The Toilers of the Sea

by Victor Hugo

But there is no city there, no temple, no fortress—only the cliffs. As you draw closer or move farther away, as you drift off or turn back, the coast falls to pieces. No kaleidoscope is quicker to disintegrate. The view breaks apart and re-forms; perspective plays its tricks. This block of rock is a tripod; then it is a lion; then it is an angel and unfolds its wings; then it is a seated figure reading a book. Nothing changes form so quickly as clouds, except perhaps rocks.

There is a theater. The entrance is a doorway in a deserted street giving access to a corridor. The interior is rather in the style of architecture adopted for haylofts. Satan lives here in very modest style and is poorly lodged.

Opposite the theater is the prison, another lodging of the same individual.

Is it possible to speak of Voltaire calmly and with justice? When a man dominates an age and incarnates progress, he cannot expect criticism: only hatred.

A new bride does not leave her house for a week after her marriage except to go to church: a taste of prison adds spice to the honeymoon. Besides, a certain modesty is in order. Marriage involves so few formalities that it is easily concealed.

Taxes, curiously, are assessed on the total fortune, actual or surmised, of the taxpayer. This has the disadvantage of not attracting great consumers to the island. Monsieur de Rothschild, if he owned a pretty cottage on Guernsey that had cost some 20,000 francs, would pay an annual 1.5 million francs in tax. It must be added that if he lived there only five months in the year he would pay nothing. It is the sixth month that is to be dreaded.

Absolute freedom: it is a magnificent spectacle. You can argue about a judicial decision. Just as you can preach to the priest, you can judge the judge. The papers can say: “Yesterday the court reached an iniquitous decision.” A possible judicial error, surprisingly, has no claim to respect. Human justice is open to dispute just as is divine revelation. Individual independence can scarcely go further. Each man is his own sovereign, not by law but by custom. This is sovereignty so complete and so intrinsic to life that it is no longer felt. Law has become breathable: it is as colorless, imperceptible, and as necessary as air.

There is one exception to this liberty: only one, which we have already noted. The tyrant of England has the same name as Don Juan’s creditor: it is Sunday. The English are the people for whom time is money, but Sunday, the tyrant, reduces the working week to six days: that is, it deprives them of a seventh of their capital. And there is no possibility of resistance. Sunday rules by custom, which is more despotic than law. Sunday, that king of England, has as his Prince of Wales the dullness known as spleen. He has the power to create boredom. He closes workshops, laboratories, libraries, museums, and theaters, and almost closes gardens and forests, too.

There is an autumn for the fall of prejudices. It is the time for the decline of monarchies.

And since, in the view of many people, and particularly of state religions, to hate our enemies is the best way of loving ourselves, Catholicism should be much loved in the Channel Islands.

Risking your life is of no consequence when you are on your own; but the question changes when you are part of a family unit. In a hurricane and in darkness, when out at sea a ship is in distress and there is a chance that anyone going to its aid may not return, the pilot finds himself caught between two shipwrecks, the shipwreck of the seamen in danger who without him will perish, and the shipwreck of his children, who without him will die. It is a fearful dilemma. He has to think of his family. This means that heroism is for sale; a man is not an angel of salvation free of charge; he has his price.

Everything limits man, but nothing stops him. He responds to limits by jumping over them. The impossible is a frontier that is perpetually receding.

A geological formation that has at its base the mud of the Deluge and at its summit the eternal snows is, for man, a wall like any other: he cuts through it and continues beyond. He slashes an isthmus, subdues a volcano, cuts away a cliff, mines the rock for minerals, breaks up a promontory into small pieces. Once upon a time he did all this work for Xerxes;65 nowadays, less foolish, he does it for himself. This diminution of foolishness is called progress.

And the books that he had inherited from the dead woman, and that he read, were disturbing, too. When the Reverend Jaquemin Hérode, rector of St. Sampson’s, had been in the house for the woman’s funeral, he had read on the spines of the books the titles of Rosier’s Dictionary, Voltaire’s Candide, and Tissot’s Advice to the People on Health. 74 A French noble, an émigré who had come to live in St. Sampson, declared that this must have been the Tissot who had carried the Princesse de Lamballe’s head on a pike. The reverend gentleman had also noticed on one of the books the daunting and threatening title De Rhubarbaro. It must be said, however, that since this work, as the title indicates, was written in Latin, it was doubtful whether Gilliatt, who knew no Latin, read it. But it is just those books that a man does not read that provide evidence against him. The Spanish Inquisition considered this point and put the matter beyond doubt.

In fact the book was merely Dr. Tilingius’s treatise on rhubarb, published in Germany in 1679.

