The Toilers of the Sea

by Victor Hugo

  The air was like the hot breath of an oven. The mysterious accumulation of cloud gave off the misty vapors of a steam bath. The sky, which from blue had become white, had now changed from white to gray and taken on the look of a gigantic slate. The sea, below, was dull and leaden, like another great slate. There was not a breath of wind, not a wave on the sea, not a sound. As far as the eye could reach stretched an empty waste. Not a sail in any direction. The birds had gone into hiding. There was a smell of treason in the infinite. The enlargement of this great area of shadow was proceeding imperceptibly.

  The moving mountain of vapors that was heading for the Douvres was one of those clouds that could be called battle clouds; sinister clouds, too. Through these obscure masses a mysterious squinting eye seemed to be watching. This slow advance was terrifying. Gilliatt stared at the cloud, muttering under his breath: "I'm thirsty: you're going to give me something to drink."

  He remained motionless for some moments, his eye fixed on the cloud. He looked as if he was sizing up the storm.

  His cap was in the pocket of his pea jacket; he took it out and put it on. From the recess in the rock where he had slept for so many nights he took out his store of clothes and put on his leggings and oilskin coat, like a knight buckling on his armor at the moment of action. It will be remembered that he had lost his shoes, but his feet had been hardened on the rocks.

  Having thus prepared for war, he looked down at his breakwater, grasped the knotted rope, descended from the Great Douvre to the rock below, and made straight for his storeroom. A few moments later he was at work. The huge silent cloud could now hear the blows of his hammer. What was he doing? With his remaining stocks of nails, ropes, and timber he was constructing at the east end of the channel a second openwork barrier some ten or twelve feet to the rear of the first one.

  There was still a profound silence. The tufts of grass growing in crevices in the rock were not moving.

  Suddenly the sun disappeared. Gilliatt raised his head.

  The rising cloud had just reached the sun. It was as if daylight had been extinguished, to be replaced by confused and pallid reflections.

  The wall of cloud had changed its aspect. It had lost its unity. It had formed horizontal wrinkles as it reached the zenith, from which it overhung the rest of the sky. It had broken down into different levels, and the formation of the storm was displayed like the cross section of a trench. Layers of rain and beds of hail could be distinguished. There was no lightning, but a horrible diffused light--for the idea of horror can be attached to the idea of light. The vague breathing of the storm could be heard. In this silence there was an obscure palpitation. Gilliatt, no less silent, watched as all these blocks of fog formed above his head and the deformity of the clouds took shape. On the horizon lay, steadily expanding, a band of ash-gray mist, and at the zenith a band the color of lead; over the mists below hung livid rags from the clouds above. The whole background--the wall of cloud--was wan, milky, sallow, gloomy, indescribable. A thin, whitish patch of cloud, coming from who knows where, cut obliquely across the high dark wall from north to south. One end of this cloud hung down into the sea. At the point where it touched the confusion of waves, a dense red vapor was discernible in the darkness. Under the long pale swathe of cloud, low down, smaller dark-colored clouds were flying in different directions as if uncertain which way to go. The massive cloud that formed the background was growing in all directions at the same time, increasingly eclipsing the sun, on which it maintained its lugubrious hold. To the east, behind Gilliatt, there remained only one patch of clear sky, and this was closing in rapidly. Though there seemed to be no wind, strange flecks of grayish down, scattered and fragmented, were sailing across the sky, as if some gigantic bird had just been plucked behind the wall of darkness. A ceiling of compact blackness had formed and on the distant horizon was touching the sea and mingling with the night. There was a feeling as if something was moving forward-- something vast and ponderous and sinister. The darkness was growing denser. Suddenly there was an immense peal of thunder.

  Gilliatt himself felt the shock. There is something dreamlike in thunder. This brutal reality in the region of visions is terrifying. It is like the upsetting of some piece of furniture in the abode of giants.

