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.
Suddenly he felt himself seized by the arm. A strange, indescribable horror thrilled through him.
Some living thing--thin, rough, flat, cold, slimy--had twisted itself round his naked arm. It crept upward towards his chest. Its pressure was like a tightening cord, its steady persistence like that of a screw. In less than a moment some mysterious spiral form had passed round his wrist and elbow, and had reached his shoulder. A sharp point penetrated beneath the arm-pit.
Gilliatt recoiled; but he had scarcely power to move. He was, as it were, nailed to the place. With his left hand, which was disengaged, he seized his knife, and made a desperate effort to withdraw his arm. He only succeeded in disturbing his persecutor, which wound itself still tighter. It was supple as leather, strong as steel, cold as night.
A second form--sharp, elongated, and narrow--issued out of the crevice, like a tongue out of monstrous jaws. It seemed to lick his naked body; then, suddenly stretching out, it became longer and thinner, as it crept over his skin, and wound itself round him. A terrible sense of anguish, comparable to nothing he had ever known, compelled all his muscles to contract. He felt upon his skin a number of flat, rounded points. It seemed as if innumerable suckers had fastened to his flesh, and were about to drink his blood.