baskets of iron wire could
travel to and fro along them; and in this manner the rocks were covered
with a system of baskets and wire-cables, not unlike the filaments
which a certain species of spider weaves about a tree. The Chinese, an
essentially imitative people, were the first to take a lesson from the
work of instinct. Fragile as these bridges were, they were always ready
for use; high waves and the caprices of the sea could not throw them
out of working order; the ropes hung just sufficiently slack, so as to
present to the breakers that particular curve discovered by Cachin, the
immortal creator of the harbour at Cherbourg. Against this cunningly
devised line the angry surge is powerless; the law of that curve was
a secret wrested from Nature by that faculty of observation in which
nearly all human genius consists.

M. de Montriveau's companions were alone on board the vessel, and out of
sight of every human eye. No one from the deck of a passing vessel could
have discovered either the brig hidden among the reefs, or the men at
work among the rocks; they lay below the ordinary range of the most
powerful telescope. Eleven days were spent in preparation, before the
Thirteen, with all their infernal power, could reach the foot of the
cliffs. The body of the rock rose up straight from the sea to a height
of thirty fathoms. Any attempt to c