  The crash was not accompanied by any electric flash: it was like black thunder. Then silence returned. There was a kind of interval, as when hostile forces are taking up their ground. Then there appeared, slowly, one after the other, great shapeless flashes. They were quite noiseless, unaccompanied by any roll of thunder. At each flash the whole scene was illuminated. The wall of cloud had now become a cavern, with arches and vaulted halls. Outlines of figures could be descried--monstrous heads, necks stretching forward, elephants with their howdahs, glimpsed and then vanishing. A column of fog, straight, round, and black, surmounted by a puff of white vapor, simulated the funnel of some colossal steamer engulfed by the sea, still with steam up and smoking. Sheets of cloud, waving, were like the folds of huge flags. In the center, under a vermilion mass, a nucleus of dense fog hung inert and motionless, impenetrable to electric sparks--a kind of hideous fetus in the womb of the tempest.

  Suddenly Gilliatt felt a breath of wind ruffling his hair. Three or four large spiders of rain splashed down on the rock around him. Then there was a second peal of thunder. The wind rose.

  The expectancy of darkness was at its peak. The first peal of thunder had shaken the sea; the second split the wall of cloud from top to bottom, a rent opened up, the shower hanging in the air turned in that direction, the crevice turned into an open mouth filled with rain, and the vomiting of the tempest began.

  It was a fearful moment.

  Rain, hurricane, fulgurations, fulminations, waves reaching up to the clouds, foam, detonations, frantic torsions, roars, hoarse cries, whistling--all at the same time. Monsters unleashed.

  The wind was blowing like thunder. The rain was not falling: it was tumbling down.

  For an unfortunate man, caught up like Gilliatt, with a heavily laden boat, between two rocks in the midst of the sea, it was a moment of desperate crisis. The danger from the tide, which Gilliatt had overcome, was as nothing compared with the danger from the tempest.

  Gilliatt, surrounded on every side by precipices, now revealed, at the last moment and in face of supreme peril, a well-conceived strategy. He had taken up his stance in the very territory of the enemy; he had made the reef his partner; the Douvres, hitherto his adversary, were now his second in this immense duel. He had made them his base. Instead of a sepulchre, they had become his fortress. He had entrenched himself in this formidable dwelling in the sea. He was under siege, but strongly defended. He was, as it were, with his back to the wall of the reef, face-to-face with the hurricane. He had barricaded the channel through the reef, that street amid the waves. It was all he could do. It seems that the ocean, which is a despot, can, like other despots, be brought to reason by barricades. The paunch could be regarded as secure on three sides. Tightly wedged between the two inner walls of the reef, firmly held by three anchors, it was sheltered on the north by the Little Douvre and on the south by the Great Douvre-- two wild rock faces more accustomed to causing shipwrecks than to preventing them. On the west it was protected by the framework of beams moored and nailed to the rocks, a tried and tested barrier that had withstood the rough assault of the rising tide--a fortress gate with the two pillars of the reef, the Douvres, as its jambs. There was nothing to be feared on that side. The point of danger was to the east.

  At the east end there was only the breakwater. A breakwater is a device for breaking up the force of the waves. It ought to have at least two openwork frames. Gilliatt had had time only to make one, and he was now building the second in the teeth of the tempest.

  Fortunately the wind, which is sometimes ill-judged in its assaults, was coming from the northwest. This--the wind once known as the galerne--had little effect on the Douvres. It blew across the reef, and thus did not drive the sea agains
t either end of the defile that cut through it, so that instead of entering a street it came up against a wall. The storm's attack was ill directed.

  But the wind's attacks tend to curve around, and it was necessary to be prepared for a change in its direction. If it should veer to the east before the second panel of the breakwater was constructed, there would be grave danger. The tempest would then be able to invade the channel between the rocks, and all would be lost.

  The storm was still increasing in violence. A tempest heaps blow on blow: that is its strength, but it is also its weakness. Its very fury makes it vulnerable to human intelligence, and man is able to defend himself. But what force, what monstrous power, is directed against him! No respite, no interruption, no truce, no time to draw breath. There is some cowardice in this prodigality with inexhaustible resources. It is surely the lungs of the infinite that are breathing.

