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
tried to bale the hold out, standing in a row to pass them from hand to
hand; but the buckets were past use, the leather of some was unstitched,
there were holes in the bottoms of the others, and the buckets emptied
themselves on the way. The difference in quantity between the water