the transparence of that water of the approach of some mystic form.  A species of long, ragged band was moving amid the oscillation of the waves.  It did not float, but darted about at its own will.  It had an object; was advancing somewhere rapidly.  The thing had something of the form of a jester’s bauble with points, which hung flabby and undulating.  It seemed covered with a dust incapable of being washed away by the water.  It was more than horrible; it was foul.  It seemed to be seeking the darker portion of the cavern, where at last it vanished.

Gilliatt returned to his work.  He had a notion.  Since the time of the carpenter-mason of Salbris, who, in the sixteenth century, without other helper than a child, his son, with ill-fashioned tools, in the chamber of the great clock at La Charite-sur-Loire, resolved at one stroke five or six problems in statics and dynamics inextricably intervolved—­since the time of that grand and marvellous achievement of the poor workman, who found means, without breaking a single piece of wire, without throwing one of the teeth of the wheels out of gear, to lower in one piece, by a marvellous simplification, from the second story of the clock tower to the first, that massive clock, large as a room, nothing that could be compared with the project which Gilliatt was meditating had ever been attempted.

After incredible exertions, the machinery was ready for lowering into the sloop.  Gilliatt had constructed tackle, a regulating gear, and made all sure.  The long labour was finished; the first act had been the simplest of all.  He could put to sea.  To-morrow he would be in Guernsey.

But no.  He had waited for the tide to lift the sloop as near to the suspended engines as possible, and now the funnel, which he had lowered with the paddle-boxes, prevented the sloop from getting out of the little gorge.  It was necessary to wait for the tide to fall.  Gilliatt drew his sheepskin about him, pulled his cap over his eyes, and lying down beside the engine, was soon asleep.

When he woke, it was to feel the coming of a storm.  A fresh task was forced upon this famished man.  It was necessary to build a breakwater in the gorge.  He flew to this task.  Nails driven into the cracks of the rocks, beams lashed together with cordage, cat-heads from the Durande, binding strakes, pulley-sheaves, chains—­with these materials the haggard dweller of the rock built his barrier against the wrath of God.

Then the storm came.

III.—­The Devil-Fish

When the awful rage of the storm had passed, and the barrier which he had repaired in the midst of the tempest hung like a broken arm across the gorge, Gilliatt, maddened by hunger, took advantage of the receding tide to go in search of crayfish.  Half naked, and with his open knife between his teeth, he sprang from rock to rock.  In hunting a crab he found himself once more in the mysterious grotto that glittered with jewel-like flowers.  He noticed a fissure above the level of the water.  The crab was probably there.  He thrust in his hand as far as he was able, and groped about in that dusky aperture.