Horreur!!

The passengers had cast off in the longboat, leaving Clubin alone on the Durande, with seventy five thousand francs in a small iron box attached to the leather belt around his waist. This was his moment of greatest triumph. All he had to do now was swim to the shore which was only a mile away.

Just then the fog lifted a little, and he saw with horror, not the Hanois rocks, as he expected, but the jagged pillars of the twin Douvres! He had steered too far to the west after a passenger from Guernsey had claimed he'd sighted the Hanois through the fog! The dreaded Douvres were the most isolated and terrible of rocks, with a narrow and sinister passageway between their black and dangerous sides. They were five leagues from the shore, an impossible distance for a man to swim.

All his plans had come to nought! He trembled. There was no way out!

But then, he saw a sail on the horizon! He could be rescued after all! But the Durande had foundered on the low rocks of the reef and would not be visible to the other boat. The only thing to do was swim over to the Homme, the highest rocky platform of the reef, climb it, and signal to the other boat from there.

He took off his clothes except for the leather belt with the iron box containing the seventy five thousand francs, and dived head first into the water from the high stern of the Durande. He touched bottom, skirted the underwater rocks, and was just about to kick off for the surface when......

SOMETHING GRABBED HOLD OF HIS FOOT!