Chapter III

... The _La Guayra_ was a point on the sky-verge;--the sun's face had vanished. The silence and the darkness were deepening together.

--"_Si lanmè ka vini plis fò, ça nou ké fai?_" (If the sea roughens, what are we to do?) asked Maximilien.

--"Maybe we will meet a steamer," answered Stéphane: "the _Orinoco_ was due to-day."

--"And if she pass in the night?"

--"They can see us."...

--"No, they will not be able to see us at all. There is no moon."

--"They have lights ahead."

--"I tell thee, they will not see us at all,--_pièss! pièss!_"

--"Then they will hear us cry out."

--"No,--we cannot cry so loud. One can hear nothing but a steam-whistle or a cannon, with the noise of the wind and the water and the machine.... Even on the Fort-de-France packet one cannot hear for the machine. And the machine of the _Orinoco_ is more big than the church of the 'Centre.'"

--"Then we must try to get to La Dominique."

... They could now feel the sweep of the mighty current;--it even seemed to them that they could hear it,--a deep low whispering. At long intervals they saw lights,--the lights of houses in Pointe-Prince, in Fond-Canonville,--in Au Prêcheur. Under them the depth was unfathomed:--hydrographic charts mark it _sans-fond._ And they passed the great cliffs of Aux Abymes, under which lies the Village of the Abysms.

The red glare in the west disappeared suddenly as if blown out;--the rim of the sea vanished into the void of the gloom;--the night narrowed about them, thickening like a black fog. And the invisible, irresistible power of the sea was now bearing them away from the tall coast,--over profundities unknown,--over the _sans-fond_,--out "to the horizon."