The Toilers of the Sea

by Victor Hugo

  Whether or not it is haunted, it is certainly strange.

  The house, a two-story granite building, stands on the grassy summit of the hill. It is not by any means a ruin; it is perfectly habitable. The walls are thick and the roof is sound. Not a stone is missing from the walls, not a tile from the roof. A brick chimney-stack buttresses one corner of the roof. The house turns its back on the sea. The side facing the ocean is a blank wall; but if you look closely you can see a window that has been walled up. On the gable ends are three small windows, one on the east end and two on the west end; all three are walled up. The side facing inland has a doorway and windows. The doorway is walled up. The two ground-floor windows are walled up. On the first floor--and this is what strikes you most as you approach the house-- are two open windows; but the walled-up windows are less disturbing than these. Open though they are, they look black even in full daylight. They have lost their glass, and even the frames are missing. They open on the darkness within. They are like the empty sockets of two eyes that have been torn out. There is nothing inside the house. Through the gaping windows can be seen the dilapidation of the interior. No wainscoting, no woodworking; nothing but bare stone. It is like a sepulchre with windows from which ghosts can look out. Rain is undermining the foundations on the seaward side. Nettles, shaken by the wind, caress the lower parts of the walls. On the horizon not a human habitation is to be seen. This house is an empty thing, a place of silence. But if you stop for a moment and put your ear against the wall you will now and then hear a confused fluttering of wings, scared by your presence. Above the walled-up door, on the stone that forms the architrave, are inscribed the letters ELM-PBILG and the date 1780.

  At night the somber moon shines into the house.

  Around this house is the whole of the sea. Its situation is magnificent, and consequently sinister. The beauty of the place becomes an enigma. Why is there no human family living in this house? The situation is beautiful; the house is a good one. Why has it been abandoned?

  To the questions posed by our reason are added others suggested by our reverie. This field is suitable for cultivation: why is it not cultivated? The house has no master. The doorway is walled up. What is wrong with this place? Why do men shun it? What is going on here? If nothing is going on, why is there no one here? When everyone is asleep is there anyone awake here? The sight of this house calls up images of dark and gloomy squalls, the wind, birds of prey, lurking animals, unknown beings. What wayfarers does this hostelry cater to?

  You can imagine dark shadows of hail and rain bursting in through the windows. Storms have left their traces in the marks made by water trickling down the inside walls. These rooms, whether their windows are walled up or open, are visited by the hurricane. Has some crime been committed here? Surely at night this house, abandoned to darkness, must call for help? Does it remain silent? Are voices heard coming from it? With whom does it have to do in this solitude? The mystery of the hours of darkness is entirely at home here. This house is disquieting at midday: what is it like at midnight? When you look at it you are looking at a secret. You wonder--since reverie has its own logic and the possibilities open up in your mind--what happens to this house between the twilight of evening and the half-light of morning. Has extra-human life, dispersed as it is over immense distances, a junction point on this lonely hill where it stops and is forced to become visible and descend to earth? Do the scattered elements of this other world come together to swirl and eddy here? Does impalpable matter condense here and take on form? These are enigmas. There is a sacred horror in these stones. The darkness of these forbidden rooms is more than darkness: it is the unknown. After the sun goes down the fishing boats will return to harbor, the birds will be silent, the goatherd behind the rock will go off with his goats, the first reptiles, taking courage, will slip out of crevices between the stones, the stars will begin to look down, the north wind will blow, darkness will fall, and these two windows will be there, gaping wide.

  The house is now open to dreams; and popular belief, which is both simpleminded and profound, peoples the somber intimacies between this house and the darkness of night with apparitions, with evil spirits, with spectral faces dimly discerned, with masks surrounded by lurid light, with mysterious tumults of souls and shades.

  The house is haunted: no further explanation is needed.

