"Oh! that deluge from the heavens!" cried the king. "What we had suffered before seemed but little in comparison. It came upon us after night; and the absolute darkness, the awful roaring, the terrific force of the falling water, the sense of suffocation, the rapid filling of the barge until the water was about our necks--these things drove us wild with despair. "I tried to sustain my poor queen in my arms, but she struggled to seize the children and hold them above the water, and in her efforts she escaped from my hands, and henceforth I could find her no more. I stumbled about, but it was impossible to see; it was impossible to hear. At last I fell unconscious face downward, as it afterward appeared, upon a kind of bench at the rear end of the barge, which was covered with a narrow metallic roofing, and raised above the level of the bulwarks. It was there that I had tried to shelter the queen and the children. "In some way I must have become lodged there, under the awning, in such a position that the pitching of the barge failed to throw me off. I never regained consciousness until I heard a voice shouting in my ear, and felt some one pulling me, and when I had recovered my senses, I found myself in the submersible." "And all your companions were gone?" asked Cosmo, in a voice shaking with pity. "Yes, oh, Lord! All! They had been swept overboard by the waves--and would that I had gone with them!" The poor king broke down again and sobbed. After a long pause Cosmo asked gently: "Did the Frenchman tell you how he came upon the barge?" "He said that in rising to the surface to find out the state of things there the submersible came up directly under the barge, canting it in such a way that I was rolled out and he caught me as I was swept close to the opening." "But how was it that the downpour, entering the submersible, when the cover was removed, did not fill it with water?" "He had the cover so arranged that it served as an almost complete protection from the rain. Some water did enter, but not much." "A wonderful man, that Frenchman," said Cosmo. "He would be an acquisition for me. What did he say his name was? Oh, yes, De Beauxchamps--I'll make a note of that. I shouldn't wonder if we heard of him again." Cosmo Versál was destined to encounter Yves de Beauxchamps and his wonderful submersible _Jules Verne_ sooner, and under more dramatic circumstances than he probably anticipated. CHAPTER XVIII NAVIGATING OVER DROWNED EUROPE After the English king had so strangely become a member of its company the Ark resumed its course in the direction of what had once been Europe. The spot where the meeting with the _Jules Verne_ had occurred was west of Cape Finisterre and, according to the calculations of Captain Arms, in longitude fifteen degrees four minutes west; latitude forty-four degrees nine minutes north.