by Victor Hugo
BOOK VI
DRUNK HELMSMAN, SOBER CAPTAIN
I
THE DOUVRES
Some five leagues out to sea, to the south of Guernsey, opposite Pleinmont Point and between the Channel Islands and Saint-Malo, is a group of rocks known as the Douvres.138 It is a baneful spot.
There are many reefs and rocks called Douvre, in English Dover. Near the Cotes du Nord is a rock with the name of Douvre on which a lighthouse is at present being built. It is a dangerous reef, but it is not to be confused with the one we are concerned with here.
The nearest point to the Douvres on the French mainland is Cap Brehant. They are a little farther from the French coast than the nearest of the Channel Islands. Their distance from Jersey is about the same as the distance from the northwest to the southeast of Jersey. If that island were turned on Corbiere Point as on a hinge the promontory in St. Catherine's Bay would reach almost exactly to the Douvres. The distance is rather more than four leagues.
In the seas of the civilized world even the wildest rocks are seldom deserted. There are smugglers on Hagot, customs officers on Binic, Celts on Brehat, oyster cultivators at Cancale, rabbit catchers on Cesambre or Caesar's Island, crab gatherers on Brecqhou, trawlermen on the Minquiers, hand-net fishers on Les Ecrehou. On the Douvres there is no one. Only seabirds make their home there.
No spot in the ocean is more dreaded. The Casquets, on which the White Ship is said to have been wrecked; the Calvados Bank; the Needles on the Isle of Wight; the Ronesse, which makes the Beaulieu coast so dangerous; the Preel shoals, which restrict the entrance to Merquel and make it necessary to set the red-painted marker buoy twenty fathoms out; the treacherous approaches to Etables and Plouha; the two granite Druids off the south coast of Guernsey, Old Anderlo and Little Anderlo; Corbiere Point; the Hanois; the Ile des Ras, whose terrors are expressed in the saying, Si jamais tu passes le Ras,
si tu ne meurs, tu trembleras;
Should ever you pass by the Ras,
if you do not die, you will tremble;
the Mortes-Femmes, the passage between the Boue and the Frouquie; the Deroute between Guernsey and Jersey; the Hardent between the Minquiers and Chousey; the Mauvais Cheval between Boulay Bay and Barneville--none of these has such a sinister reputation as the Douvres. A seaman would rather face all these rocks, one after the other, than the Douvres once.
In all this perilous sea that is the Channel--the Aegean of the west--there is nothing to equal the terrors of the Douvres apart from the Paternoster reef between Guernsey and Sark. And even from the Paternoster you can signal for help: it is within sight of Icart Point to the north and Gros-Nez to the south. From the Douvres you can see nothing.
There is nothing here but squalls, water, clouds, limitless horizons, emptiness. No one sails this way unless he has lost his bearings. The granite rocks are huge and hideous. Cliffs everywhere. The harsh inhospitability of the abyss.
This is the open sea. The water here is very deep. A completely isolated rock like the Douvres attracts and provides a home for creatures that shun the haunts of men. It is like a huge madrepore, a submarine bank of coral. It is a labyrinth engulfed by the sea. Here, at a depth that divers can barely reach, are hidden caves and caverns and dens, a network of dark passageways in which monstrous creatures pullulate. They devour each other: the crabs eat the fish and are themselves eaten. In this dark world roam fearful living shapes, created to be unseen by the human eye. Vague forms of mouths, antennae, tentacles, gaping jaws, scales, claws, and pincers float and quiver in the water, grow larger, decompose, and disappear in the sinister transparency. Fearful swarms of sea creatures swim to and fro, prowling, doing what they have to do. It is a hive of hydras.
This is horror in its ideal form.
Imagine, if you can, a teeming mass of holothurians.
To see the inmost depths of the sea is to see the imagination of the Unknown, and to see it from its most terrible side. This abyss has a likeness to night. Here, too, there is a form of sleep, of apparent sleep at least: the sleep of the consciousness of created things. Here are committed, with no fear of retribution, the crimes of the irresponsible. Here, in a fearful peace, rude forms of life--almost phantoms, but wholly demons--go about the dread business of this dark world.