  Credulous minds have their explanation; but matter-of-fact minds also have theirs. There is no mystery about this house, they say. It is an old watch house, used during the wars of the Revolution and Empire and the time when smuggling was rife. It was built for that purpose, and after the wars it was abandoned. The house was not pulled down because it might be needed again. The doorway and ground-floor windows were walled up against the deposit of human excrement and to prevent anyone from getting in, and the windows on the three sides of the house facing the sea because of the southerly and westerly winds. There was no more to it than that.

  The ignorant and credulous still hold to their belief. In the first place, they say, the house was not built during the wars of the Revolution. It bears a date--1780--earlier than the Revolution. And it was not built as a watch house. It bears the letters ELM-PBILG--the initials of two families, which show that, in accordance with custom, the house had been built for a newly married couple. Thus it had clearly been inhabited at one time. Then why is it no longer occupied? If the doorway and windows were walled up to prevent anyone from getting into the house, why were two windows left open? Everything should have been walled up, or nothing. Why are there no shutters? Why are there no window frames? Why is there no glass in the windows? Why were the windows walled up on one side and not on the other? The rain is prevented from coming in on the south side but is allowed in on the north side.

  The credulous are wrong, no doubt, but certainly the matter-of-fact people are not right. The problem remains.

  What is certain is that the house is believed to have been more useful than harmful to smugglers.

  When people are scared, they cannot see things in their proper proportions. There is no doubt that many of the nocturnal happenings that had led to the belief that the house was haunted could be explained by obscure and furtive visits, by men landing here for a short time and then reembarking, by the precaution or the boldness of men engaged in suspect activities who sought either to conceal what they were up to or allowed themselves to be seen in order to inspire fear.

  At that distant period many daring deeds were possible. In those days the police, particularly in small districts, fell far short of what they are today.

  Moreover, if, as is said, the house was convenient for smugglers, this was partly because they were unlikely to be disturbed there as a result of its sinister reputation, which prevented people from reporting what went on there. You do not usually apply to customs men or excisemen when you are troubled by specters. On such an occasion superstitious people make the sign of the cross; they think it more efficacious than a police report. They see something, or think they see something; then they make off and say nothing about it. There is a tacit connivance-- involuntary, but real--between those who inspire fear and those who feel it. Those who are scared feel they have done wrong to be scared; they imagine they have stumbled on something secret; they are afraid of finding themselves worse off in a situation that to them is mysterious, and of angering the apparitions. This makes them discreet. And, even apart from a calculation of this kind, the instinct of credulous people is to keep silent; fear makes them dumb. Terrified people do not speak much: it is as if horror says "Hush!"

  It must be remembered that this was a period when the country people of Guernsey believed that on one day each year the mystery of the manger in Bethlehem was reenacted by oxen and asses. It was a time when no one would go into a stable on Christmas Eve for fear of finding the animals on their knees.

  If we are to believe local legends and the tales told by people you meet, superstition used sometimes to be carried so far as to hang on the walls of
this house at Pleinmont, on nails of which some traces can still be seen, rats with their paws cut off, bats without their wings, the carcasses of dead animals, toads squashed between the pages of a Bible, sprigs of yellow lupin--strange votive offerings made by people who had been unwise enough to pass that way at night and had seen something, in the hope that these gifts would win pardon for them and appease nocturnal apparitions, evil spirits, and phantoms. There have always been people ready to believe in abacas and witches' sabbaths, including some highly placed personages. Caesar consulted Sagane; Napoleon, Mademoiselle Lenormand. 128 There are consciences so unquiet that they will seek to obtain indulgences from the Devil. "May God do and Satan not undo" was one of the Emperor Charles V's prayers. Others are more timorous still. They will even persuade themselves that one can wrong what is evil. They are concerned to behave impeccably to the Devil. Hence come religious practices directed toward the immense and obscure power of evil. It is a form of bigotry like any other.

