A staysail, fixed by huge stones, served, though torn and damaged, to protect what the rain might have injured.
Shattered as were the bows of the wreck, he had succeeded in saving the two cat-heads with their three pulley-blocks.
He had found the bowsprit too, and had had much trouble in unrolling its gammoning; it was very hard and tight, having been, according to custom, made by the help of the windlass, and in dry weather. Gilliatt, however, persevered until he had detached it, this thick rope promising to be very useful to him.
He had been equally successful in discovering the little anchor which had become fast in the hollow of a reef, where the receding tide had left it uncovered.
In what had been Tangrouille’s cabin he had found a piece of chalk, which he preserved carefully. He reflected that he might have some marks to make.
A fire-bucket and several pails in pretty good condition completed this stock of working materials.
All that remained of the store of coal of the Durande he carried into the warehouse.
In a week this salvage of debris was finished; the rock was swept clean, and the Durande was lightened. Nothing remained now to burden the hull except the machinery.
The portion of the fore-side bulwarks which hung to it did not distress the hull. The mass hung without dragging, being partly sustained by a ledge of rock. It was, however, large and broad, and heavy to drag, and would have encumbered his warehouse too much. This bulwarking looked something like a boat-builder’s stocks. Gilliatt left it where it was.
He had been profoundly thoughtful during all this labour. He had sought in vain for the figurehead—the “doll,” as the Guernsey folks called it, of the Durande. It was one of the things which the waves had carried away forever. Gilliatt would have given his hands to find it—if he had not had such peculiar need of them at that time.
At the entrance to the storehouse and outside were two heaps of refuse—a heap of iron good for forging, and a heap of wood good for burning.
Gilliatt was always at work at early dawn. Except his time of sleep, he did not take a moment of repose.
The wild sea birds, flying hither and thither, watched him at his work.
X
The Forge
The warehouse completed, Gilliatt constructed his forge.
The other recess which he had chosen had within it a species of passage like a gallery in a mine of pretty good depth. He had had at first an idea of making this his lodging, but the draught was so continuous and so persevering in this passage that he had been compelled to give it up. This current of air, incessantly renewed, first gave him the notion of the forge. Since it could not be his chamber, he was determined that this cabin should be his smithy. To bend obstacles to our purposes is a great step towards triumph. The wind was Gilliatt’s enemy. He had set about making it his servant.
The proverb applied to certain kinds of men—“Fit for everything, good for nothing”—may also be applied to the hollows of rocks. They give no advantages gratuitously. On one side we find a hollow fashioned conveniently in the shape of a bath; but it allows the water to run away through a fissure. Here is a rocky chamber, but without a roof; here a bed of moss, but oozy with wet; here an armchair, but one of hard stone.
The forge which Gilliatt intended was roughly sketched out by nature; but nothing could be more troublesome than to reduce this rough sketch to manageable shape, to transform this cavern into a laboratory and smith’s shop. With three or four large rocks, shaped like a funnel, and ending in a narrow fissure, chance had constructed there a species of vast ill-shapen blower, of very different power to those huge old forge bellows of fourteen feet long, which poured out at every breath ninety-eight thousand inches of air. This was quite a different sort of construction. The proportions of the hurricane cannot be definitely measured.
This excess of force was an embarrassment. The incessant draught was difficult to regulate.
The cavern had two inconveniences; the wind traversed it from end to end; so did the water.
This was not the water of the sea, but a continual little trickling stream, more like a spring than a torrent.
The foam, cast incessantly by the surf upon the rocks and sometimes more than a hundred feet in the air, had filled with sea water a natural cave situated among the high rocks overlooking the excavation. The overflowings of this reservoir caused, a little behind the escarpment, a fall of water of about an inch in breadth, and descending four or five fathoms. An occasional contribution from the rains also helped to fill the reservoir. From time to time a passing cloud dropped a shower into the rocky basin, always overflowing. The water was brackish, and unfit to drink, but clear. This rill
