The supplication ended, she seemed about to raise her hand to give the anticipated signal when a look of amazement passed over her features; she brushed her hand over her eyes and looked again, then folded her arms and gazed steadily seawards.  What she saw might have shattered even her nerves of iron.  At the close of her prayer, which had exactly coincided with the moment when Hilda stepped from her cell, the bosom of the sea heaved and rose:  a wave, ten feet high, glided, stole as it were, so gently did it move, into the forest; but so rapidly, that in one minute every human being except herself and Jean was engulphed.  They were gone, the high-couraged and the craven, the frenzied priest and the laughing child, with their passions, their hopes, and their fears, without the faintest note of warning of coming danger!  Judith glanced at Jean, almost contemptuously; he, not having seen what had happened, was still momentarily expecting the application of the torch.  A second wave crept in, smaller than the former, but overwhelming the pyre.  The dazed warrior on the Guet reported that after this second wave had passed he saw the tall form still towering on the peak, but that when he looked again the rock, though still above water, was tenantless; a little later the granite mass, together with the tops of the tallest trees, lay under an unruffled surface.

When the pyre was submerged the litter, to which Jean was attached, floated off and formed a tolerably secure raft.  His life was safe for a time; but he would have been exposed to a still more ghastly fate from the swooping sea-birds had he not been able by a supreme effort to wrest one of his arms from its bands.  In speechless wonderment he was carried seaward by the slowly receding tide.  Suddenly his raft was hailed by a well-known voice.  Friendly hands cut the ropes that bound him, and he was lifted into a boat.  The occupant was Haco who, attracted to the spot when hurrying to the Vale, by the cries of the clustering gulls, had thus again saved his life.

The giant pulled vigorously to the point which, now known as the Hommet, terminates the northern arm of Vazon Bay; there he landed the youth, to enable him to stretch his cramped limbs, and to clothe him in such articles as he could spare from his own equipment.  A rapid explanation passed between them.  Haco told him how the force investing Lihou had, when apparently waiting for a signal to move, been overwhelmed by a wave which cut off the promontory from L’Eree, and had perished to a man.  Jean could tell of nothing but the sudden cessation of the tumult and the floating of his litter.  The minds of both were wandering, burningly anxious as they were to know what had passed at the Vale.  Scaling the Hommet, they obtained a sufficient view to satisfy them that Lancresse Common no longer formed a portion of the mainland; an hour afterwards, entering the Grand Havre, they saw an unbroken channel between that inlet and St. Sampson’s:  every trace of the invading host had disappeared.  Jean was soon in Hilda’s arms; and the two lovers, with Haco, spent the remainder of the day in pious thanksgiving to the Holy Mother by whose special interposition, testified so miraculously to the maiden, the cause of Christ had triumphed and the parted had been reunited, when the last gleam of safety seemed to have been extinguished.