The Toilers of the Sea

by Victor Hugo

  But how could he reach the summit of the Great Douvre? How could he scale that vertical rock face, as solid and as polished as a waterworn boulder and half covered with a mat of viscous confervae,166 which looked as slippery as a surface freshly soaped?

  The summit was at least thirty feet from the deck of the Durande.

  Gilliatt took the knotted rope out of his toolbox, hooked it to his belt with the grapnel, and set out to scale the Little Douvre. The higher he climbed the harder it became. He had not taken his shoes off, and this increased the difficulty of the climb. Finally, with great effort, he reached the summit and stood up. There was room for his two feet, but little more. It would be difficult to establish his lodging here. A stylite might have found it adequate; but Gilliatt, more exigent than a stylite, wanted something better.

  The Little Douvre leaned toward the Great Douvre, so that, seen from a distance, it seemed to be bowing to it; and the distance between the two, which was some twenty feet at the base, was only eight or ten feet at the top.

  From the point to which he had climbed Gilliatt had a clearer view of the mass of rock on the summit platform of the Great Douvre. The platform was at least three fathoms above his head, and he was separated from it by a precipice. The overhang of the Little Douvre concealed the steeply scarped rock face beneath him.

  Gilliatt took the knotted rope from his belt, quickly measured the distance with his eye, and hurled the grapnel toward the summit of the Great Douvre.

  The grapnel grazed the rock and then slipped away. The rope, with the grapnel at the end, fell to the foot of the Little Douvre.

  Gilliatt tried again, throwing the rope farther forward and aiming at the mass of rock on the summit, on which he could see various cracks and crevices.

  This time the throw was so skillful and so accurate that the grapnel lodged in the rock.

  Gilliatt pulled on the rope. The rock broke away, and the rope returned to dangle against the Little Douvre under Gilliatt's feet.

  He threw the grapnel for the third time, and this time it did not fall. He tried the rope again. It held. The grapnel was firmly anchored. It had lodged in some crevice on the summit platform that Gilliatt could not see. He would have to trust his life to this unseen means of support.

  Gilliatt did not hesitate. Time was pressing. He had to take the quickest way to achieve his aim.

  In any case it was almost impossible to get back to the Durande and reconsider his plans. He would probably slip, and almost certainly fall. It was possible to climb up; it was impossible to climb down.

  Gilliatt, like all good seamen, was precise and careful in his movements. He never wasted his strength. His effort was always proportionate to the work in hand. Hence the prodigies of strength that he achieved with muscles of merely ordinary power. His biceps were no stronger than anyone else's, but he had a heart that others lacked. To strength, which is a physical quality, he added energy, which is a moral quality.

  He was faced with a redoubtable challenge. He had to cross the space between the two Douvres, suspended from this slender rope.

  Often, in acts of devotion or of duty, we find question marks-- questions that seem to come from the mouth of Death. A voice from the shadows says: "Are you going to do that?"

  Gilliatt gave another pull on the rope. The grapnel still held firm. He wrapped his handkerchief around his left hand and grasped the rope with his right hand, which he covered with his left; then, holding one foot out in front of him, he kicked off sharply with the other foot so that the impetus would prevent the rope from twisting and launched himself from the top of the Little Douvre against the face of the Great Douvre.

  He banged heavily against the other rock. In spite of the care he had taken, the rope twisted and he hit the rock with his shoulder. He rebounded, and this time it was his fists that struck the rock. His handkerchief had come adrift, and his hands were badly grazed; but at least there were no bones broken.

  Gilliatt hung for a moment, dazed by the shock, but was sufficiently in command of himself not to relax his hold on the rope. He swung free, jerking to and fro, and it was some time before he managed to get a grip on the rope with his feet.

  Recovering himself, and holding on to the rope with both hands and feet, he looked down. He was not worried about the length of the rope, which he had used to climb greater heights in the past; and it now reached right down to the deck of the Durande. Reassured that he would be able to get down again, he began to climb, and in a few moments had reached the top.

