movement on the sea. The motionless is the inexorable. Absorption was

sucking them down silently. Through the depths of the dumb

waters--without anger, without passion, not willing, not knowing, not

caring--the fatal centre of the globe was attracting them downwards.

Horror in repose amalgamating them with itself. It was no longer the

wide open mouth of the sea, the double jaw of the wind and the wave,

vicious in its threat, the grin of the waterspout, the foaming appetite

of the breakers--it was as if the wretched beings had under them the

black yawn of the infinite.

They felt themselves sinking into Death's peaceful depths. The height

between the vessel and the water was lessening--that was all. They could

calculate her disappearance to the moment. It was the exact reverse of

submersion by the rising tide. The water was not rising towards them;

they were sinking towards it. They were digging their own grave. Their

own weight was their sexton.

They were being executed, not by the law of man, but by the law of

things.

The snow was falling, and as the wreck was now motionless, this white

lint made a cloth over the deck and covered the vessel as with a

winding-sheet.

The hold was becoming fuller and deeper--no means of getting at the

leak. They struck a light and fixed three or four torches in holes as

best they could. Galdeazun brought some old leathern buckets, and they

199

The Man Who Laughs