There is an Indian fable that tells how Brahma asked Strength, “Who is stronger than you?” The reply was “Cunning.” And there is a Chinese proverb: “What could the lion not do if he were a monkey?” Gilliatt was neither a lion nor a monkey; but his actions gave some warrant to the Chinese proverb and the Hindu fable. He was of ordinary height and ordinary strength, but was able, thanks to his inventive and powerful dexterity, to lift weights that might have taxed a giant and perform feats that would have done credit to an athlete. There was something of the gymnast about him; and he used both his right and his left hand with equal skill.

The last one to try was noted for having rowed a boat across the dangerous narrows between Sark and Brecqhou in heavy seas. Streaming with sweat, he brought the paunch back, saying: “It can’t be done.” Then Gilliatt got into the boat, took hold of the oar and then the mainsheet, and put to sea. He did not bitt the sheet, which would have been unwise, but neither did he let it go, which kept him in control of the sail, and, leaving the boom to move with the wind without drifting, he took hold of the tiller with his left hand. In three-quarters of an hour he was at Herm. Three hours later, although a strong south wind had sprung up and was blowing across the seaway, he brought the boat back to St. Sampson with its load of stones. As an extra, in a show of bravado, he had added to his cargo the little bronze cannon that the people of Herm fire off every year on the fifth of November in celebration of the death of Guy Fawkes. Guy Fawkes, it may be noted in passing, died 260 years ago: long-continued rejoicings indeed!

He was now just a harmless old fellow, rheumaticky and comfortably off. These two products of a man’s labor often come together. At the very moment when you become rich you are paralyzed. That rounds off your life. Then men say to themselves: “Let us enjoy life.”

Mess Lethierry would not give way. He would no more be stopped by a rearing wave than by a quarrelsome neighbor. What he said was said; what he planned to do was done. He would not bend before an objection nor before a storm at sea. For him the word no did not exist, either in the mouth of a man or the rumbling of a thundercloud. He pressed on regardless. He would take no refusals. Hence his obstinacy in life and his intrepidity on the ocean.

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.

If there is one thing that has more resemblance to us than our face, it is the look on our face; and if there is one thing that has more resemblance to us than the look on our face, it is our smile. Déruchette smiling was simply Déruchette.

She perhaps did not know the meaning of the word love, but she liked people to fall in love with her.

She had an open forehead, a simple and tempting neck, chestnut hair, a fair skin with a few freckles in summer, a wide, healthy mouth, and on that mouth the adorable and dangerous brightness of her smile. Such was Déruchette.

People did not accept these new inventions so calmly in the first quarter of this century, and these vessels with their smoke were particularly disliked by the Channel Islanders. In this puritanical archipelago, where the queen of England has been accused of violating the Bible by giving birth with the help of chloroform,96 the steamship immediately became known as the devil boat.

To the worthy fishermen of those days—formerly Catholics, now Calvinists, but always bigots—it was seen as hell afloat. A local preacher took as his text, “Is it right to let water and fire, which were divided by God, work together?”97 Did not this beast of fire and iron resemble Leviathan? Were we not re-creating Chaos on a human scale? This was not the first time that the advance of progress had been called a return to chaos.

Learned men had rejected the steamship as impossible; the priests for their part rejected it as impious. Science had condemned it; religion damned it. Fulton was a variant of Lucifer.

No one, at that remote period, was daring enough for such an enterprise—a steamship sailing between Guernsey and Saint-Malo—except Mess Lethierry. He alone, as an independent thinker, was able to conceive the plan and, as a hardy seaman, to carry it out. The French part of his nature had the idea; the English part put it into execution.

He was capable of anything, and of worse than that.

Every embryo conceived by science has a double aspect: as a fetus it is a monster, as the germ of something more it is a marvel.

This ladder, starting from the ground, continues into the empyrean. The whole of hierarchical England comes into it at their appropriate levels. These are the various rungs, increasingly glorious as they go up: above the gentleman (the equivalent of Monsieur) is the esquire, above the esquire the knight (with the title Sir for life); then, still higher up, the baronet (with the hereditary title Sir), then the lord (laird in Scotland), then the baron, then the viscount, then the earl (count in France, jail in Norway), then the marquis, then the duke, then the peer, then the prince of the blood royal, then the king. The ladder ascends from the common people to the middle classes, from the middle classes to the baronetage, from the baronetage to the peerage, from the peerage to royalty.

Mess Lethierry saw this slightly misshapen block of wood with the eyes of illusion. He looked on it with the reverence of a believer. He sincerely believed that it was a perfect likeness of Déruchette—in much the same way as a dogma resembles a truth and an idol resembles God.

Mess Lethierry had one fault; a serious one. He hated, not someone, but something—the priesthood. One day, reading—for he was a reader—Voltaire—for he read Voltaire—the words, “Priests are cats,” he put down the book and could be heard muttering under his breath, “Then I’m a dog.”

