The Toilers of the Sea

by Victor Hugo

  They possess this chaos. What do they do with it? Implacable deeds: we know not what. The den of the winds is more monstrous than a lions' den. How many corpses there are in its deep recesses! The winds drive this great obscure and bitter mass pitilessly onward. We hear them always, but they listen to no one. They commit acts resembling crimes. We know not whom they are attacking with these white flecks of foam. What impious ferocity there is in bringing about a shipwreck! What an affront to Providence! They seem sometimes to be spitting on God. They are the tyrants of the unknown places. Luoghi spaventosi, as the seamen of Venice used to murmur.

  The trembling expanses of sea suffer assault and battery at their hands. What happens in these great wastes cannot be expressed. Some mysterious horseman is concealed amid the shadows. There is the noise of a forest in the air. Nothing can be seen, but the sound of horses galloping is heard. It is midday, and all at once it is night; a tornado sweeps past; it is midnight, and suddenly it is broad daylight; the emanations of the Pole are illuminated. Whirlwinds pass to and fro, reversing their direction in a kind of hideous dance: the trampling of plagues on the water. An overheavy cloud breaks in two and falls in pieces into the sea. Other clouds, purple-tinged, flash and rumble, then turn dark and somber; the cloud, emptied of its thunder, blackens like an extinguished ember. Sacks of rain burst open and dissolve into mist. Here there is a furnace amid falling rain, there a wave emitting flame. The white gleam of the sea beneath the rain reflects light on astonishing distant vistas; in the depths, constantly changing, can be seen vaguely recognizable forms. Monstrous navels open up in the clouds. Vapors swirl around, the waves pirouette; naiads, drunk, tumble about; as far as the eye can see the massive sluggish sea is in movement, but moving nowhere; everything is livid; from the pallor emerge desperate cries.

  In the depths of the inaccessible darkness great sheaves of shadow quiver. Every now and then there is a paroxysm. The noise grows into a tumult, as the waves grow into a swell. The horizon, a confused superposition of waves, an endless oscillation, murmurs in basso continuo; there are weird outbreaks of noise; there are sounds like the sneezing of hydras.

  Cold winds blow up, then hot winds. The shuddering of the sea reflects a fear of some terrible happening. Disquiet; anguish; the profound terror of the waters. Suddenly the hurricane comes, like a wild beast, to drink in the ocean; there is an extraordinary suction; the water rises to the invisible mouth, a sucker takes shape, the tumor swells; there is a waterspout, the fiery whirlwind of the ancients, a stalactite above and a stalagmite below, a double upturned cone revolving, one point balanced on another, a kiss between two mountains, a mountain of foam rising and a mountain of cloud descending; a fearful coitus between the waves and the shadows. The waterspout, like the column of fire in the Bible, is dark during the day and luminous at night. In the face of the waterspout the thunder is silent, as if afraid.

  There is a whole gamut in the vast confusion of the solitudes, a redoubtable crescendo: the shower of rain, the blast, the squall, the gale, the storm, the tempest, the waterspout; the seven strings in the lyre of the winds, the seven notes of the abyss. The sky is a wide expanse, the sea a rounded surface; a breath of wind passes, then there is a sudden change, and all is fury and confusion.

  Such are these harsh regions.

  The winds run, fly, swoop down, die away, rise again, whistle, roar, laugh; frantic, lascivious, unbridled, taking their ease on the irascible waves. They howl, but their howling has a certain harmony. They fill the sky with sound. They blow on the clouds as on a brass instrument, they raise space to their lips, and they sing in the infinite, with all the mingled voices of clarions, horns, oliphants, bugles, and trumpets, in a kind of Promethean fanfare. Any who hear them are listening to Pan. The fearful thing is that they are playing. They are filled with a colossal joy made up of shadows. In these solitudes they hunt down ships. Unceasingly, day and night, at any time of year, in the Tropics as at the Pole, blowing their wild trumpets, they pursue through the entanglements of clouds and waves the great black hunt after shipwrecks. They are the masters of hounds. They are enjoying themselves. They urge on their hounds to bark at the rocks and the waves. They drive the clouds together and tear them apart. They knead, as with millions of hands, the supple immensity of water.

