The Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo
When Gilliatt arrived the skipper had just been telling his story to Mess Lethierry. It was a full and detailed account. Toward morning, when the squall had blown itself out and the wind had become manageable, he had heard the bellowing of cattle in the open sea.
Surprised by this rural sound amid the waves, he had headed in that direction and had seen the Durande aground on the Douvres. The sea was now calm enough to allow him to go closer. He had hailed the wreck, but the only reply was the bellowing of the cattle drowning in the hold. The skipper was sure that there was no one left on the Durande. The wreck had held together well, and in spite of the violence of the squall Clubin could have spent the night on board. He was not a man to give up easily; and since he was not on the Durande he must have been rescued. A number of sloops and luggers from Granville and Saint-Malo, getting under way again on the night before after the fog lifted, must certainly have passed close to the Douvres, and one of them must have picked up Captain Clubin. It will be remembered that the Durande's boat had been full when it left the wreck, that one man more would have overloaded it and perhaps caused it to sink, and that this must have been Clubin's main reason for staying on the wreck; but, having thus done his duty as captain, when a rescue ship appeared he would certainly have made no difficulty about taking advantage of it. You may be a hero, but you are not a fool. For him to commit suicide would have been absurd, particularly since he had nothing to reproach himself with. The guilty man was Tangrouille, not Clubin. This all seemed conclusive. The skipper of the Shealtiel was clearly right, and everyone expected Clubin to reappear at any moment. There was talk of giving him a triumphant reception.
Two things seemed certain from the skipper's account: Clubin was saved, and the Durande was lost.
As for the Durande, it had to be accepted that the catastrophe was irremediable. The skipper of the Shealtiel had seen the final stage of the shipwreck. The jagged rock on which the Durande was impaled had held on to her throughout the night, resisting the violence of the storm as if it wanted to keep her as its prey; but in the morning, when the Shealtiel, having ascertained that there was no one on board to be saved, had begun to move away, there had come one of those sudden heavy seas that are like the last angry outbursts of the storm. The Durande had been lifted violently upward, torn off the reef, and thrown, with the speed and directness of an arrow, between the two Douvres rocks. There had been a "devil of a crash," said the skipper of the Shealtiel. The Durande, raised higher by the wave, had lodged between the two rocks as far as her midship frame. She was again held fast, but more firmly than on the underwater reef. She would remain haplessly suspended there, at the mercy of the wind and the sea.
The Durande, according to the crew of the Shealtiel, was already three parts broken up. She would certainly have sunk during the night had she not been caught up and held on the reef.
The skipper of the Shealtiel had examined the wreck through his glass and reported on its condition with seamanlike precision. The starboard quarter had been stove in, the masts snapped off, the sails blown off the bolt ropes, the shrouds torn away, the cabin skylights crushed by the falling of a yard, the uprights broken off level with the gunwale from abreast of the mainmast to the taffrail, the dome of the cuddy house beaten in, the chocks of the longboat struck away, the roundhouse dismantled, the rudder hinges broken, the trusses wrenched off, the bulwarks demolished, the bitts carried away, the cross beam destroyed, the handrail gone, the sternpost broken. All this devastation had been caused by the frenzy of the storm. Of the derrick on the foremast nothing at all was left; not a trace; it had been completely swept away, with its hoisting tackle, its blocks and falls, its snatch block and its chains. The Durande had broken her back; the sea would now begin to tear her to pieces. Within a few days there would be nothing left of her.
Remarkably, however, the engines of the Durande had remained almost unscathed--proof of the excellence of Lethierry's work. The skipper of the Shealtiel was sure that they had not suffered any serious damage. The masts had given way, but the funnel had held firm. The iron guards on the bridge had merely been twisted. The paddle boxes had been damaged; the casings had been crushed, but the paddle wheels had apparently not lost a single blade. The engines themselves were intact. The skipper of the Shealtiel was sure of it. Imbrancam, the stoker, who had mingled with the groups, was equally sure. This Negro, more intelligent than many whites, was a great admirer of the engines. He held up his arms, with black fingers spread wide, and said to Lethierry, who still stood silent: "Master, the machinery is still alive."
