The Toilers of the Sea

by Victor Hugo

  To live safely in this house you had to "belong." Outsiders were not regarded with favor. Did these people know each other? No. They scented each other.

  The mistress of the house was a young woman with a wooden leg, not bad-looking, who wore a bonnet trimmed with ribbons, who washed herself occasionally with water from the well.

  At dawn the courtyard emptied; the occupants scattered in all directions.

  There were a cock and some hens in the courtyard that scratched about in the refuse all day long. Across the courtyard ran a horizontal beam borne on posts, the likeness of a gallows that did not seem entirely out of place there. Sometimes, on the day after a rainy evening, a bedraggled silk dress belonging to the woman with the wooden leg would be hung out on the beam to dry.

  Above the shed and, like it, running around the courtyard, was an upper story, and above this a loft. A staircase of rotting wood ran up through an aperture in the roof of the shed to the upper floor--a rickety ladder up which the woman with the wooden leg stumped noisily. Casual lodgers, paying by the week or by the night, slept in the courtyard. More permanent residents lived in the house.

  Windows without glass, doorways without doors, fireplaces without fires: the house was like that. You passed from one room to another either through a long square hole where there had been a door or through a triangular gap between the joists in the dividing walls. The floors were littered with fallen plaster. It was hard to see how the house held together. It was shaken by every wind. Climbing the worn and slippery steps of the staircase was a hazardous business. The whole structure was open to the air. Winter entered the house as water enters a sponge. The multitude of spiders provided some reassurance against the immediate collapse of the building. There was no furniture of any kind. Two or three straw mattresses in the corners of the rooms, gaping open and revealing more ashes than straw. Here and there a jug and an earthenware pot, serving a variety of uses. A repellent sweetish smell.

  From the windows there was a view of the courtyard--a view like the view of a scavenger's cart. The things--to say nothing of the people--that lay rotting, rusting, moldering there were indescribable. All the various kinds of debris fraternized; they fell off the walls, they fell off the occupants. The rags and tatters seeded the rubble.

  In addition to the floating population of the courtyard La Jacressarde had three permanent lodgers--a coal man, a ragpicker, and a maker of gold. The coal man and the ragpicker occupied two of the straw mattresses on the first floor; the gold maker, a chemist, lodged in the loft. No one knew where the woman slept. The gold maker was also something of a poet. In the roof space, under the tiles, he had a room with a narrow window and a large stone fireplace in which the wind roared. Since the window had no frame he had nailed over it a strip of scrap metal salvaged from a ship, which admitted little light but plenty of cold air. The coal man paid for his lodging with a sack of coal from time to time; the ragpicker paid with a setier of grain for the chickens once a week; the gold maker did not pay anything. In the meantime he was burning up the house. He had torn off what little woodwork there was and kept taking laths from the wall or the roof to heat his crucible. On the wall above the rag-and-bone man's bed were two columns of figures written in chalk, a column of threes and a column of fives, according to whether a setier of grain cost three liards or five centimes.135 For his crucible the "chemist" used a broken old shell-case, promoted by him to the role of cauldron, in which he mixed his ingredients. He was obsessed with the idea of transmutation. Sometimes he talked about it to the vagrants in the courtyard, who laughed at him. Then he would say: "People like that are full of prejudices." He was determined not to die until he had thrown the philosopher's stone through the windows of science. His furnace consumed a great deal of wood. The banisters of the staircase had disappeared into its maw, and the whole of the house was going that way, little by little. The landlady used to say to him: "You will leave us nothing but the shell." Then he would disarm her by writing poetry to her.

  Such was La Jacressarde.

  The domestic staff consisted of a goitrous boy, or perhaps a dwarf, who might have been twelve or might have been sixty, who went about with a broom in his hand.

  The lodgers entered by the doorway leading into the courtyard; the general public entered through the shop.

  What was the shop?

