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About this time, M. Méchain, who had been sent to Spain to prolong the meridional line as far as Formentera, died at Castellon de la Plana. His son, Secretary at the Observatory, immediately gave in his resignation. Poisson offered me the situation. I declined his first proposal.
There were days when the sea would lash furiously against the chain of islands and cliffs between Iviza and Formentera that form a wall of rock cut by straits and channels.
The people of Formentera, a lawless and God-forsaken crowd they were natives of a smaller island used to light bonfires to decoy the sailors, and when the ship was lost to them it was not lost to the islanders, for its spoils made many of them rich. A Febrer poor? Pèp would not accept the money Febrer offered him.
All were sick; indeed, De Péchels' malady lasted during the entire voyage. The squadron first cast anchor amongst the Formentera Islands, off the coast of Spain, where they took in water. On the next day they anchored in the Straits of Gibraltar for the same purpose. They next sailed for Cadiz, but a strong west wind having set in, the ship was forced back to the road of Gibraltar.
Lieutenant Procope, with his head all muffled up for fear of frost-bite, took an occasional peep through an aperture that had been intentionally left in the roof, and by the help of a compass, maintained a proper and straight course for Formentera.
The sea might be raging along the chain of islands and reefs lying between Iviza and Formentera; the narrow channels might be boiling caldrons, the rocks crowned with foam, and the rude men of the sea might acknowledge themselves vanquished and seek safety in the harbors, the passage might be closed against every living thing, the islands shut off from the rest of the world, but this signified nothing to the invincible mariner with the hairless head, to him who walks with fleshless legs, who rushes with gigantic strides over mountain and sea.
Formentera, uninhabited for centuries after having been a granary of the Romans, served as a treacherous anchorage for the hostile fleets. The churches were still veritable fortresses, with strong towers where the peasants took refuge on being warned by bonfires that enemies had landed.
The wind was still blowing hard from the south, and assuming that the yawl could be propelled with a velocity of about fifteen or at least twelve leagues an hour, he reckoned that it was quite possible to reach Formentera within twelve hours, that is to say, in a single day between the intervals of sunrise and sunrise.
The startled island had given forth its winged inhabitants. Other huge birds emerged and flew from the summit and disappeared like black specks toward the larger island. These were falcons which roosted in the Vedrá and lived upon the doves of Iviza and Formentera. The old sailor pointed out to Febrer certain window-like caves in the most sheer and inaccessible cliffs of the smaller island.
In the direction of Formentera he saw an immense dragon which slowly advanced across the horizon, with a long tail of clouds, to treacherously swallow the dying sun. When the red sphere, fleeing from this danger, sank into the waters, enlarged by a spasm of terror, the depressing gray of twilight aroused Febrer from his hallucination. He arose, picked up his gun, and started for the tower.
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