Since Clubin was thought to be safe and the hull of the Durande was known to be lost, conversation in the various groups turned to the engines. People were as concerned about them as if they had been a person. They were amazed by how well they had performed. "There's a stout old lady for you!" said a French seaman. "She's a good one!" said a Guernsey fisherman. "There must be good stuff in her," said the skipper of the Shealtiel, "to get away with two or three scratches."
Gradually the engines came to be the sole subject of conversation. There were warmly held views both for and against them; they had their friends and their enemies. Some of those present--owners of good old-fashioned sailing cutters who hoped to win back customers from the Durande--were not sorry to hear that the Douvres had put the new invention out of action. The whispering grew louder and the discussions threatened to become noisy. In general, however, conversation was restrained, and every now and then there was a sudden lowering of voices, shamed by Lethierry's sepulchral silence.
The general view that emerged from the discussions was this. The essential thing was the engines. The ship could be rebuilt; the engines could not. The engines were unique. There would not be the money to make others like them; nor would there be anyone to make them; their original builder was dead. They had cost forty thousand francs, and no one would now risk that amount of money in such a venture. Moreover, it had been shown that steamships could be lost like any other vessel; the accident to the Durande had wiped out all her earlier success. But it was terrible to think that this piece of machinery, still entire and in good condition, would be torn to pieces within five or six days as the ship had been. So long as it existed the shipwreck could not be said to be complete. Only the loss of the engines would be irreparable. Saving the engines would make good the disaster.
It was easy enough to talk of saving the engines; but who would do it? Was it indeed possible? To conceive a project and to carry it out are two different things: it is easy to have a dream but difficult to turn it into reality. And if ever a dream was impracticable and senseless it was this one--to save the Durande's engines, aground on the Douvres. To send a ship and crew to work on these rocks would be absurd; it was not to be thought of. It was the time of year when there were heavy seas; and in the first squall the anchor chains would be sawn through by the sharp edges of the underwater reef and the ship would go to pieces on the rocks. It would be sending a second wreck to the aid of the first. In the cavity on the summit of the rock on which the legendary shipwrecked mariner had died of hunger there was barely room for one man. In order to salvage the engines, therefore, a man would have to go to the Douvres, and he would have to go alone-- alone in that waste of sea, alone in that solitude, alone at five leagues from the coast, alone in that place of terror, alone for weeks at a time, alone in face of dangers both foreseen and unforeseen, without hope of receiving supplies if his food ran out, without help in any emergency, without any trace of human life apart from the memory of the seaman who had starved to death there, without any other companion than the dead man. And how would he set about saving the engines? He would have to be not only a seaman but a smith as well. And what hardships he would have to put up with! Any man who ventured on the task would be more than a hero: he would be a madman. For in certain enterprises of disproportionate magnitude in which superhuman power is called for, there is a higher level above bravery--madness. And indeed would it not be folly to devote so much
No: no one should go to the Douvres. The engines must be abandoned along with the rest of the ship. No such savior as was required would present himself. Where was such a man to be found?
This, expressed in different words, was the gist of the murmured conversations among those present.
The skipper of the Shealtiel, who had once been a pilot, expressed the general view:
"No, there's nothing more to be done. There is no one who will go out there and bring back the Durande's engines."
"Since I am not going," added Imbrancam, "it means that no one can go."
The skipper shook his left hand in a gesture expressing his conviction that the thing was impossible, and went on:
"If there were such a man--"
Deruchette turned round:
"--I would marry him," she said.
There was a silence.
A man came forward, his face ashy pale, and said:
"You would marry him, Miss Deruchette?"
It was Gilliatt.
All eyes were turned on him. Mess Lethierry had drawn himself up to his full height. There was a strange light in his eye. He took off his seaman's cap and flung it on the ground, looked solemnly in front of him without seeing any of those who were present, and said:
"Deruchette would marry him. I give my word of honor to God."
