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!

The Wrong Rocks

Captain Clubin, had recognised, in St Malo, a certain Rantaine, who had stolen money from the owner of the steamship Durande, Messe Lethierry. Clubin, you will remember, was the captain of the Durande.

Captain Clubin had purchased a revolver. He had followed Rantaine to a remote clifftop where he was waiting to rendezvous with a smugglers' ship that would take him to South America. Clubin had forced Rantaine to hand over a leather belt containing seventy five thousand francs, before embarking. He claimed he was going to return the money to Messe Lethierry.

As Rantaine sailed away he was heard to shout back furiously that he would make sure someone on board his ship wrote to Messe Lethierry to tell him what had happened.

This is why Captain Clubin feared the postbox of the sea. For he had no intention of giving the money back to the owner of the Durande. Instead, he planned to run the Durande aground on the return trip to Guernsey, send the passengers off in a lifeboat, and pretend that he was going down with the ship. But being a good swimmer, his real intention was to swim ashore and start a new life with the money.

Little did he know that due to a set of misunderstandings and a thick fog, he would run the ship aground upon the wrong set of rocks!......