In Germany, for example in Heidelberg, they make less fuss: they cut the church in two, one half for St. Peter and the other for Calvin, with a partition between them to prevent any quarrels. They have equal shares: three altars for the Catholics and three altars for the Huguenots; and since they have services at the same times one bell rings for both, summoning worshipers to God and the Devil at the same time. It is certainly a simplification.

New ideas suffer from the disadvantage that everyone is against them, and the slightest thing that goes wrong discredits them.

“The proposition you have in mind is a conversion—the conversion of money into smoke.”

His wife had been an honest woman as he was an honest man. She had died with a reputation for unassailable virtue. If the bailiff had tried to trifle with her she would have reported him to the king. If the good Lord himself had been in love with her she would have told the curé.

day. He spoke English to a smuggler and had a smattering of Spanish for a contrabandista. He had a variety of aphorisms to justify this: “You can get some good out of knowing evil.”—“The gamekeeper can learn something from the poacher.”—“The pilot must take soundings of the pirate, who is a kind of hidden reef.”—“I taste a rascal as a doctor tastes poison.” These statements were unanswerable. Everyone agreed that Captain Clubin was right.

To the questions posed by our reason are added others suggested by our reverie. This field is suitable for cultivation: why is it not cultivated? The house has no master. The doorway is walled up. What is wrong with this place? Why do men shun it? What is going on here? If nothing is going on, why is there no one here? When everyone is asleep is there anyone awake here? The sight of this house calls up images of dark and gloomy squalls, the wind, birds of prey, lurking animals, unknown beings. What wayfarers does this hostelry cater to?

These rooms, whether their windows are walled up or open, are visited by the hurricane. Has some crime been committed here? Surely at night this house, abandoned to darkness, must call for help? Does it remain silent? Are voices heard coming from it? With whom does it have to do in this solitude?

The darkness of these forbidden rooms is more than darkness: it is the unknown.

This reef is famous. It has done all the evil deeds that a rock can do. It was one of the most redoubtable killers in the sea.

In 1862 a lighthouse was built on the reef. Nowadays it shows a light to the ships that it formerly led astray; what used to be a trap now bears a torch. Seamen scan the horizon for this rock, now a protector and a guide, which they formerly shunned as an evildoer. It now reassures the vast nocturnal expanses in which it formerly inspired fear. It is rather like a robber turned gendarme.

They had a French boy with them, and this emboldened them to approach the house. It is well known that the French believe in nothing. Besides, when there are several of you in danger, this is reassuring; when there are three of you afraid, this gives you courage.

“Will Blasquito obey his passenger?” “If the sea obeys Blasquito.” “He will be well paid.” “Gold is gold. The sea is the sea.” “That is true.” “A man with gold can do what he wants. God, with the wind, does what he wants.”

Sieur Clubin went on: “I told you I would be satisfied with three thousand pounds. You can have the ten pounds back.” And he threw Rantaine the note wrapped around the pebble. Rantaine kicked the banknote and the pebble into the sea. “As you please,” said Clubin. “I see you must be well off. I needn’t worry about you.”

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.

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.

“Is it the case, sir, that you are fond of using nicknames in America, so much so that you apply them to all your famous people, and call your celebrated Missouri banker Thomas Benton ‘Old Bullion’?” “Yes, sir—just as we call Zachary Taylor ‘Old Rough and Ready.’ ” “And General Harrison ‘Old Tip’—isn’t that so?—and General Jackson ‘Old Hickory’?” “Because Jackson is as tough as hickory wood, and because Harrison beat the redskins at Tippecanoe.” “It’s a very odd fashion.” “It’s just our way. We call Van Buren the ‘Little Magician’; Seward is called ‘Little Billy’ because he introduced small dollar bills; and Douglas, the Democratic senator for Illinois, who is four feet tall but a great orator, is the ‘Little Giant.’ You can go from Texas to Maine, but you will never find anyone using the name Cass: it is always the ‘big man from Michigan.’ And Clay is known as the ‘Mill-Boy of the Slashes’: his father was a miller.” “I would rather say Clay or Cass,” said the man from Paris. “It’s shorter.” “You would show you didn’t know what was what. Corwin, who is secretary of the Treasury, is the ‘Wagon Boy.’ Daniel Webster is ‘Black Dan.’ And Winfield Scott, whose first thought after beating the English at Chippeway was to call for a plate of soup, is called ‘Marshal Tureen.’ ”

“God is absent from our world. They ought to pass a decree compelling him to stay in residence. He’s in his country house and doesn’t care about us. And so everything is going askew. It is clear, my dear sir, that God is no longer in charge; he is on holiday, and the business is being run by some deputy, some angel trained in a seminary, some imbecile with the wings of a sparrow.”

For thirty years he had borne the burden of his hypocrisy. Being himself evil, he had coupled with integrity. He hated virtue with the hatred of a man who has married the wrong wife.