The Man Who Laughs

by Victor Hugo

  In such cases the question of life and death is balanced thus; if the wave carries the vessel on the rock, she breaks on it and is lost; if the billow retires before the ship has touched, she is carried back, she is saved.

  It was a moment of great anxiety; those on board saw through the gloom the great decisive wave bearing down on them. How far was it going to drag them? If the wave broke upon the ship, they were carried on the rock and dashed to pieces. If it passed under the ship.

  The wave did pass under.

  They breathed again.

  But what of the recoil? What would the surf do with them? The surf carried them back. A few minutes later the Matutina was free of the breakers. The Ortach faded from their view, as the Caskets had done. It was their second victory. For the second time the hooker had verged on destruction, and had drawn back in time.

  [1] Guafrier, the iron with which a person is traced on stuff. -- Translator.

  * * *

  XV

  PORTENTOSUM MARE

  MEANWHILE A THICKENING mist had descended on the drifting wretches. They were ignorant of their whereabout, they could scarcely see a cable's-length around. Despite a furious storm of hail which forced them to bend down their heads, the women had obstinately refused to go below again. No one, however hopeless, but wishes, if shipwreck be inevitable, to meet it in the open air. When so near death, a ceiling above one's head seems like the first outline of a coffin.

  They were now in a short and chopping sea. A turgid sea indicates its constraint. Even in a fog the entrance into a strait may be known by the boiling-like appearance of the waves. And thus it was, for they were unconsciously coasting Aurigny. Between the west of Ortach and the Caskets and the east of Aurigny the sea is hemmed in and cramped, and the uneasy position determines locally the condition of storms. The sea suffers like others, and when it suffers it is irritable. That channel is a thing to fear.

  The Matutina was in it.

  Imagine under the sea a tortoise shell as big as Hyde Park or the Champs Elysées, of which every stricture is a shallow, and every embossment a reef. Such is the western approach of Aurigny. The sea covers and conceals this shipwrecking apparatus. On this conglomeration of submarine breakers the cloven waves leap and foam--in calm weather a chopping sea; in storms a chaos.

  The shipwrecked men observed this new complication without endeavouring to explain it to themselves. Suddenly they understood it. A pale vista broadened in the zenith; a wan tinge overspread the sea; the livid light revealed on the port side a long shoal stretching eastward, toward which the power of the rushing wind was driving the vessel. The shoal was Aurigny.

  What was that shoal? They shuddered. They would have shuddered even more had a voice answered them--Aurigny.

  No isle so well defended against man's approach as Aurigny. Below and above water it is protected by a savage guard, of which Ortach is the outpost. To the west, Burhou, Sauteriaux, Anfroque, Niangle, Fond du Croc, Les Jumelles, La Grosse, La Clanque, Les Eguillons, Le Vrac, La Fosse-Malière; to the east, Sauquet, Hommeau Floreau, La Brinebetais, La Queslingue, Croquelihou, La Fourche, Le Saut, Noire Pute, Couple, Orbue. These are hydra-monsters of the species reef.

  One of these reefs is called Le But, the goal, as if to imply that every voyage ends there.

  This obstruction of rocks, simplified by night and sea, appeared to the shipwrecked men in the shape of a single dark band, a sort of black blot on the horizon.

  Shipwreck is the ideal of helplessness; to be near land, and unable to reach it; to float, yet not to be able to do so in any desired direction; to rest the foot on what seems firm and is fragile; to be full of life when o'ershadowed by death; to be the prisoner of space; to be walled in between sky and ocean; to have the infinite overhead like a dungeon; to be encompassed by the eluding elements of wind and waves; and to be seized, bound, paralysed;--such a load of misfortune stupefies and crushes us. We imagine that in it we catch a glimpse of the sneer of the opponent who is beyond our reach. That which holds you fast is that which releases the birds and sets the fishes free. It appears nothing, and is everything. We are dependent on the air which is ruffled by our mouths; we are dependent on the water which we catch in the hollow of our hands. Draw a glassful from the storm, and it is but a cup of bitterness--a mouthful is nausea, a waveful is extermination. The grain of sand in the desert, the foam-flake on the sea, are fearful symptoms. Omnipotence takes no care to hide its atoms, it changes weakness into strength, fills naught with all; and it is with the infinitely little that the infinitely great crushes you. It is with its drops the ocean dissolves you. You feel you are a plaything.