  No creature without wings had ever before found a footing there. The summit platform was covered with bird droppings. It was an irregular trapezoid in shape, the broken-off top of the colossal prism of granite called the Great Douvre. The center had been hollowed out by the rain into the form of a basin.

  Gilliatt had been right in his guess. At the southern corner of the trapezoid was a pile of rocks, probably fragments left by the fall of the summit. There was sufficient room between these rocks, which looked like gigantic paving-stones, to provide a refuge for any wild creature that might stray onto this summit. They were heaped up in disorder, leaving gaps and crannies, like a pile of builder's rubble. There was nothing in the nature of a cave within the rocks, but rather a series of cavities like the holes in a sponge.

  One of these lairs was large enough to admit Gilliatt. It was floored with grass and moss. Gilliatt would fit into it as if in a sheath. It was two feet high at the mouth and narrowed toward the back. There are stone coffins of this shape. Since the other side of the pile of rocks faced southwest, the recess was sheltered from rain but was exposed to the north wind.

  Gilliatt decided that it would serve his purpose. Thus two problems were solved; the paunch had a safe haven and he had a lodging. The great advantage of this lodging was that it was within easy reach of the wreck.

  The grapnel attached to the knotted rope had fallen between two rocks and was firmly lodged. Gilliatt made sure that it would not come loose by laying a large stone on top of it.

  He had now established a means of regular communication with the Durande. The Great Douvre was his home and the Durande was his workplace. He was able to come and go, to climb up and down, without difficulty.

  He dropped down quickly on the knotted rope to the deck of the Durande.

  The day was going well; he had made a good beginning; he was content. He realized that he was hungry.

  He undid his basket of provisions, opened his knife, cut a slice of smoked beef, ate a piece of brown bread, drank from his can of fresh water, and altogether had a good supper.

  To do good work and have a good meal are two of the joys of life. A full stomach is like a good conscience.

  After he had eaten his meal there was still a little daylight left. He used it to begin the next very urgent task of lightening the wreck.

  He had spent part of the day in sorting through the debris on the Durande. He put aside in the stoutest part of the wreck containing the engines anything that might be of use--timber, iron, ropes, canvas-- and flung everything else into the sea.

  The stores from the paunch that he had hoisted onto the wreck with the capstan, modest though they were, were an encumbrance. Gilliatt noticed a kind of recess in the wall of the Little Douvre, at a height within reach of his hand. Rocks often have such natural cupboards, though they are cupboards without doors. He thought that he could keep things in this one. At the back of the recess he put his two boxes, one containing tools and the other clothing; then he put in the sacks of rye flour and biscuit, and finally--perhaps rather too near the edge, but there was nowhere else to put it--the basket of provisions.

  He had been careful to take out of the box of clothing his sheepskin, his oilskins, and his tarpaulin leggings.

  In order to prevent the knotted rope from blowing in the wind, he tied its lower end to a rider on the Durande. Since the Durande had been badly stove in the rider was much bent, and held the rope as tightly as a closed fist.

  The up
per end of the rope also required attention. Tying the lower end was good as far as it went, but at the top of the rock face, where the rope hung over the edge of the summit platform, there was a danger that it would be gradually frayed by the sharp edge of the rock. Gilliatt rummaged through the pile of debris he had collected and picked out a few fragments of sailcloth and some long strands of rope yarn from a length of old cable, which he stuffed into his pockets. A seaman would have known that he was going to use these pieces of cloth and strands of yarn to protect the rope at the point where it passed over the sharp edge of the rock so as to prevent it from chafing: the process known in sailors' language as keckling.

  He then put on his leggings and oilskins, pulled the hood down over his seaman's cap, tied the sheepskin around his neck and, thus attired in full panoply, grasped the rope, now firmly secured along the side of the Great Douvre, and set out on the assault of that somber citadel of the sea.

  In spite of the abrasions to his hands he quickly reached the summit of the rock. The last pale glimmers of the setting sun were now dying away. It was dark over the sea, but there was still a little light on the top of the Great Douvre. Gilliatt used this last remnant of daylight to keckle the knotted rope. At the point where it passed over the edge of the summit platform he applied a bandage consisting of several thicknesses of sailcloth, each one tightly tied with a strand of yarn. It was rather like the padding that actresses put on their knees in preparation for the deaths and pathetic appeals of the fifth act.