Forty years ago two rocks of extraordinary form marked out the Douvres from afar to any who passed that way: two slender pillars curving toward each other and almost touching at the top. They looked like the tusks of an elephant that had been swallowed up by the sea; only, tall as towers, they were the tusks of an elephant the size of a mountain. Between these two natural towers guarding the dark city of monsters there was only a narrow passage through which the waves surged. This twisting passage, with a series of sharp bends, was like a narrow street between enclosing walls. These twin rocks were called the two Douvres, the Great Douvre and the Little Douvre; one was sixty feet high, the other forty. The constant to-and-fro movement of the waves had acted like a saw at the base of these towers, and on October 26, 1859, a violent equinoctial gale overthrew one of them. The remaining tower, the smaller one, is battered and truncated.
One of the strangest rocks in the Douvres group is known as the Homme or Man. It still stands. Last century some fishermen who had been blown off their course onto this rocky shore found the body of a man on top of this rock. Beside the body were numbers of empty seashells. The man had been shipwrecked here and had taken refuge on the rock, had lived for some time on shellfish, and then had died. Hence the name of the rock.
The solitudes of the ocean are melancholy: tumult and silence combined. What happens there no longer concerns the human race. Its use or value is unknown. Such a place is the Douvres. All around, as far as the eye can see, is nothing but the immense turbulence of the waves.
II
AN UNEXPECTED BOTTLE OF BRANDY
On Friday morning, the day after the departure of the Tamaulipas, the Durande sailed for Guernsey. She left Saint-Malo at nine.
The weather was fine; there was no mist. It looked as if old Captain Gertrais-Gaboureau had been maundering.
Sieur Clubin's other activities had evidently cost him most of his cargo. He had loaded only a few packages of fancy goods for shops in St. Peter Port and three crates for the Guernsey hospital, one of yellow soap, another of candles, and a third of French sole leather and fine Cordovan leather. From his previous cargo he was bringing back a case of crushed sugar and three cases of Congou tea to which the French customs had refused entry. He had embarked very little livestock; only a few bullocks, which were rather loosely stowed in the hold.
There were six passengers: a Guernsey man; two Saint-Malo cattle dealers; a "tourist" (a term that was already coming into use at that period); a Parisian of the lower middle class who was probably a commercial traveler; and an American, traveling to distribute Bibles.
The Durande had a crew of seven in addition to the captain, Sieur Clubin: a helmsman, a chief engineer, a carpenter, a cook (who could also work as a seaman if need be), two stokers, and a cabin boy. One of the stokers was also an engineer. This stoker-cum-engineer, a very brave and very intelligent Dutch Negro who had escaped from the sugar refineries of Surinam, was called Imbrancam. He understood the ship's engines and looked after them admirably. In the ship's early days his jet-black face emerging from the engine room had helped to give the Durande her diabolical reputation.
The helmsman, a Jersey man by birth but of Cotentin stock, was called Tangrouille, of a family of the higher nobility.
This was literally true. The Channel Islands, like England, are a hierarchical country. There are still castes in the islands. The castes have their own ideas, which are their defenses. The ideas of castes are the same everywhere, in India as in Germany. Nobility is won by the sword, and is lost by working. It is preserved by idleness. To do nothing is to live nobly; those who do no work are honored. To have a trade brings you down in the world.