  A plaything: ghastly epithet!

  The Matutina was a little above Aurigny, which was not an unfavourable position; but she was drifting toward its northern point, which was fatal. As a bent bow discharges its arrow, the nor'wester was shooting the vessel toward the northern cape. Off that point, a little beyond the harbour of Corbelets, is that which the seamen of the Norman archipelago call a "singe."

  The "singe," or race, is a furious kind of current. A wreath of funnels in the shallows produces in the waves a wreath of whirlpools. You escape one to fall into another. A ship caught hold of by the race, winds round and round until some sharp rock cleaves her hull; then the shattered vessel stops, her stern rises from the waves, the stem completes the revolution in the abyss, the stern sinks in, and all is sucked down. A circle of foam broadens and floats, and nothing more is seen on the surface of the waves but a few bubbles here and there rising from the smothered breathings below.

  The three most dangerous races in the whole Channel are: one close to the well-known Girdler Sands, one at Jersey between the Pignonnet and the Point of Noirmont, and the race of Aurigny.

  Had a local pilot been on board the Matutina, he could have warned them of their fresh peril. In place of a pilot, they had their instinct. In situations of extreme danger men are endowed with second sight. High contortions of foam were flying along the coast in the frenzied rain of the wind. It was the spitting of the race. Many a bark has been swamped in that snare. Without knowing what awaited them, they approached the spot with horror.

  How to double that cape? There were no means of doing it.

  Just as they had seen, first the Caskets, then Ortach, rise before them. They now saw the point of Aurigny, all of steep rock. It was like a number of giants, rising up one after another--a series of frightful duels.

  Charybdis and Scylla are but two; the Caskets, Ortach, and Aurigny are three.

  The phenomenon of the horizon being invaded by the rocks, was thus repeated with the grand monotony of the abyss. The battles of the ocean have the same sublime tautology as the combats of Homer.

  Each wave, as they neared it, added twenty cubits to the cape, awfully magnified by the mist; the fast decreasing distance seemed more inevitable--they were touching the skirts of the race! The first fold which seized them would drag them in--another wave surmounted, and all would be over.

  Suddenly the hooker was driven back, as by the blow of a Titan's fist. The wave reared up under the vessel and fell back, throwing the waif back in its mane of foam. The Matutina, thus impelled, drifted away from Aurigny.

  She was again on the open sea.

  Whence had come the succour? From the wind. The breath of the storm had changed its direction.

  The wave had played with them, now it was the wind's turn. They had saved themselves from the Caskets. Off Ortach it was the wave which had been their friend. Now it was the wind. The wind had suddenly veered from north to south. The sou'wester had succeeded the nor'wester.

  The current is the wind in the waters; the wind is the current in the air. These two forces had just counteracted each other, and it had been the wind's will to snatch its prey from the current.

  The sudden fantasies of ocean are uncertain. They are, perhaps, an embodiment of the perpetual; when at their mercy man must neither hope nor despair. They do, and they undo. The ocean amuses its
elf. Every shade of wild, untamed ferocity is phased in the vastness of that cunning sea, which Jean Bart used to call the "great brute." To its claws and their Lashings succeed soft intervals of velvet paws. Sometimes the storm hurries on a wreck, at others it works out the problem with care; it might almost be said that it caresses it. The sea can afford to take its time, as men in their agonies find out.

  We must own that occasionally these lulls of the torture announce deliverance. Such cases are rare. However this may be, men in extreme peril are quick to believe in rescue; the slightest pause in the storm's threats is sufficient; they tell themselves that they are out of danger. After believing themselves buried, they declare their resurrection; they feverishly embrace what they do not yet possess; it is clear that the bad luck has turned; they declare themselves satisfied; they are saved; they cry quits with God. They should not be in so great a hurry to give receipts to the Unknown.