  The keckling completed, Gilliatt stood up again. For the last few minutes, while he had been engaged in this work, he had been vaguely conscious of a curious fluttering sound. In the stillness of the evening it sounded like the beating of the wings of some gigantic bat. He looked up. A great black circle was revolving in the deep white sky of twilight above his head.

  In old pictures there are sometimes circles of this kind around the heads of saints. But in such cases they are golden against a dark ground; this circle was dark against a light ground. It was like the Great Douvre's halo of darkness.

  The circle came closer to Gilliatt and then moved away, contracting and then enlarging. It was made up of a flock of seabirds--gulls, sea mews, frigate birds, cormorants--evidently excited and upset.

  Probably the Great Douvre was their usual lodging and they were coming back to it for the night. Gilliatt had taken a room in it, and they were alarmed by this unexpected fellow lodger. A man on the Great Douvre: they had never seen such a thing before.

  This agitated flight lasted for some time. They seemed to be waiting for Gilliatt to go away. Gilliatt watched them with a thoughtful air.

  Finally they appeared to make up their mind; the circle suddenly broke up and turned into a spiral, and the whole flock flew off and settled on the Homme, at the other end of the reef. There it sounded as if they were discussing and deliberating on the matter. For a long time, as Gilliatt lay down in his granite sheath, taking a stone for his pillow, he heard the birds chattering to one another, each in turn. Then they fell quiet, and everyone slept, the birds on their rock and Gilliatt on his.

  VIII

  IMPORTUNAEQUE VOLUCRES167

  Gilliatt slept well. But he was cold, and this woke him from time to time. He had naturally put his feet at the far end of the recess and his head at the entrance; but he had not taken the trouble to remove from his bed a quantity of sharp-edged pebbles that did little to improve his sleep. Occasionally he half opened his eyes. Every now and then he heard a deep boom: it was the rising tide entering sea caves on the reef with a noise like the discharge of a cannon.

  All the circumstances of his present position had the unnatural effect of a vision; he was surrounded by chimeras. In the state of bewilderment that comes with the night, he felt himself plunged into a world of impossibilities. He thought: "It is all a dream."

  Then he would fall asleep again and, now really dreaming, found himself at the Bu de la Rue, at Les Bravees, at St. Sampson; he heard Deruchette singing; he was back in the real world.

  While he was asleep he thought that he was awake and living his life; when he woke up he thought he was asleep. And indeed he was now living in a dream.

  In the middle of the night there was a great rumbling in the sky, of which Gilliatt was dimly conscious in his sleep. Probably it was the wind rising.

  Once when he awoke, feeling cold, he opened his eyes rather wider than he had done so far. There were great clouds at the zenith; the moon was fleeing, and a large star was running after her.

  Gilliatt's mind was full of the diffused perceptions of a dream, and this enlargement of his dreams was mingled in confusion with the eerie landscapes of the night.

  At daybreak he was frozen, but he was sound asleep.

  The suddenness of dawn roused him from this sleep, which was perhaps dangerous. The recess in which he was lying faced the rising sun.

  Gilliatt yawned, stretched, and emerged quickly from his hole. He had been sleeping so soundly that he did not at first realize where he was. Gradually the feeling of reality returned, and he exclaimed: "Time for breakfast!"

  The weather was calm, the sky cold and clear. There were no clouds; the winds of the night had swept the horizon clean, and the sun was rising. Another fine day was beginning. Gilliatt had a feeling of elation.

  He took off his oilskins and leggings, rolled them up in the sheepskin, with the fleece inside, tied the bundle up with a length of rope, and pushed it to the back of his lair, out of reach of any rain that might fall.

  He made his bed: that is to say, he removed the pebbles. Then he slid down the rope to the deck of the Durande and went to the recess in the rock where he had left his basket of provisions.