  Crimes against the Devil exist in certain diseased imaginations; to have broken the law of the underworld torments some eccentric casuists of ignorance; they have scruples in dealing with the world of darkness. To believe in the efficacy of worshiping the mysteries of the Brocken and of Armuyr,129 to imagine that one has sinned against Hell, to perform chimerical penances for chimerical offenses, to admit the truth to the Father of Lies, to offer a mea culpa to the Father of Sin, to make one's confession widdershins: all these things happen or have happened, as is proved in the records of witch trials on every page. Human imaginings go to such extremes. When a man begins to be scared there is no stopping him. He dreams up imaginary faults, he dreams of imaginary purifications, and he cleanses his conscience with the shadow of the witch's broomstick.

  However that may be, if this house has adventures, that is its own affair. Apart from a few chance visits and a few exceptions, no one goes there. The house is left alone; and no one feels like risking an encounter with infernal forces.

  Thanks to the terror that guards it and keeps away anyone who might observe and bear witness, it has always been easy to get entry to this house at night with the help of a rope ladder, or even a hurdle from one of the neighboring fields. With a suitable supply of clothes and food, a man could wait here in complete safety until the time came for a furtive embarkation. Tradition has it that some forty years ago a fugitive--for reasons of politics according to some, for reasons of commerce according to others--spent some time hidden in the haunted house of Pleinmont before sailing in a fishing boat to England. And from England it is easy to get to America.

  The same tradition maintains that any supplies left in the house will not be touched, since it is in the interests of Lucifer as well as the smugglers that whoever deposited them should return.

  From the hill on which the house stands there is a view to the southwest of the Hanois reef, a mile offshore.

  This reef is famous. It has done all the evil deeds that a rock can do. It was one of the most redoubtable killers in the sea. It lay treacherously in wait for ships sailing at night. It had extended the cemeteries of Torteval and Rocquaine.

  In 1862 a lighthouse was built on the reef. Nowadays it shows a light to the ships that it formerly led astray; what used to be a trap now bears a torch. Seamen scan the horizon for this rock, now a protector and a guide, which they formerly shunned as an evildoer. It now reassures the vast nocturnal expanses in which it formerly inspired fear. It is rather like a robber turned gendarme.

  There are three Hanois: the Grand Hanois, the Petit Hanois, and the Mauve. The "red light" is on the Petit Hanois.

  This reef is one of a group of jagged rocks, some of them underwater, some emerging from the sea. Like a fortress, it has its outworks: on the side facing the open sea a string of thirteen rocks; to the north two shoals, the Hautes-Fourquies and the Aiguillons, and a sandbank, the Herouee; to the south three rocks, the Cat Rock, the Percee, and the Roque Herpin; plus two underwater rocks, the South Boue and the Boue le Mouet, and off Pleinmont, just under the surface, the Tas de Pois d'Aval.

  It is difficult, but not impossible, to swim from the Hanois to Pleinmont. It will be remembered that this was one of Sieur Clubin's feats. For the swimmer who knows these shallows there are two places where he can rest--the Round Rock and, beyond this, bearing a little to the left, the Red Rock.

  V

  THE BIRD'SNESTERS

  It was about the time of Sieur Clubin's visit to Torteval on that Saturday morning that there occurred a singular event that was at first little spoken of in the district and only transpired long afterward. For, as we have just remarked, many things remain unknown because of the alarm they cause to those who have witnessed them.

  That Saturday night--we give the exact date and believe it to be correct--three boys climbed up the cliffs at Pleinmont. They were on their way back to the village, coming from the sea. They had been bird'snesting. Wherever there are cliffs and rock crevices above the sea there are children robbing birds' nests. We mentioned this earlier: it will be remembered that Gilliatt was concerned about it, for the sake both of the birds and of the children.

  These bird'snesters are the street urchins of the ocean, not easily frightened.

  The night was very dark. Successive layers of dense cloud concealed the zenith. Three o'clock in the morning had just struck in the church tower at Torteval, which is round and pointed, like a magician's hat.