  The sou'wester set in with a whirlwind. Shipwrecked men have never any but rough helpers. The Matutina was dragged rapidly out to sea by the remnant of her rigging--like a dead woman trailed by the hair. It was like the enfranchisement granted by Tiberius, at the price of violation. The wind treated with brutality those whom it saved; it rendered service with fury; it was help without pity.

  The wreck was breaking up under the severity of its deliveries.

  Hailstones, big and hard enough to charge a blunderbuss, smote the vessel; at every rotation of the waves these hailstones rolled about the deck like marbles. The hooker, whose deck was almost flush with the water, was being beaten out of shape by the rolling masses of water and its sheets of spray. On board it each man was for himself.

  They clung on as best they could. As each sea swept over them, it was with a sense of surprise they saw that all were still there. Several had their faces torn by splinters.

  Happily despair has stout hands. In terror a child's hand has the grasp of a giant. Agony makes a vise of a woman's fingers. A girl in a fright can almost bury her rose-coloured fingers in a piece of iron. With hooked fingers they hung on somehow, as the waves dashed on and passed off them, but every wave brought them the fear of being swept away.

  Suddenly they were relieved.

  * * *

  XVI

  THE PROBLEM SUDDENLY WORKS IN SILENCE

  THE HURRICANE had just stopped short. There was no longer in the air sou'wester or nor'wester. The fierce clarions of space were mute. The whole of the waterspout had poured from the sky without any warning of diminution, as if it had slid perpendicularly into a gulf beneath. None knew what had become of it; flakes replaced the hailstones, the snow began to fall slowly. No more swell: the sea flattened down.

  Such sudden cessations are peculiar to snowstorms. The electric effluvium exhausted, all becomes still, even the wave, which in ordinary storms often remains agitated for a long time. In snowstorms it is not so. No prolonged anger in the deep. Like a tired-out worker it becomes drowsy directly, thus almost giving the lie to the laws of statics, but not astonishing old seamen, who know that the sea is full of unforeseen surprises.

  The same phenomenon takes place, although very rarely, in ordinary storms. Thus, in our time, on the occasion of the memorable hurricane of July 27, 1867, at Jersey, the wind, after fourteen hours' fury, suddenly relapsed into a dead calm.

  In a few minutes the hooker was floating in sleeping waters.

  At the same time (for the last phase of these storms resembles the first) they could distinguish nothing, all that had been made visible in the convulsions of the meteoric cloud was again dark. Pale outlines were fused in vague mist, and the gloom of infinite space closed about the vessel. The wall of night--that circular occlusion, that interior of a cylinder the diameter of which was lessening minute by minute--enveloped the Matutina, and, with the sinister deliberation of an encroaching iceberg, was drawing in dangerously. In the zenith nothing--a lid of fog closing down. It was as if the hooker were at the bottom of the well of the abyss.

  In that well the sea was a puddle of liquid lead. No stir in the waters--ominous immobility! The ocean is never less tamed than when it is still as a pool.

  All was silence, stillness, blindness.

  Perchance the silence of inanimate objects is taciturnity.

  The last ripples glided along the hull. The deck was horizontal, with an insensible slope to the sides. Some broken planks were shifting about irresolutely. The block on which they had lighted the tow steeped in tar, in place of the signal light which had been swept away, swung no longer at the prow, and no longer let fall burning drops into the sea. What little breeze remained in the clouds was noiseless. The snow fell thickly, softly, with scarce a slant. No foam of breakers could be heard. The peace of shadows was over all.

  This repose, succeeding all the past exasperations and paroxysms was, for the poor creatures so long tossed about, an unspeakable comfort. It was as though the punishment of the rack had ceased. They caught a glimpse about them and above them of something which seemed like a consent that they should be saved. They regained confidence. All that had been fury was now tranquillity. It appeared to them a pledge of peace. Their wretched hearts dilated. They were able to let go the end of rope or beam to which they had clung, to rise, hold themselves up, stand, walk, move about. They felt inexpressibly calmed. There are in the depths of darkness such phases of paradise, preparations for other things. It was clear that they were delivered out of the storm, out of the foam, out of the wind, out of the uproar.

