The Toilers of the Sea

by Victor Hugo

Religion, society, nature: such are the three struggles in which man is engaged. These three struggles are, at the same time, his three needs. He must believe: hence the temple. He must create: hence the city. He must live: hence the plow and the ship. But these three solutions contain within them three wars. The mysterious difficulty of life springs from all three. Man is confronted with obstacles in the form of superstition, in the form of prejudice, and in the form of the elements.

Solitude adds a quality to simple people, and gives them a certain complication. They become imbued, unconsciously, with a sacred awe. The shadowy area in which Gilliatt’s mind constantly dwelt was composed, in almost equal parts, of two elements, both of them obscure but very different from each other: within him ignorance and weakness; without, mystery and immensity.

He went so far as to observe sleep. Sleep is in contact with the possible, which we also call the improbable. The nocturnal world is a world of its own. Night, as night, is a universe. The material human organism, living under the weight of a fifteen-league-high column of air, is tired at the end of the day, it is overcome by lassitude, it lies down, it rests; the eyes of the flesh close; then in this sleeping head, which is less inert than is generally believed, other eyes open; the Unknown appears. The dark things of this unknown world come closer to man, whether because there is a real communication between the two worlds or because the distant recesses of the abyss undergo a visionary enlargement. It seems then that the impalpable living creatures of space come to look at us and are curious about us, the living creatures of earth; a phantom creation ascends or descends to our level and rubs shoulders with us in a dim twilight; in our spectral contemplation a life other than our own, made up of ourselves and of something else, forms and disintegrates; and the sleeper—not wholly aware, not quite unconscious—catches a glimpse of these strange forms of animal life, these extraordinary vegetations, these pallid beings, ghastly or smiling, these phantoms, these masks, these faces, these hydras, these confusions, this moonlight without a moon, these dark decompositions of wonder, these growths and shrinkings in a dense obscurity, these floating forms in the shadows, all this ...

The human body is perhaps nothing more than an appearance. It conceals our reality. It solidifies over the light and shadow of our life. The reality is the soul. In absolute terms, our face is a mask. The real man is what exists under the man. If we were able to perceive that man crouching, sheltered, behind that illusion that we call the flesh, we should have many a surprise. The common error is to take the external being for the real one. Some girl we know, for example, if we were to see her as she really is, would appear in the form of a bird. A bird in the form of a girl: what could be more exquisite? Just imagine that you have one in your own home. Take, for example, Déruchette. What a charming creature! One would be tempted to say to her, “Good morning, Mademoiselle Wagtail!” You do not see her wings, but you hear her twittering. Now and then she sings. In her chattering she is below mankind; in her singing she is above it. There is a mystery in this singing; a virgin is the mortal habiliment of an angel. When she develops into a woman the angel departs; but later it returns, bringing back a small soul to the mother. While waiting for life to begin, she who will one day be a mother long remains a child; the little girl continues to exist within the young woman, and now she is a warbler. Looking at her, we think, How good of her not to fly away! This sweet familiar being moves freely about the house, from branch to branch—that is to say, from room to room—going in and...

Déruchette was gaiety itself as she flitted about the house, creating a perpetual spring. She was beautiful, but more pretty than beautiful, and more sweet than pretty. She reminded the good old pilots who were Mess Lethierry’s friends of the princess in a soldiers’ and sailors’ song— Qui était si belle qu’elle passait pour telle Dans le régiment.

What is a husband? He is the captain in charge of a voyage. Why should the girl and the boat not have the same master? A household is subject to the tides. If you can manage a boat you can manage a woman. They are both ruled by the moon and the wind.

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.

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.

A well-timed outburst of anger is a way of throwing off responsibility, and sometimes of transferring it.

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.

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

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 enterprise inexorably reveals what it entails. The difficulty to which we set our hands pricks like a thorn.

To bend obstacles to your will is a great step toward success. The wind was Gilliatt’s enemy: he would make it his servant.

The empty waste, the boundless expanse, the space in which there are so many forms of rejection for man, the mute inclemency of natural phenomena pursuing their regular courses, the great general law of things, implacable and passive, the ebb and flow of the tides, the reef, this black constellation of stars in whirling movement, the focal point of an irradiation of currents, the mysterious conspiracy of things against the temerity of a living being, the winter, the clouds, the besieging sea—all this enveloped Gilliatt, surrounded him, seemed to be closing in on him, separating him from living beings in the manner of a dungeon building up around a man. Everything was against him, nothing was for him; he was isolated, abandoned, enfeebled, broken down, forgotten. His stores gone, his tools broken and defective, he suffered thirst and hunger by day and cold at night; covered with rags, his clothes threadbare—rags over festering sores; holes in his clothing and in his flesh, his hands torn, his feet bloody, his limbs emaciated, his face pallid; but there was a flame in his eyes.

A proud flame; a man’s will made visible. A man’s eye reveals his quality. It shows how much of a man there is within us. We declare ourselves by the light that gleams under our eyebrows. Petty spirits merely wink; great spirits emit a flash of lightning. If there is no brilliance under the eyelid, there is no thought in the brain, no love in the heart. A man who loves exerts his will, and a man who exerts his will radiates light and brilliance. Resolution puts fire in the glance: a noble fire that results from the combustion of timid thoughts.

Sublime characters are stubborn. A man who is merely brave has only one method of action, a man who is merely valiant has only one temperament, a man who is merely courageous has only one virtue; greatness is reserved for the man who is stubborn in pursuing the right course. Almost th...

Perseverance is to courage what the wheel is to the lever; it is a perpetual renewal of the fulcrum. Whether the objective be on earth or in heaven, the only thing that matters is to make for that objective; the former case is for Columbus, the latter for Jesus. The cross is mad: hence its glory. To achieve suffering and triumph, it is necessary to leave no room for argument with one’s conscience and to allow no relaxation of one’s will. In the sphere of morality a fall does not exclude the possibility of soaring. A fall is the starting point of a rise. The second-rate allow themselves to be put off by apparent obstacles; the strong do not. For them the prospect of perishing is merely a possibility; the prospect of conquering is a certitu...

All Gilliatt’s efforts seemed to be concentrated on the impossible. Success was meager or slow in coming, and much effort was required to obtain very little result. This was what showed his greatness of spirit; this was what was so poignant about his situation. That so much preparation, so much work, so much fumbling effort, so many nights of uncomfortable sleep, so many days of labor had been necessary to rig up four beams over the wreck of a ship, to cut up and set aside all that was worth saving in the ship, and to suspend this wreck within a wreck from four hoists with their cables: this was the terrible thing about his solitary labor. Fatality in the cause; necessity in the effect. Gilliatt had not only accepted this: he had wanted it. Fearful of a competitor, since a competitor might have been a rival, he had not sought any assistant. The whole crushing enterprise, the risk, the danger, the toil that was daily increasing, the possibility that the salvager might be engulfed in his salvage, the hunger, the fever, the nakedness, the distress—in his egotism he had chosen all these things for himself. It was as if he were in a terrifying bell-glass from which the air was being ...