  In the high wall facing onto the street, to the right of the entrance to the courtyard, was a square opening that was both a door and a window, with shutters and a window frame--the only shutters in the whole of the house with hinges and bolts. Behind this window, opening off the street, was a small room formed by cutting off a corner of the shed around the courtyard. Scrawled in charcoal on the street door was the inscription CURIOSITY SHOP--a term that was then in use. On three shelves in the shop window could be seen a few china jars without handles, a torn Chinese parasol in figured gold-beater's skin that could be neither opened nor shut, some shapeless fragments of iron and earthenware, battered hats and bonnets, three or four ormer shells, a few packets of bone and copper buttons, a snuffbox with a portrait of Marie-Antoinette, an odd volume of Bois-Bertrand's Algebra. This was the shop; these were the "curiosities" sold here. A door in the back of the shop led into the courtyard in which was the well. In the shop were a table and a stool. The shopkeeper was the woman with the wooden leg.

  VII

  SHADY TRANSACTIONS

  Clubin had been away from the Auberge Jean for the whole of Tuesday evening, and he was away again on Wednesday evening.

  That evening, as night was falling, two men walked along the Ruelle Coutanchez and stopped in front of La Jacressarde. One of them knocked on the window. The shop door was open, and they went in. The woman with the wooden leg put on the smile she kept for respectable citizens. There was a candle on the table.

  The men were indeed respectable citizens.

  The one who had knocked on the window said: "Good evening, mistress. I've come about you know what."

  The woman smiled again and went out of the door into the courtyard. A moment later a man appeared in the half-open door. He was wearing a cap and an overall, with the bulge of some object showing under the overall. He had bits of straw in the creases in his overall, and the look of someone just roused from sleep.

  He came forward. The three looked at one another. The man in the overall had a wary, cunning air. He asked: "You are the gunsmith?"

  The man who had knocked on the window replied: "Yes. You are the man from Paris?"

  "Name of Redskin. Yes."

  "Let me see it."

  "There you are."

  The man drew from under his overall an object rarely seen in Europe at that time--a revolver.

  It was new and shining. The two men examined it. The one who seemed to know the establishment and had been addressed as the gunsmith tried the mechanism and then passed the revolver to the other man, who looked less like a local man and kept his back turned to the light.

  The gunsmith asked: "How much?"

  The man in the overall answered: "I've just brought it from America. There are some who bring in monkeys and parrots and animals, as if the French were savages. That is what I bring in. It's a useful invention."

  "How much?" repeated the gunsmith.

  "It's a pistol that revolves."

  "How much?"

  "Bang! The first shot. Bang! The second shot. Bang! A whole volley of shots! It does a good job."

  "How much?"

  "It has six barrels."

  "Well: how much?"

  "For six barrels the price is six louis."

  "Will you take five?"

  "Can't be done. One louis per bullet. That's the price."

  "Come, now: if we're to do business you must be reasonable."

  "I've put a fair price on it. Just examine it, Mr. Gunsmith."

  "I have examined it."

  "It turns as fast as Monsieur Talleyrand. It ought to be in the Dictionary of Weathervanes.136 It's a jewel."


  "I've looked at it."

  "The barrels are of Spanish forging."

  "I can see that."

  "It's rifled. I'll tell you how they do the rifling. They empty into the forge the stock of a scrap-iron dealer--a load of old iron, farriers' nails, broken horseshoes--"

  "And old scythe-blades."

  "As I was just going to say, Mr. Gunsmith. Then they expose the whole lot to a good sweating heat, and that gives you the finest quality of iron."

  "Yes; but there can be cracks and faults in the metal."

  "True enough. But they put that right by small dovetails, just as they avoid the risk of defects in soldering by heavy pounding. They weld it together with a heavy hammer and give it two more turns in the furnace. If the iron has been overheated they retemper it with strong heats and light hammering. Then the stuff is drawn out and well rolled on the lining; and with iron of that quality you get a barrel like this."

