Under an overturned sofa, pinned down but unhurt, white with dust and broken plaster and almost unrecognizable, they found our landlord. Gaston lay a few feet away, the breath knocked out of him, an ugly wound in his head. Lemois had answered their call, but Gaston had given no sign. Herbert braced himself and in the dim light looked about him. The saving of lives was now a question of judgment, requiring that same instantaneous making up of his mind always necessary when his own life had depended upon the exact placing of a rifle-ball in the skull of a charging elephant. There was not a second to lose. Another slash of the sea and the whole mass might go headlong down the slope, and yet to lift the wrong timber in an effort to free Lemois might topple the entire heap, as picking out the wrong match-stick topples a pile of jackstraws. He ran his eye over the shattered room; ordered the two fishermen to leave the wrecked building; selected, after a moment's pause, a heavy joist lying across the sofa; stood by while Louis put his shoulder under its edge, his enormous strength bearing the full brunt of the weight; waited until it swayed loose, and then, grabbing Lemois firmly by the coat-collar, dragged him clear and set him on his feet. Gaston came next, limp and apparently dead--the blood trickling from his head and spattering his rescuers. The crowd shouted in unison as they caught sight of Lemois' gray head, all the whiter from the grime of powdered plaster. Then came another and louder shout, followed by another piercing shriek from Gaston's mother as her boy's sagging, insensible body was brought clear of the wreck. None of his bones were broken, none that Lemois could find; something had struck the boy--some falling weight--perhaps a bust from one of the bookcases over his head. That was the last the lad had known until he found his mother kneeling beside him in the rain and mud, where the cold wind and rain revived him. But our work was not yet over. The miscellaneous assortment of precious things housed in the garage must be rearranged before nightfall and protected against breakage and leakage. Watchmen must be selected and made comfortable in the garage, a telegram despatched to madame at her apartment in Paris, with details of the catastrophe and salvage, and another to her estate at Rouen, and, more important still, Gaston must be carried home, put to bed, and a doctor sent for. This done, Herbert and the rest of us could go back to the inn in Le Blanc's motor. [Illustration: As her boy's sagging, insensible body was brought clear of the wreck]