II
GREAT ASTONISHMENT ON THE WEST COAST
The moon was due to rise at ten that night; but however favorable the night, the wind, and the sea, no fishermen meant to go out either from La Hougue la Perre, nor from Bordeaux harbor, nor from Houmet Benet, nor from Le Platon, nor from Port Grat, nor from Vazon Bay, nor from Perelle Bay, nor from Pezeries, nor from Les Tielles, nor from Saint's Bay, nor from Petit-Bo, nor from any port or harbor on Guernsey. The reason was very simple: the cock had crowed at midday.
When the cock crows at an unusual time there are no fish to be had that day.
That evening, however, as night was falling, a fisherman returning to Omptolle had a surprise. As he came past Houmet Paradis, with the Platte Fougere buoy, which is in the form of an inverted funnel, on his left and the St. Sampson buoy, in the form of a man, on his right, he thought he detected a third buoy. What was this buoy, he wondered? Who had set it at that particular point? What hidden shoal was it marking? The buoy provided an immediate answer to his questions: it was moving; it was a mast. This by no means lessened the fisherman's astonishment. A buoy would have been cause for wonder; a mast even more.
No one could be fishing that day. When everyone was coming in, someone was putting out.
Who could it be? And why was he going out to sea?
Ten minutes later the mast, moving slowly, came within a short distance of the fisherman from Omptolle. He was unable to recognize the boat. He heard the sound of oars. He could make out only two oars, so there was probably only one man on board. The wind was northerly, and the man was evidently rowing out to catch the breeze beyond Fontenelle Point. There, probably, he would put on sail. So he was intending to round L'Ancresse and Mont Crevel. Whither was he bound?
The mast passed on its way, and the fisherman returned to port.
That same night, at different points along the west coast of Guernsey and at different times, a number of people observed a boat moving out at sea.
Just as the fisherman from Omptolle was mooring his boat, a man carting seaweed half a mile farther on was whipping his horses along the lonely Les Clotures road, near the standing stones between Martello towers 6 and 7, when he saw a sail being hoisted some distance out at sea, in an area toward the Roque Nord and the Sablonneuse, which was little frequented because it required familiarity with these dangerous waters. He paid little heed to it, being more interested in carts than in boats.
Perhaps half an hour later a plasterer returning from his work in the town and skirting the Mare Pelee saw almost in front of him a boat daringly maneuvering amid the Quenon, Rousse de Mer, and Gripe de Rousse rocks. It was a dark night but it was light over the sea--an effect that commonly occurs--and it was possible to distinguish movements out at sea. The only craft visible was this boat.
A little later, and a little farther down the coast, a man setting his crayfish pots on the sandbank between Port Soif and Portinfer wondered why a boat was picking its way between the Boue Corneille149 and the Moulrette. You had to be a good pilot and in a great hurry to get somewhere to venture on that passage.
As eight o'clock was striking on the Catel church the landlord of the tavern in Cobo Bay was astonished to see a sail beyond the Boue du Jardin and the Grunettes, close to the Suzanne and the Grunes de l'Ouest.
A little way beyond Cobo Bay, on the lonely Hommet promontory that bounds Vazon Bay, two lovers were taking a lingering farewell of each other. At the moment when the girl was saying to the boy: "I've got to go; it's not because I want to leave you but because I've house-work to do," they were distracted from their parting kiss by a large boat that passed close to them, making for the Messellettes.
About nine o'clock that evening Monsieur Le Peyre des Norgiots, of Le Cotillon Pipet, was examining a hole made by marauders in the hedge around his field, La Jennerotte, and his little plantation of trees. While investigating the damage he could not help noticing a boat rounding Crocq Point--a reckless thing to do at that time of night.
The course followed by the boat was a risky one on the day after a storm, when the sea had still not settled down. It was an unwise venture except for a man who knew by heart the channels between the rocks.