  "You are in the trade, then?"

  "I'm a man of all trades."

  "The barrel is very light-colored."

  "That's the beauty of it, Mr. Gunsmith. They get that effect with butter of antimony."

  "So we are going to pay you five louis for it?"

  "If you don't mind, sir, may I remind you that I said six louis?"

  The gunsmith lowered his voice: "Listen to me, Mr. Parisian. Take your chance, and get rid of it. A gun like that is not a good thing for a man like you to have. It draws attention to you."

  "True enough," said the man from Paris. "It is a bit conspicuous. It's better for a respectable citizen."

  "Will you take five louis?"

  "No: six. One for each hole."

  "All right, then: six napoleons."

  "I want six louis."

  "You are not a Bonapartist, then? You prefer a louis to a napoleon?"

  The man from Paris who called himself Redskin smiled.

  "Napoleon is better," he said; "but Louis is worth more."

  "Six napoleons."

  "Six louis. It makes a difference of twenty-four francs to me."

  "In that case there's no deal."

  "All right. I'll keep this little trinket."

  "Keep it, then."

  "Asking for a cut price! Not likely! I'm not the man to give away a thing like that--a new invention."

  "Good-bye, then."

  "It's a great improvement on a pistol, which the Chesapeake Indians call Nortay-u-Hah."

  "Five louis in cash is good money."

  "Nortay-u-Hah means Short Gun. Not many people know that."

  "Will you take five louis and an ecu thrown in?"

  "I said six, sir."

  During this conversation the man who had kept his back to the candle and had not yet spoken had been making the mechanism revolve. He now went up to the gunsmith and whispered in his ear, "Is it a good one?"

  "First-rate."

  "Then I'll pay the six louis."

  Five minutes later, while the man from Paris who called himself Redskin was tucking the six louis into a secret recess under the armpit of his overall, the gunsmith and the purchaser of the revolver, carrying it in his trouser pocket, left the Ruelle Coutanchez.

  VIII

  CANNON OFF THE RED AND OFF THE BLACK

  On the following day, which was Thursday, a tragic event took place a little way out of Saint-Malo, near the Pointe du Decolle, at a spot where the cliffs are high and the sea is deep.

  There a tongue of rock shaped like a spearhead, linked with the mainland by a narrow isthmus, reaches out to sea and ends abruptly in a sheer crag--a very common feature in the architecture of the sea. To reach level ground above the crag from the shore involves climbing up a slope that at some points is quite steep.

  About four o'clock in the afternoon there was standing on a level spot of this kind a man wearing a uniform cape and probably armed, to judge from the straight, angular folds in his cape. The summit of the crag on which he stood was a level area of some size scattered with large cubes of rock like giant paving stones, with narrow fissures between them. This platform, with a dense carpet of low-growing grass, ended in an open space above a vertical rock-face, rising some sixty feet above high-water level, which looked as if it had been cut with the help of a plumb line. Its left-hand corner, however, had broken away, forming one of those natural staircases commonly found in granite cliffs, with awkwardly shaped steps that sometimes call for the strides of a giant or the agility of a clown. This tumble of rocks reached perpendicularly down to the sea and continued down into it. It was a breakneck track, but if need be a man could make his way down to embark in a boat at the foot of the cliff.

  A breeze was blowing. The man, wrapped in his cape, stood firmly on his feet, holding his right elbow in his left hand and with his other hand on a telescope, through which he was looking, with one eye closed. He seemed absorbed in an intent watch. He had moved forward to the very edge of the cliff and stood motionless there, his eye imperturbably fixed on the horizon. It was high tide, and the waves were beating against the base of the cliff below him.

  The object the man was watching was a ship out at sea that was behaving in a peculiar manner.

  The ship, which had left Saint-Malo harbor barely an hour before, had stopped beyond the Banquetiers. It was a three-master. She had not dropped anchor but had merely lain to, perhaps because the bottom would have allowed her to bear to leeward only on the edge of the cable and because she would have strained on her anchor under the cutwater.