  All this tumultuous immensity was hurling itself against the Douvres reef. Voices without number could be heard. Whose cries were these? The panic fear of the ancients had come again. At times it sounded like talking, as if someone were issuing commands. Then came clamors, the sound of clarions, strange trepidations, and that great majestic roar that seamen term the call of the ocean. The indefinite, fleeting spirals of the wind whistled as they churned up the sea; the waves, shaped into disc form by this whirling movement, were hurled against the rocks like gigantic quoits thrown by invisible athletes. Great masses of foam whipped wildly against the rocks. Torrents above; spittle below. Then the roaring redoubled. No sound from either human or animal throats could give any idea of the din mingled with these dislocations of the sea. The clouds were thundering, the hailstones were firing salvoes, the waves were surging to the attack. At some points there seemed to be no movement; elsewhere the wind was traveling at twenty fathoms a second. As far as the eye could reach the sea was white; the horizon was lined with ten leagues of lather. Gates of fire were opening up. Some clouds looked as if they were being burned by others; lying on heaped-up reddish clouds that seemed like red-hot embers, they had the appearance of smoke. Floating formations of cloud ran into one another and amalgamated, each altering the shape of the other. Incommensurable quantities of water were streaming down. The rattle of musketry was heard in the firmament. In the center of the ceiling of darkness there was a kind of vast upturned basket from which fell at random whirlwinds, hail, clouds, purple tinges, phosphoric lights, night, light, thunder--so formidable are these tiltings of the abyss!

  Gilliatt appeared to pay no attention to all this. His head was bent over his work. The second openwork frame was beginning to rise. He responded to each peal of thunder with a blow of his hammer; this regular beat could be heard above the surrounding chaos. He was bareheaded, for a gust of wind had whipped off his cap.

  He had a burning thirst. He probably had a touch of fever. Pools of rainwater had formed around him in holes in the rock, and from time to time he took up a mouthful of water in his palm and drank it. Then, without even looking to see how the storm was getting on, he returned to his task.

  A moment might decide on success or failure. He knew what was awaiting him if he did not finish his breakwater in time. What was the use of wasting even a minute in watching the face of the death that was approaching?

  The turmoil around him was like a boiling cauldron. There was noise and tumult on every side. Every now and then there was a roll of thunder, sounding as if it was descending a staircase. The electric shocks returned incessantly to the same points on the rock, where there were probably veins of diorite. There were hailstones as big as a man's fist. Gilliatt had repeatedly to shake out the folds in his pea jacket. Even his pockets were filled with hail.

  The storm had now veered around to the west and was beating against the barrier between the two Douvres; but Gilliatt had confidence in his barricade, and with reason. Constructed from the large section of the forward part of the Durande, it yielded to the shock of the waves. Elasticity is a form of resistance; and the calculations of Stevenson195 have shown that as a defense against waves, which themselves are elastic, a timber structure of appropriate size, fitted together and secured in the right way, is a more effective obstacle than a masonry breakwater. The barrier at the Douvres met these requirements; and it was so ingeniously anchored that a wave striking it acted like a hammer driving in a nail, pushing it against the rock and consolidating it; it could be demolished only by overturning the Douvres. All that the storm could do to the paunch, therefore, was to cast a few flecks of foam onto it over the obstacle. On that side of the reef, thanks to the breakwater, the tempest was reduced to spitting in impotent rage. Gilliatt turned his back on it, happy to feel this ineffectual fury behind him.

  The flecks of foam flying on all sides were like wool. The vast angry ocean poured over the rocks, mounting onto them, entering into them, penetrating into the network of fissures within them, and emerged from the granite masses through narrow crevices--inexhaustible mouths that formed small tranquil fountains amid the deluge. Here and there threads of silver fell gracefully from these holes into the sea.

  The additional frame reinforcing the barrier at the east end of the channel was now almost complete, requiring only a few knots in the ropes and chains, and the moment was approaching when this barrier would be able to play its part in the struggle.

