THE mysterious forces had chosen their time well.
Chance, if chance exists, is sometimes far-seeing.
While the sloop had been anchored in the little creek of "The Man" rock, and as long as the machinery had been prisoned in the wreck, Gilliatt's position had been impregnable. The sloop was in safety, the machinery sheltered. The Douvres, which held the hull of the Durande fast, condemned it to slow destruction, but protected it against unexpected accidents. In any event, one resource had remained to him. If the engine had been destroyed, Gilliatt would have been uninjured. He had still the sloop by which to escape.
But to wait till the sloop was removed from the anchorage where she was inaccessible; to allow it to be fixed in the defile of the Douvres; to watch until the sloop too was, as it were, entangled in the rocks; to permit him to complete the salvage, the moving, and the final embarkation of the machinery; to do no damage to that wonderful construction by which one man was enabled to put the whole aboard his bark; to acquiesce, in fact, in the success of his exploits so far-this was but a trap which the elements had laid for him. Now for the first time he began to perceive in all its sinister characteristics the trick which the sea had been meditating so long.
The machinery, the sloop, and their master were all now within the gorge of the rocks. They formed but a single point. One blow, and the sloop might be dashed to pieces on the rock, the machinery destroyed, and Gilliatt drowned.
The situation could not have been more critical.
The sphinx, which men have imagined concealing herself in the cloud, seemed to mock him with a dilemma.
