This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892 Excerpt: ...point. This time Gilliatt stopped his work and looked around him. He stood erect, on a point of overhanging rock behind the second barrier, now almost finished. If the first hurdle of the breakwater should be carried away it would break down the second, which was not yet consolidated, and in this demolition would crush ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892 Excerpt: ...point. This time Gilliatt stopped his work and looked around him. He stood erect, on a point of overhanging rock behind the second barrier, now almost finished. If the first hurdle of the breakwater should be carried away it would break down the second, which was not yet consolidated, and in this demolition would crush Gilliatt. At the place which he had just chosen, he would, in that case, -have been killed before seeing the sloop, the engine, and all his work swallowed up in this engulfment. Such was the contingency. Gilliatt accepted it, and, terrible to contemplate, wished that it might happen. In this wreck of all his hope he desired to die first--to die first, because the engine seemed to him like a living being. With his left hand he moved aside his hair, which hung over his eyes, matted by the rain, seized his good hammer with a firm grasp, leaned backward in a menacing attitude, and waited. He was not kept waiting long. A clap of thunder gave the signal, the pale opening in the zenith closed, a torrent of rain fell, everything became dark again, lightning was the only light. The dark attack recommenced. A powerful wave, visible amid flash after flash of lightning, rose on the east beyond rHomme rock. It resembled a large roll of glass, and was of a greenish hue and frameless, and stretched across the whole sea. It advanced toward the breakwaters. As it approached it increased in size; it was an indescribable, large cylinder of darkness rolling on the ocean. Thunder rumbled indistinctly. This wave, on reaching 1'Homme rock, broke in two and passed on. The two ends, rejoined, formed but one mountain of water, which, instead of being parallel to the breakwaters, rose perpendicularly. The wave was shaped like a beam. This battering-ram flung itself agai...
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