  Water is supple because it is incompressible. When pressed it slips away again. Put under compulsion on one side, it escapes on the other. It is thus that water becomes waves. The waves are its form of freedom.

  III

  EXPLANATION OF THE SOUND HEARD BY GILLIATT

  The great descent of the winds on the earth takes place at the equinoxes. At these times the balance between the Tropics and the Pole swivels and the colossal tide of the atmosphere directs its flow on one hemisphere and its ebb on the other. There are constellations that symbolize these phenomena, the Balance and the Water Carrier.

  This is the season for storms.

  The sea waits, and keeps silent.

  Sometimes the sky has an unhealthy look. It is pale, and a dark veil obscures its face. Seamen are worried when they see the ill humor of the shadows.

  But they are most afraid when the shadows seem contented. A smiling sky at the equinox is a storm concealing its iron hand in a velvet glove. When the sky was in this mood the Weepers' Tower187 in Amsterdam was filled with women scanning the horizon.

  When the spring or autumn storms are late in coming they accumulate greater force. They are storing up greater resources for creating havoc. Beware of arrears! Ango188 used to say: "The sea is good at settling her accounts."

  When there is too long a wait the sea betrays its impatience only by greater calm; but the magnetic tension is shown by what might be called the inflammation of the water. Lights are emitted by the waves; the air is electric, the water phosphoric. Seamen feel harassed. This moment is particularly perilous for ironclads; their iron hull can produce wrong compass directions and lead them to destruction. The transatlantic steamer Iowa perished in this way.

  For those who are on familiar terms with the sea, its aspect at such moments is strange; it is as if it desired and at the same time feared the cyclone. Some nuptials, though strongly desired by nature, are received in this fashion. The lioness in heat flees from the lion's pursuit. The sea, too, is in heat: hence its trembling motion.

  This immense union is about to be consummated. And this mating, like the marriages of the ancient emperors, is celebrated by immolations. It is a festival given piquancy by disasters.

  Meanwhile, from over yonder, from the open sea, from those unreachable latitudes, from the livid horizon of these solitary wastes, from the depths of the ocean's boundless freedom, the winds are approaching.

  Beware! This is the equinox.

  A tempest is the result of a conspiracy. Ancient mythology glimpsed these indistinct personalities mingled with the whole diffused substance of nature. Aeolus was seen as conspiring with Boreas. Agreement between the one element and the other is necessary.

  They share out the task between them. Impulsions have to be given to the waves, to the clouds, to the emanations; night is an auxiliary, and use must be made of it. There are compasses to be led astray, beacons to be extinguished, lighthouses to be masked, stars to be hidden. The sea must cooperate in all this. Every storm is preceded by a murmuring. Beyond the horizon there are the preliminary whisperings of hurricanes.

  This is the sound that is heard in the darkness, far away, over the terrified silence of the sea. It was this dread whispering that Gilliatt had heard. The phosphorescence had been the first warning, the murmuring the second.

  If the demon Legion exists, it is he, undoubtedly, that is the Wind.

  The wind is multiple, but air is of one substance. In consequence all storms are mixed. The unity of air requires it.

  The whole of the abyss is involved in a tempest. The entire ocean is in a squall. All its forces are mobilized and take part in the action. A wave is the gulf below, a gust of wind the gulf above. I
n facing a gale you are facing the whole of the sea and the whole of the sky. Messier, 189 the great naval expert, the thoughtful astronomer in his cottage at Cluny, said: "The wind from everywhere is everywhere." He did not believe that winds could be imprisoned, even within landlocked seas. In his view there were no purely Mediterranean winds. He claimed to be able to recognize them in their passage. He declared that on one day, at such and such an hour, the foehn of Lake Constance, the ancient Favonius of Lucretius, had crossed the horizon of Paris; on another day the bora of the Adriatic; on another the gyratory Notus that is said to be confined to the circle of the Cyclades. He specified their various emanations. He did not think that the autan that blows between Malta and Tunis and the autan that blows between Corsica and the Balearics were unable to escape from these bounds. He did not accept that winds could be confined in cages like bears. He said: "All rain comes from the Tropics and all lightning comes from the Poles." For winds become saturated with electricity at the intersection of the meridians of the celestial sphere, which mark the ends of the earth's axis, and with water at the equator, bringing liquid from the Line and fluid from the Poles.