  Why were the boys returning home so late? The reason was very simple. They had gone in search of seagulls' eggs on the Tas de Pois d'Aval. That year the weather had been very mild, and the birds had begun to mate very early. The boys, watching the male and female birds coming and going around the nests and carried away by the eagerness of their quest, had forgotten what time it was. They had been surrounded by the rising tide and had been unable to get back in time to the little creek where they had moored their boat, and had had to wait on one of the projecting rocks on the Tas de Pois until the tide receded. Hence the lateness of their return home. Children late in returning home are waited for by their anxious mothers, who, reassured by their return, vent their joy in anger: anger, swollen by tears, which is dissipated by boxing their ears. And so the boys, anxious themselves, were hurrying home. They were hurrying with the particular kind of haste that would be glad of any delay and contains some degree of reluctance to return. They were looking forward to a reception made up of both kisses and cuffs.

  Only one of the boys had nothing to fear on that head: he was an orphan. This boy was French; he had neither father nor mother, and at present was glad that he had no mother. Since no one was concerned for his welfare, he would not be beaten. The two others were Guernsey boys, belonging to the parish of Torteval.

  After scaling the rocky hill the three boys arrived on the level area on which the haunted house stands.

  At first they felt afraid, which is to be expected of anyone, and particularly any child, passing that way at that time of night. They felt a strong urge to make off as fast as they could, but they also felt an urge to stop and look.

  They stopped. They looked at the house. It was black and terrifying.

  Standing in the center of the deserted hilltop, it was a dark block, a hideous symmetrical excrescence, a tall square mass with surfaces set at right angles, resembling an enormous altar of darkness.

  The boys' first thought had been to flee; the second was to go closer. They had never seen the house at this time of night. There is such a thing as the desire to experience fear. They had a French boy with them, and this emboldened them to approach the house. It is well known that the French believe in nothing. Besides, when there are several of you in danger, this is reassuring; when there are three of you afraid, this gives you courage.

  And then they were hunters; they were children, with not as much as thirty years among the three of them; they were questing, they were searching, they were seeking out hidden things.

  Why should they not stop and look? If you peer into o
ne hole, why not peer into another?

  When you are hunting for something, you are undergoing a course of training; when you are seeking to discover something, you are caught up in a chain of action. If you have been in the habit of looking into birds' nests, it gives you an itch to look into the nests of specters. Rummaging about in Hell: why not?

  Hunting one prey after another, you eventually come to the Devil. After sparrows, hobgoblins. You have to learn to cope with all the fears that your parents have instilled in you. Tracking down old wives' tales brings you onto a very slippery slope. The idea of knowing as much as the old wives is tempting.

  All this hotchpotch of ideas, in the state of confusion and the instinctive feelings in the minds of these Guernsey boys, combined to make them bold. They walked toward the house.

  The boy who was their leader in this display of courage was worthy of the role. He was a resolute lad, a caulker's apprentice, one of those children who are already men; sleeping on straw in a shed at his place of work, earning his own living, loud-voiced, a great climber of walls and trees, without any prejudices about any apples he came across; he had worked on the refitting of warships; a child of chance, a cheerful orphan; born in France, no one knew where, he had two reasons for being bold; ready to give a penny to a beggar; mischievous, but good at heart; fair hair, with a reddish tinge; he had spoken to people from Paris. Just now he was earning a shilling a day caulking the fishermen's boats that put in at Les Pequeries for repair. When he felt like it, he would take a holiday and go bird'snesting. Such was the little French boy.

  There was something funereal about the solitude of the place. Its inviolability had a menacing feel. It was eerie. The bare, silent hilltop sloped down to the cliff a short distance away. The sea, down below, was quiet. There was no wind. Not a blade of grass stirred. The bird'snesters walked on slowly, with the French boy leading, looking at the house. Later one of them, telling their story, or what little he remembered of it, said: "The house didn't speak."