  The man, whose uniform cape showed him to be a coastguardsman, was following all the movements of the three-master, and seemed to be taking a mental note of them. The ship was lying to a little off the wind; the fore topsail was taken aback and the wind was filling the main topsail. The mizzen had been squared and the topsail had been set as close as possible so as to work the sails against one another and to make little way either on-or offshore. Her master had evidently no wish to expose his vessel much to the wind, for he had only braced up the small mizzen topsail, so that the ship, coming crossway on, was drifting at no more than half a league an hour.

  It was still broad daylight, particularly out at sea and on the top of the cliff. Lower down, on the coast, the light was beginning to fail.

  The coastguardsman, engrossed in his task and conscientiously scanning the open sea, had not been watching the cliff beside him and below him. His back was turned to the rough stone staircase leading from the sea to the top of the cliff. He did not notice that something was moving there. Behind a crevice in the rocks there was someone--a man--who had evidently been hiding there before the coastguardsman's arrival. Every now and then, in the shadow of the rock, a head appeared, looking up, watching the watcher. The head, wearing a broad-brimmed American hat, belonged to the Quaker who had been seen ten days ago talking to Captain Zuela amid the rocks on the Petit Bey.

  Suddenly the coastguardsman's attention seemed to redouble. Quickly he wiped the glass of the telescope with the sleeve of his cape and focused it on the three-master.

  A small black dot had left the ship.

  The black dot, like an ant on the surface of the sea, was a boat. It seemed to be making for the shore. It was manned by a number of seamen, rowing vigorously. It gradually altered course and headed for the Pointe du Decolle.

  The coastguardsman's watch had reached a peak of intensity. He followed every moment of the boat's movement. He had drawn even closer to the edge of the cliff.

  At this moment the figure of a tall man, the Quaker, appeared at the top of the rock staircase, behind the coastguardsman. The watcher did not see him.

  The man stopped for a moment, his arms hanging by his sides and his fists clenched, and watched the coastguardsman's back, like a hunter watching his prey.

  He was only four paces behind the coastguardsman. He took a step forward and stopped; then took another step, and stopped again. Only his legs moved; the rest of his body was as still as a statue. His footsteps made no sound on the grass. Then he took a th
ird step, and stopped again. He was now almost touching the coastguardsman, who remained motionless, intent on his watch. The man slowly brought his clenched fists up to the level of his collarbone; then his arms suddenly shot forward, and his fists, as if released by a trigger, struck the coastguardsman's shoulders. It was a fatal blow. The coastguardsman had no time even to utter a cry. He fell head first from the cliff into the sea. There was a brief glimpse of the soles of his shoes. It was as if a stone had fallen into the sea. Then the water closed over him.

  A few large circles formed on the dark water.

  All that was left was the telescope that had fallen from the coastguardsman's hands and was lying on the grass.

  The Quaker looked down from the edge of the cliff, watched the ripples on the sea dying down, waited for a few minutes, and then stood up, humming between his teeth: Monsieur d'la Police est mort

  En perdant sa vie.

  The gentleman of the police is dead

  As a result of losing his life.

  He looked down again. Nothing had reappeared; but, at the spot where the coastguardsman had fallen into the water, a brown patch had formed on the surface of the water and was spreading under the movement of the waves. Probably the coastguardsman had fractured his skull on some underwater rock and his blood had risen and formed this stain on the sea.

  Watching this reddish patch, the Quaker went on humming his song:

  Un quart d'heure avant sa mort,

  Il etait encore--

  A quarter of an hour before his death

  He was still--

  He did not finish. He heard a soft voice behind him saying: "So there you are, Rantaine. How are you? You have just killed a man."

  He turned around and saw, in a crevice in the rocks, some fifteen paces away, a short man holding a revolver.