  Ubiquity is the name of wind.

  This does not mean, of course, that there are no particularly windy zones. Nothing has been more clearly demonstrated than the existence of such continuously blowing currents of air; and one day aerial navigation, using ships of the air--which in our mania for Greek terms we call aeroscaphs--will make use of the principal lines of this kind. The canalization of the air by the winds is beyond doubt; there are rivers of wind, streams of wind, and brooks of wind. But the ramifications of the air operate in the inverse way from the ramifications of water: the brooks branch off from the streams and the streams from the rivers rather than flow into them--producing dispersion in place of concentration.

  It is this dispersion that creates the solidarity of the winds and the unity of the atmosphere. One molecule out of place will displace another. The whole of wind moves together. To these deeper causes of amalgamation are to be added the relief pattern of the globe, intruding into the atmosphere with all its mountains, creating knots and torsions in the course of the wind, and giving rise to countercurrents in all directions: boundless irradiation. The phenomenon of wind is the oscillation of two oceans, one upon the other: the ocean of air, superimposed on the ocean of water, rests on this constant motion and wavers over the trembling element below.

  The indivisible cannot be broken up into compartments. There is no intervening wall between one wave and another. The Channel Islands feel impulses coming from the Cape of Good Hope. Shipping throughout the world is confronting a single monster. The whole of the sea is one hydra. The waves cover the sea with a kind of fish's skin. The Ocean is Ceto.190 On this unity swoops down the innumerable.

  IV

  TURBA, TURMA191

  The compass recognizes thirty-two winds; that is, thirty-two directions; but these directions can be indefinitely subdivided. Wind, classified according to direction, is incalculable; classified by types, it is infinite. This is a numbering at which Homer himself would flinch.

  The polar current encounters the tropical current; cold and hot are combined; the shock between the two creates a balance; the wave of the winds is formed, swollen, scattered, tattered in all directions into wild streams of water. The dispersal of the winds tosses to the four quarters of the horizon the prodigious dishevelment of the air.

  All the points of the compass are there: the wind of the Gulf Stream that discharges so much fog on Newfoundland; the wind of Peru, a region of silent sky where no man has ever heard thunder; the wind of Nova Scotia, the haunt of the great auk, Alca impennis, with its striped beak; the whirlwinds of Fer in the China Seas; the wind of Mozambique that handles canoes and junks so roughly; the electric wind of Japan of which warning is given by strokes on a gong; the African wind whose home is between Table Mountain and the Devil's Peak and which ranges freely from there; the equatorial wind that passes above the trade winds and describes a parabola whose highest point is always to the west; the Plutonian wind that emerges from craters in a fierce burst of flame; the strange wind peculiar to Mount Awu, which perpetually gives rise to an olive-tinted cloud in the north; the monsoon of Java, as a protection from which the casemates known as hurricane houses are built; the many-branched wind known to the English as the bush wind; the curving squalls of the Strait of Malacca that were observed by Horsburgh; the mighty southwest wind known in Chile as the pampero and in Buenos Aires as the rebojo, which carries the condor out to sea and saves it from the trench in which the savage is waiting for it, lying on his back on a freshly flayed bull's hide, bending his great bow with his feet; the chemical wind that, according to Lemery,191 forms thunder stones in the clouds; the harmattan of the Kaffirs; the snow-blower of the polar regions that harnesses itself to the ice floes and draws after it the eternal ice; the wind in the Bay of Bengal that reaches far north to Nizhny Novgorod and wreaks havoc on the triangle of timber huts in which the Asian Fair is held; the wind of the Cordilleras, stirrer-up of great waves and great forests; the wind of the archipelagos of Australia, where honey gatherers tear down the wild hives hidden under the armpits of the branches of the giant eucalyptus; the sirocco, the mistral, the hurricane; winds that bring drought; winds that bring floods, diluvian winds; torrid winds; those that deposit dust from the plains of Brazil in the streets of Genoa; those that follow a diurnal rotation and those that run counter to it and cause Herrera to remark: Malo viento toma contra el sol ;193 those that run in couples, conspiring to do mischief, one undoing what the other does; the old winds that assailed Columbus on the coast of Veraguas; those that for forty days, from October 21 to November 28, 1520, threatened to prevent Magellan from reaching the Pacific; and those that dismasted the Armada and blew against Philip II. Others still there are, but how shall they all be told? The winds carrying toads and grasshoppers that transport swarms of these creatures over the ocean; those that bring about a sudden change in the wind, whose function is to finish off shipwrecked seamen; those that, with a single gust, displace the cargo of a ship and compel it to continue on its way with a list; the winds that construct circumcumuli, and those that construct circumstrati; the heavy, blind winds swollen with rain; winds bearing hail; winds carrying fever; those that spark off the solfataras and fumaroles of Calabria; those that bring a sparkle to the coats of African panthers prowling in the scrub on the Cap de Fer;194 those that shake out of their clouds, like the tongue of a trigonocephalus, the fearful forked lightning; those that bring black snow. Such is the army of the winds.