  Suddenly the sky brightened, the rain ceased, the clouds broke up. The wind had changed; a kind of tall crepuscular window opened at the zenith, and the lightning stopped. It looked like the end. It was the beginning.

  The wind had veered from southwest to northeast.

  The tempest was about to begin again, with a new troop of hurricanes. The north was moving to the attack, and it would be a violent assault. The south wind has more water, the north wind more thunder.

  Now the attack, coming from the east, was going to be directed against the weak spot in Gilliatt's defenses. This time he interrupted his work and looked around him.

  He took up his position on a projecting rock to the rear of the second openwork frame, now almost completed. If the first part of the breakwater were to be carried away it would destroy the second part, which was not yet consolidated, and would crush Gilliatt along with it. In the position that he had chosen he would be destroyed before seeing the paunch and the Durande's engines and the whole of his work engulfed and lost. This was the eventuality that had to be faced. Gilliatt accepted it and, defiantly, willed it.

  In this shipwreck of his hopes all that he wanted was to die first--to be the first to die, for to him the engines were like a person. Brushing off with his left hand the hair that had been plastered over his eyes by the rain, he seized hold of his stout hammer with his right, leaned back, as if threatening the storm as the storm was threatening him, and waited.

  He had not long to wait.

  The signal was given by a peal of thunder; then the pallid opening in the zenith closed, there was a deluge of rain, the whole sky darkened, and the only illumination left was the lightning. The dread attack had begun in earnest.

  A massive swell, visible in the repeated flashes of lightning, mounted in the east, beyond the Homme rock. It was like a great rolling cylinder of glass. Glaucous, without a fleck of foam, it stretched across the whole of the sea. It was advancing on the breakwater, and as it approached it grew in size; it was like a huge cylinder of darkness rolling over the ocean. The thunder rumbled dully on.

  The great wave reached the Homme rock, broke in two, and swept on beyond it. The two portions joined up again to form a single mountain of water, which was no longer parallel to the breakwater but at right angles to it. It was a wave in the form of a massive timber beam. This battering ram hurled itself against the breakwater in a thunderous shock. Nothing could be seen for the shower of foam.

  Only those who have seen them can imagine these avalanches in which the sea shrouds itself and with which it engulfs rocks more than a hundred feet in height, like the Grand Anderlo on Guernsey and the Pinnacle on J
ersey. At Sainte-Marie in Madagascar it leaps over Tintingue Point.

  For some moments everything was obscured by the mountainous sea. Nothing could be seen but a furious accumulation, an immense blanket of froth, the whiteness of a winding-sheet whirling in the wind of a tomb, a piled-up mass of noise and storm under which extermination was at work.

  The foam cleared. Gilliatt was still standing erect.

  The barrier had held firm. Not a chain was broken, not a nail dislodged. Under the onslaught of the sea it had shown the two qualities of a breakwater: it had been as flexible as a wicker hurdle and as solid as a wall. The swell had been dissolved into rain. A rivulet of foam, coursing along the zigzags of the channel, died away under the paunch at the far end.

  The man who had put this muzzle on the ocean allowed himself no rest. Fortunately, for a short space, the storm turned aside. The fury of the waves turned back against the rock walls of the reef, offering a respite. Gilliatt took advantage of it to complete the rear openwork panel of the breakwater.

  This labor occupied the rest of the day. The storm continued its violent assault on the flanks of the reef with lugubrious solemnity. The urn of water and the urn of fire contained within the clouds continued to pour out their contents without ever running dry. The undulations of the wind, upward and downward, were like the movements of a dragon.

  When night fell, it was already there; no difference was perceptible.

  The darkness, however, was not total. Tempests, which are both illuminated and blinded by lightning, are intermittently visible and invisible. Everything is white, and then everything is black. Visions depart and darkness returns.

  A swathe of phosphorus, red with the redness of the northern lights, floated like a rag of spectral flame behind the dense layers of cloud, creating a vast area of pallor. The great sheets of rain were luminous.