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How to double that cape? There were no means of doing it.
Just as they had seen, first the Caskets, then Ortach, rise before them,
they now saw the point of Aurigny, all of steep rock. It was like a
number of giants, rising up one after another--a series of frightful
duels.
Charybdis and Scylla are but two; the Caskets, Ortach, and Aurigny are
three.
The phenomenon of the horizon being invaded by the rocks was thus
repeated with the grand monotony of the abyss. The battles of the ocean
have the same sublime tautology as the combats of Homer.
Each wave, as they neared it, added twenty cubits to the cape, awfully
magnified by the mist; the fast decreasing distance seemed more
inevitable--they were touching the skirts of the race! The first fold
which seized them would drag them in--another wave surmounted, and all
would be over.
Suddenly the hooker was driven back, as by the blow of a Titan's fist.
The wave reared up under the vessel and fell back, throwing the waif
back in its mane of foam. The Matutina, thus impelled, drifted away
from Aurigny.
She was again on the open sea.
187
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