Formerly in France an exception was made only
for glass manufacturers: emptying bottles being one of the glories of a nobleman, making them did not bring dishonor. In the archipelago of the Channel, as in Great Britain, those who want to remain noble must remain rich. A workman cannot be a gentleman. Even if he has been a gentleman he is one no longer. Many a seaman is descended from knights bannerets but is now only a seaman. Thirty years ago on Alderney there was a lineal descendant of the Gorges family who would have had a claim to the seigneurie of Gorges, confiscated by King Philippe Auguste; he walked barefoot along the beaches, gathering seaweed. A Carteret is a carter on Sark. There are a draper on Jersey and a shoemaker on Guernsey named Gruchy who claim to be members of the Grouchy family and cousins of the French marshal of that name who fought at Waterloo. The old records of the diocese of Coutances mention a seigneurie of Tangroville, evidently related to Tancarville on the lower Seine, which belonged to the Montmorency family. In the fifteenth century Johan de Heroudeville, an archer and squire in the service of the seigneur of Tangroville, carried "his corslet and other equipment." In May 1371, as Bertrand du Guesclin tells us, "Monsieur de Tangroville did his devoir as knight bachelor" at Pontorson. But in the Channel Islands, if you fall into poverty, you are quickly eliminated from the nobility. It takes only a change of pronunciation. Tangroville becomes Tangrouille, and that is the end of the matter.
This had been the fate of the helmsman of the Durande.
In St. Peter Port, on the Bordage, is a scrap metal merchant named Ingrouille who is probably an Ingroville. In the reign of Louis the Fat the Ingroville family owned three parishes in the electorate of Valognes. A certain Abbe Trigan wrote the Ecclesiastical History of Normandy. He was priest in the seigneurie of Digoville. If the seigneur of Digoville had become a commoner he would have been called Digouille.
Tangrouille, probably a Tancarville and possibly a Montmorency, had the time-honored characteristic of a nobleman, but a grave fault for a helmsman: he drank.
Sieur Clubin had insisted on keeping him on, and had answered for his decision to Mess Lethierry.
Helmsman Tangrouille never left the ship, and slept on board.
On the day before the ship sailed, when Sieur Clubin came fairly late in the evening to look over the ship, Tangrouille was asleep in his hammock.
During the night Tangrouille woke up, according to his usual habit. Every drunkard who is not his own master has his private hiding place. Tangrouille had his, which he called his glory hole. It was in the hold. He had chosen this place as the unlikeliest he could think of, and felt sure that no one but himself knew about it. Captain Clubin, a sober man himself, was a stern disciplinarian. The small quantities of rum and gin that the helmsman could conceal from the captain's vigilant eye were stowed away in this mysterious corner of the hold, behind a sounding bucket, and almost every night he had a rendezvous with his store. The captain's surveillance was strict, so that there was little chance of any great orgy, and as a rule Tangrouille's nocturnal excesses were confined to two or three furtive mouthfuls.
Sometimes, indeed, there was nothing at all in the store. On that particular night Tangrouille had found an unexpected bottle of brandy there. His joy had been great, his astonishment greater still. From what seventh heaven had this bottle fallen? He could not recall when or how he had brought it on board. He had drunk it immediately--partly out of prudence, lest the bottle should be discovered and confiscated--and had thrown the empty bottle into the sea. When he went to the helm on the following morning he was unsteady on his feet, but he was able to steer much in his usual way.
Clubin, as we know, had returned to the Auberge Jean to sleep.
He always wore under his shirt a leather traveling belt containing a reserve of some twenty guineas, which he took off only at night. On the inside of the belt he had written his name in thick lithographic ink, which is indelible.
Before leaving the inn on the following morning he had put in his belt the iron box containing the banknotes for seventy-five thousand francs and had then, as usual, buckled it around his waist.
III
INTERRUPTED CONVERSATIONS
The Durande made a jaunty departure. The passengers, after stowing their cases and trunks on and under the benches, proceeded to inspect the ship, as passengers always do--a practice so habitual as to seem obligatory. Two of them, the tourist and the man from Paris, had never seen a steamship before, and when the paddle wheels began to turn admired the foam they produced. Then they admired the smoke. They examined, item by item and in the most minute detail, all the nautical apparatus on the deck and lower deck--the rings, the grapnels, the hooks, the bolts, which with their precision of form and carefully contrived disposition have the quality of colossal pieces of jewelry: iron jewelry gilded with rust by the tempest. They examined the little signal-gun moored on the deck: "chained like a watchdog," said the tourist; "and with a tarpaulin overall to keep it from catching cold," added the man from Paris. As the ship drew away from the land the passengers exchanged the usual comments on the view of Saint-Malo. One of them opined that views from the sea are deceptive and that at a league from the coast Ostend and Dunkirk are as like as two peas. The mention of Dunkirk was followed by the observation that the two red-painted lightships were called respectively the Ruytingen and the Mardyck.
