The wind was whooping louder, whirling in waves of swiftness and sound now close to the ground, now high up aloft--a regular typhoon of a storm--and it was dark as pitch, too, for even the ghastly storm-light had disappeared, swallowed by the tempest. Twice Marguerite attempted to peer around the angle of the buttress, her hand shielding her eyes, and twice she was flung back; but something impelled her forward again, some premonition she could not understand; and all at once in the chaos beyond, as, clutching the rough granite, she was bending half across its sharp edge, she saw a tear in the blackness, a stripe of pulsating red--to the east of north--a flash of blinding green, and then a tossing ball of whiteness that might be a masthead light. A wreck? Yes, a wreck, and what could live in such a sea? If there was a sinking boat out there in the darkness, with men clinging desperately to the rigging, they had best not pray for human help--that she knew--and she sent a glance heavenward where no heaven was to be seen. A dreadful fear for her paladin of a father, for Jean de Salvières, for the sailor-abbé whom she revered and loved with all her heart, shot through her to add to her wretchedness. She was aware that, peril or no peril, they would not hesitate a second to do much more than their duty: and at last, detaching herself from the protection of the huge wall, she battled on, half creeping, leaning against the gusts, fighting every inch of the way to the cliff edge. Down the sheer face of the rock to the narrow beach of pebbles below, where in half an hour the breakers would be thundering, ran an iron cable--a short cut on ordinary occasions for sailors and coastguards; but just now a mere vibrating thread stretched downward to the Pit. She had stumbled many times and fallen twice, for the path was slippery as ice, and as her hand came in contact with the stanchion she paused to listen; Garrassime at her shoulder, braced and rigid like a tree, holding her with both arms for fear she would be carried over the ghastly brink. Another rocket, then another, and another. A little sob choked Marguerite, straining her eyes in the slowly, slowly dragging dawn that now was beginning to make the gloom more visible. She was at home in storms--a child of the tempest, Régis often said--and for herself she was not caring; but when gradually she began to discern away down there on the foam-flecked shingle two darker masses, evidently the life-boats and a throng of men fighting forward to the launching, all possible difficulty was wiped out of her mind, and, tearing herself free from Garrassime, she started forward.