  The basket was not there. It had been just at the edge of the recess, and the wind that had risen during the night had blown it off and cast it into the sea.

  The elements had declared their intention of defending themselves. In seeking out the basket the wind had shown both deliberate purpose and ill will.

  Hostilities had begun. Gilliatt realized this at once.

  To those who live with the surly familiarity of the sea, it is difficult not to regard the wind as a person and the rocks as living creatures.

  Now Gilliatt's only resource, in addition to his stock of biscuit and rye flour, was the shellfish that had been the only nourishment of the man who had died of hunger on the Homme. There was no prospect of catching fish, which dislike turbulence and avoid rocks. There is no profit for fishermen in fishing amid reefs, whose sharp-edged rocks merely tear holes in their nets.

  Gilliatt ate a few sea lice, which he prized off the rock with great difficulty, almost breaking his knife in the process.

  While he was eating this scanty meal he became aware of a curious commotion on the sea, and looked around. A flock of gulls had swooped down on one of the lower rocks, beating their wings, knocking each other over, screaming and shrieking. They were all swarming noisily at the same spot. This horde of beaks and talons was pillaging something.

  That something was Gilliatt's basket. It had been cast by the wind on a sharp-edged rock and had burst open, and the birds had flocked to the scene. They were carrying off in their beaks all kinds of fragments of food. Gilliatt recognized in the distance his smoked beef and his salt fish.

  The birds, too, were joining battle and were carrying out their own reprisals. Gilliatt had taken their lodging; they were taking his supper.

  IX

  THE REEF, AND HOW TO MAKE USE OF IT

  A week passed.

  Although it was a rainy time of year there was no rain, and for this Gilliatt was thankful. What he was undertaking was, in appearance at least, beyond human strength. Success was so unlikely that the attempt seemed madness.

  It is only when you get down to a task that the obstacles and dangers become apparent. You have to begin in order to see how difficult it is going to be to finish. Every beginning is a battle against resistance. The first step you make in an enterpr
ise inexorably reveals what it entails. The difficulty to which we set our hands pricks like a thorn.

  Gilliatt was at once faced with obstacles. To raise the Durande's engines from the wreck, in which they were three parts buried--to attempt, with any prospect of success, such a task of salvage, in such a place and at such a season of the year--seemed to call for a whole team of men, and Gilliatt was alone; it called for a whole range of woodworking and engineering equipment, and Gilliatt had only a saw, an ax, a chisel, and a hammer; it called for a good workshop and shed to work in, and Gilliatt had not even a roof over his head; it called for a supply of provisions, and Gilliatt had not even a loaf of bread.

  Anyone who had seen Gilliatt working on the reef during this first week would not have understood what he was about. It looked as if he was no longer thinking about the Durande or the two Douvres. He was concerned only with what was lying about on the rocks; he seemed to be absorbed in salvaging small items of wreckage. He took advantage of every low tide to scour the reef for anything that the shipwreck had left there. He went from rock to rock collecting whatever the sea had deposited--scraps of sailcloth, ends of rope, pieces of iron, fragments of paneling, shattered planking, broken yards; here a beam, there a chain, elsewhere a pulley.

  At the same time he was studying every recess and crevice on the reef. None of them was habitable; to his great disappointment, for he had been cold in his hole among the rocks on the summit of the Great Douvre, and he would have been glad to find a better garret to lodge in.

  Two of these recesses were of some size. Although the rock floors were almost all sloping and uneven, it was possible to stand upright and to walk about in them. The wind and the rain had unrestricted access, but they were out of reach of the highest tides. They were near the Little Douvre, and could be entered at any time of day. Gilliatt decided that one of them would be a storeroom and the other a forge.

  With all the lacings and earings that he could collect he parceled up the smaller fragments of wreckage, tying the pieces of wood and iron into bundles, making parcels of canvas, and lashing everything carefully together. As the rising tide floated these bundles off the rocks, he dragged them to his storeroom. In a crevice in the rock he had found a mast rope with which he was able to haul even large pieces of timber. In the same fashion he recovered from the sea the many lengths of chain scattered about among the rocks.