Suddenly a crash was heard, resounding and prolonging itself through the defile at some distance behind him: a crash more terrible than any he had yet heard.
It came from the direction of the sloop.
Something disastrous was happening there.
Gilliatt hastened towards it.
From the eastern gullet where he was, he could not see the sloop on account of the sharp turns of the pass. At the last turn he stopped and waited for the lightning.
The first flash revealed to him the position of affairs.
The rush of the sea through the eastern entrance had been met by a blast of wind from the other end. A disaster was near at hand.
The sloop had received no visible damage; anchored as she was, the storm had little power over her, but the carcase of the Durande was distressed.
In such a tempest, the wreck presented a considerable surface. It was entirely out of the sea in the air, exposed. The breach which Gilliatt had made, and which he had passed the engine through, had rendered the hull still weaker. The keelson was snapped, the vertebral column of the skeleton was broken.
The hurricane had passed over it. Scarcely more than this was needed to complete its destruction. The planking of the deck had bent like an opened book. The dismemberment had begun. It was the noise of this dislocation which had reached Gilliatt’s ears in the midst of the tempest.