Saint-Malo grew steadily smaller and finally disappeared.
The aspect of the sea was a vast calm. The wake behind the ship was like a long street fringed by foam that continued almost without a twist or turn until it was lost to view.
Guernsey lies on an imaginary straight line drawn between Saint-Malo in France and Exeter in England. At sea a straight line is not always the logical line to take; but steamships have, to some extent, an ability to follow a straight line that is denied to sailing ships.
The sea, in conjunction with the wind, is a composite of forces. A ship is a composite of mechanisms. The sea's forces are mechanisms of infinite power; the ship's mechanisms are forces of limited power. Between these two organisms, one inexhaustible, the other intelligent, takes place the combat that is called navigation.
Human will contained in a mechanism confronts the infinite. The infinite, too, contains a mechanism. The elements know what they are doing and where they are going. None of these forces is blind. Man must keep a watch on them and seek to discover their route.
Until the law governing these forces is discovered the struggle continues; and in this struggle steam navigation is a kind of perpetual victory of man's genius, every hour of the day, over all the forces of the sea. It also has the virtue of disciplining the ship: it reduces her obedience to the wind and increases her obedience to man.
The Durande had never sailed better than on this day. She behaved marvelously. About eleven o'clock, with a fresh north-northwesterly breeze, the Durande was off the Minquiers, under low steam, steering west on the starboard tack and keeping close to the wind. The weather was still clear and fine. But for all that the trawlers were making for home.
Gradually, as if everyone was thinking of getting back to harbor, the sea was being cleared of shipping.
It could not be said that the Durande was following her usual route. The crew were not concerned by this, having absolute confidence in the captain; nevertheless--perhaps because of a mistake by the helmsman--there was some deviation from her normal course. She seemed to be heading for Jersey rather than Guernsey. Just after eleven o'clock the captain corrected her course and turned her head toward Guernsey. Only a little time had been lost, but when the days are short it is unfortunate to lose any time. There was a fine February sun. Tangrouille, in the state he was in, had neither a firm footing nor a steady hand. As a result he frequently yawed, and this slowed down the ship's progress.
The wind had now almost died away.
The passenger from Guernsey, who had a telescope, trained it from time to time on a small patch of grayish mist that was lightly floating in the wind on the horizon to the west. It looked like a lump of cotton wool powdered with dust
.
Captain Clubin had his usual austere and puritanical air. He seemed to be watching even more intently.
The atmosphere on board was tranquil and almost merry as the passengers talked together. If you close your eyes during a sea passage you can judge the state of the sea from the tremolo of conversations on board. Perfect freedom of conversation between passengers shows that the sea is absolutely calm.
For example, a conversation such as this could only take place on a very calm sea:
"Just look at that pretty green and red fly, sir."
"It must have lost its way over the sea and is having a rest on the ship."
"A fly doesn't usually get tired."
"No, they are very light. The wind carries them along."
"Do you know, sir, they once weighed an ounce of flies, and then they counted them and found that there were six thousand two hundred and sixty-eight of them?"
The Guernsey man with the telescope had joined the two cattle dealers from Saint-Malo, and their conversation went something like this: "An Aubrac ox has a round thickset body, short legs, and a tawny hide. He is a slow worker because of the shortness of his legs."
"In that respect the Salers breed is better than the Aubrac."
"I've seen two magnificent oxen in my life, sir. The first had short legs, solid forequarters, full hindquarters, broad haunches, good length from the neck to the rump, good height to the withers, good fat, and a hide that was easy to take off. The other showed all the signs of having been properly fattened--a sturdy body, a strong neck, light legs, a white-and-red hide, sloping hindquarters."
"That's the Cotentin breed."
"Yes, but with something of the Angus or the Suffolk bull."