At half-past nine, at the Equerrier, a trawler hauling in its net paused briefly to watch what appeared to be a boat making its way between Colombelle and the Souffleresse. It was a hazardous thing to do, for in that area there are sometimes sudden gusts of wind that are very dangerous. The Souffleresse, the Blower, is so called because it directs these sudden bursts of wind against passing boats.
At the moment when the moon was rising, the tide being fully in and slack in the little strait of Lihou, the solitary watchman on Lihou Island was much alarmed by the sight of a long black shape passing between the moon and him, a tall, narrow black shape that looked like a shroud standing erect and moving forward. It glided along above the wall-like ridges of rock. The watchman thought it was the White Lady.
The White Lady inhabits the Tas de Pois d'Amont, the Gray Lady inhabits the Tas de Pois d'Aval, the Red Lady inhabits the Silleuse, to the north of the Banc Marquis, and the Black Lady inhabits the Grand Etacre, to the west of the Hommet. These ladies come out at night, in the moonlight, and sometimes meet one another.
The black shape could, of course, be a sail. The long barrier of rocks along which it seemed to be walking might be concealing the hull of a boat sailing along beyond the rocks, showing only its sail. But the watchman wondered what boat would risk the passage between Lihou and the Pecheresse and between the Angullieres and L'Eree Point. And why was she sailing that way? It seemed to the watchman more likely that it was the Black Lady.
Just after the moon passed the tower of St. Peter-in-the-Wood, the sergeant in Rocquaine Castle, while pulling up the inner half of the drawbridge, saw at the mouth of the bay, beyond the Haute Canee but not so far out as the Sambule, a sailing vessel that seemed to be dropping down from north to south.
On the south coast of Guernsey, beyond Pleinmont, in a bay fringed by cliffs and rock faces falling steeply down to the sea, is a curious little harbor that a Frenchman who has lived on the island since 1855--perhaps indeed the author of these lines--has christened the "harbor on the fourth floor," a name that is now in general use. This harbor, which was originally called the Moye, is a rocky plateau, partly natural and partly shaped by man, some forty feet above the sea, communicating with the waves by two heavy beams forming an inclined plane. Boats are hauled up from the sea and launched into it on the beams, which are like two rails, with the help of chains and pulleys. For men there is a flight of steps. In thos
About eleven o'clock a number of smugglers--perhaps the very men with whom Clubin had been expecting to travel--were gathered, along with their bales of goods, on the summit of the Moye plateau. Those who live by dishonesty need to be always on the alert; and the smugglers were keeping a good lookout. They were surprised to see a sail suddenly emerging from behind the black outline of Pleinmont Point. It was moonlight. The smugglers watched it closely, fearing that it might be a party of coastguardsmen on their way to lie in ambush behind the Great Hanois. But the sail passed beyond the Great Hanois, leaving the Boue Blondel behind it to the northwest, and disappeared into the pallid mists on the horizon.
"Where the devil can that boat be heading for?" the smugglers wondered.
That evening, just after sunset, someone was heard knocking at the door of the house at the Bu de la Rue. It was a boy dressed in brown with yellow stockings, indicating that he was a junior clerk employed by the parish. The house was closed up and shuttered. An old woman prowling about the beach with a lantern in quest of shellfish called to the boy:
"What do you want, boy?"
"The man of the house."
"He isn't there."
"Where is he?"
"I don't know."
"Has he gone away?"
"I don't know."
"The new rector of the parish, the Reverend Ebenezer Caudray, wants to come and see him."
"I don't know."
"The reverend has sent me to ask if the man who lives at the Bu de la Rue will be in tomorrow morning."
"I don't know."
III
DO NOT TEMPT THE BIBLE
For the next twenty-four hours Mess Lethierry neither slept nor ate nor drank. He kissed Deruchette on the forehead, asked after Clubin, of whom nothing had been heard, signed a declaration that he did not intend to lodge a complaint against anyone and had Tangrouille released from prison.