said, there was a heavy sea. The sea tumbling beneath a rough wind, and over the rocky bottom, was wild.
The sea never tells at once what it means to do. There is everything in this abyss, even chicanery. One might almost say that the sea had designs; it advances and retreats, it proposes and retracts, it prepares a squall and then gives up its plan, it promises destruction and does not keep its word, it threatens the North, and strikes the South. All night the corvette "Claymore" had been in the fog, and feared a storm; the sea had just broken its promise, and in a cruel fashion; it had given warning of a tempest and brought out a reef. It was still shipwreck in another form.
To destruction on the rocks was added extermination in battle. One enemy supplemented the other.
La Vieuville cried out with a bold laugh,—
"Shipwreck on one hand, battle on the other. Both sides have thrown double fives."
CHAPTER VIII.
9—380.
The corvette was now nothing but a wreck.
In the pale, scattered light, in the blackness of the clouds, in the confused shifting of the horizon, in the mysterious wrinkling of the waves, there was a sepulchral solemnity. Except the hostile whistling of the wind, everything was silent. The catastrophe was rising majestically from the depths. It seemed more like an apparition than an attack. Nothing moved on the rocks, nothing stirred on the ships. It was a strange, colossal silence. Were they dealing with reality? It was like a dream passing over the sea. In legends there are such visions: the corvette was, in a certain sense, between a demon reef and a phantom fleet.
The Count de Boisberthelot gave orders in an undertone to La Vieuville, who went down to the gun-deck; then the captain seized his spyglass and came and stood at the stern near the pilot.