  Henceforth all the chances were in their favour. In three or four hours it would be sunrise. They would be seen by some passing ship; they would be rescued. The worst was over, they were re-entering life. The important feat was to have been able to keep afloat until the cessation of the tempest.

  They said to themselves, "It is all over this time."

  Suddenly they found that all was indeed over.

  One of the sailors, the northern Basque, Galdeazun by name, went down into the hold to look for a rope, then came above again and said:

  "The hold is full."

  "Of what?" asked the chief.

  "Of water," answered the sailor.

  The chief cried out:

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means," replied Galdeazun, "that in half an hour we shall founder."

  * * *

  XVII

  THE LAST RESOURCE

  THERE WAS a hole in the keel. A leak had been sprung. When it happened no one could have said. Was it when they touched the Caskets? Was it off Ortach? Was it when they were whirled about the shallows west of Aurigny? It was most probable that they had touched some rock there. They had struck against some hidden buttress which they had not felt in the midst of the convulsive fury of the wind which was tossing them. In tetanus who would feel a prick?

  The other sailor, the southern Basque, whose name was Ave Maria, went down into the hold, too, came on deck again, and said:

  "There are two varas of water in the hold."

  About six feet.

  Ave Maria added:

  "In less than forty minutes we shall sink."

  Where was the leak? They couldn't find it. It was hidden by the water which was filling up the hold. The vessel had a hole in her hull somewhere under the water-line, quite forward in the keel. Impossible to find it--impossible to check it. They had a wound which they could not stanch. The water, however, was not rising very fast.

  The chief called out:

  "We must work the pump."

  Galdeazun replied: "We have no pump left."

  "Then," said the chief, "we must make for land."

  "Where is the land?"

  "I don't know."

  "Nor I."

  "But it must be somewhere."

  "True enough."

  "Let some one steer for it."

  "We have no pilot.

  "Stand to the tiller yourself."

  "We have lost the tiller."

  "Let's rig one out of the first beam we can lay
hands on. Nails--a hammer--quick--some tools."

  "The carpenter's box is overboard; we have no tools."

  "We'll steer all the same; no matter where."

  "The rudder is lost."

  "Where is the boat? We'll get in and row."

  "The boat is lost."

  "We'll row the wreck."

  "We have lost the oars."

  "We'll sail."

  "We have lost the sails, and the mast."

  "We'll rig one up with a pole and a tarpaulin for sail. Let's get clear of this and trust in the wind."

  "There is no wind."

  The wind, indeed, had left them, the storm had fled, and its departure, which they had believed to mean safety, meant, in fact, destruction. Had the sou'wester continued it might have driven them wildly on some shore, might have beaten the leak in speed--might, perhaps, have carried them to some propitious sandbank, and cast them on it before the hooker foundered. The swiftness of the storm, bearing them away, might have enabled them to reach land; but no more wind, no more hope. They were going to die because the hurricane was over.

  The end was near!

  Wind, hail, the hurricane, the whirlwind--these are wild combatants that may be overcome; the storm can be taken in the weak point of its armour; there are resources against the violence which continually lays itself open, is off its guard, and often hits wide. But nothing is to be done against a calm; it offers nothing to the grasp, of which you can lay hold.

  The winds are a charge of Cossacks; stand your ground and they disperse. Calms are the pincers of the executioner.

  The water, deliberate and sure, irrepressible and heavy, rose in. the hold, and as it rose the vessel sank--it was happening slowly.

  Those on board the wreck of the Matutina felt that most hopeless of catastrophes--an inert catastrophe undermining them. The still and sinister certainty of their fate petrified them. No stir in the air, no movement on the sea. The motionless is the inexorable. Absorption was sucking them down silently. Through the depths of the dumb waters--without anger, without passion, not willing, not knowing, not caring--the fatal centre of the globe was attracting them downward. Horror in repose amalgamating them with itself. It was no longer the wide-open mouth of the sea, the double jaw of the wind and the wave, vicious in its threat, the grin of the waterspout, the foaming appetite of the breakers--it was as if the wretched beings had under them the black yawn of the infinite.