  Their distant gallop was heard on the Douvres reef as Gilliatt was constructing his breakwater.

  As we have said, Wind is all winds. The whole of this horde was now coming.

  On one side was this legion.

  On the other, Gilliatt.

  V

  GILLIATT HAS A CHOICE

  The mysterious forces had chosen their moment well.

  Chance, if it exists, is shrewd.

  So long as the paunch was moored in the creek at the Homme rock, so long as the engines were still in the wreck, Gilliatt was impregnable. The paunch was secure and the engines were safe; the Douvres, which had the engines in their keeping, were condemning them to slow destruction but were protecting them against surprise. Whatever happened, Gilliatt still had a resource. Even if the engines were destroyed this did not destroy him. He still had the paunch to escape in.

  But by waiting until the paunch was taken out of the mooring where it could not be reached, by allowing it to enter the channel at the Douvres rocks, by doing nothing until it, too, was caught by the reef, by allowing Gilliatt to salvage, lower, and tranship the engines, by avoiding any interference with the tremendous effort that had loaded everything into the paunch, by permitting Gilliatt to succeed in his endeavor, a trap had been set. All this revealed in its sinister lineaments the somber trick practiced by the abyss.

  Now the engines, the paunch,
and Gilliatt were all together in the rock channel. They were all one. It required only a single effort, directed to the same point, to break up the paunch on the reef, send the engines to the bottom, and drown Gilliatt. Everything could be finished off in a single action, at the same time, and without any dispersal of effort; everything could be destroyed in a single blow.

  Gilliatt was now in a most critical situation. The sphinx that was imagined by dreamers to be lurking in the shadows seemed to be presenting him with a dilemma: should he stay where he was or should he leave? To leave was the act of a madman; to stay was a dread alternative.

  VI

  THE COMBAT

  Gilliatt climbed to the summit of the Great Douvre. From there he could see the whole of the sea.

  The view to the west was surprising. A wall was building up; a great wall of cloud, barring the whole expanse from one side to the other, was rising slowly from the horizon to the zenith. Rectilinear, vertical, without a crack or crevice in its whole height, without a break in its coping, it seemed to have been constructed with the aid of a set square and a plumb line. It was a cloud with the appearance of granite. The steep face of the cloud, which was absolutely perpendicular at the south end, sloped a little toward the north like a bent sheet of iron, with the gradual slant of an inclined plane. The bank of fog grew wider and increased in height, its entablature always remaining parallel to the line of the horizon, which was almost indistinguishable in the gathering darkness. This wall of air rose all in one piece, in silence. Not an undulation, not a wrinkle, not a projection moving or altering its shape: an immobility in movement that gave it an aspect of gloom. The sun, shining palely through a strange sickly transparency, threw a dim light on this apocalyptic vision. The clouds were already invading almost half the space, shelving like a terrifying slope into the abyss. It was like the emergence of a mountain of shadow between earth and sky. It was the ascent of night in the full light of day.