The Toilers of the Sea (40 page)

VI

DE PROFUNDIS AD ALTUM
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Among the stores in the paunch Gilliatt had a fair-sized tarpaulin with long lanyards at the four corners.

He took the tarpaulin, fastened the lanyards on two of the corners to the two rings of the chains holding the Durande's funnel on the side where the leak was, and threw it overboard. It fell between the paunch and the Little Douvre and sank into the water, where it was held over the hole in the hull by the pressure of the water seeking to enter through the hole. The greater the pressure, the more firmly the tarpaulin adhered to the hull, being held in place over the hole by the waves themselves. The wound in the vessel's side was stanched, and, with the tarpaulin interposed between the interior of the hull and the water outside, not a drop could enter.

The leak was blocked but not closed. It was at any rate a respite.

Gilliatt took the baling scoop and began to empty water out of the paunch. It was high time to lighten her. The work warmed him up a little, but he was extremely tired. He was compelled to admit to himself that he might not be able to complete the task and make the hull watertight. He had had very little to eat and was humiliated to feel himself exhausted. He measured the progress of his work by the falling of the water level below his knees; but the fall was very slow.

Besides, the leak was only temporarily stopped: the mischief had been alleviated but not put right. The tarpaulin, driven into the hole by the pressure of the water, was beginning to swell into the hull like a tumor. It looked as if a fist were thrusting into the canvas and trying to burst through it. Strong and thickly coated with tar, it was holding out, but the swelling and the pressure were increasing and it was by no means certain that it would not give way: at any moment the tumor might burst, and water would again surge in.

In such a case, as the crews of vessels in distress know, the only solution is to stop the hole with whatever scraps of canvas and oakum are available and force as much as possible of this material into the hole to reduce the tumor. But Gilliatt had no material of this kind. All that he had salvaged from the wreck and stored up had either been used in his work or scattered by the storm. As a last chance he might have been able to find some fragments of material by scavenging among the rocks. The paunch was now sufficiently lightened to allow him to leave it for a quarter of an hour; but how could he look for anything without any light? He was in utter darkness: there was no moon—nothing but a somber sky studded with stars. Gilliatt had no dry rope to make a wick, no tallow to make a candle, no fire to light it, no lantern to shelter it. In the paunch and on the reef everything was confused and indistinct. He could hear the water swirling around the wounded hull; he could not even see the hole, and could only feel the growing pressure on the tarpaulin with his hands. There could be no question of looking for fragments of canvas and rope among the rocks in the prevailing darkness. How could he glean such scraps without seeing what he was doing? Gilliatt looked gloomily into the night. All these stars, and not a single candle!

Now that there was less water in the hull the pressure from outside was increasing. The swelling in the tarpaulin was growing in size: it was increasingly ballooning into the interior of the hull. The situation, after a brief improvement, was again becoming threatening.

It was of the utmost importance to plug the hole. Gilliatt's only remaining resource was his clothes, which he had laid out to dry on projecting rocks on the Little Douvre. He went to pick them up and laid them on the bulwarks of the paunch. He took his oilskins and, kneeling in the water, thrust them into the hole, pushing out the tumor in the tarpaulin and emptying it. The oilskins were followed by the sheepskin, the sheepskin by the woolen shirt, the shirt by the pea jacket. All these went into the hole. He had only one item of clothing left, his trousers: he took them off and used them to enlarge and strengthen the plug. This seemed sufficient to stop the hole.

The plug went right through the hole, enclosed within the tarpaulin. The water seeking to find a way into the hull pressed against this obstacle and spread it out over the hole, strengthening the plug. It was like an external compress.

Inside the boat only the center of the swelling had been pushed out, and there remained all around the hole and the plug a circular pad of tarpaulin that the very inequalities of the breach held firm.

The leak was sealed; but the position was still extremely precarious. The sharp edges of the breach that held the tarpaulin in place might cut through it and let the water in. In the darkness Gilliatt would not even see it happening. It was unlikely that the plug would hold out until daylight. Gilliatt's anxiety was changing in form, but he felt it growing at the same time as he felt his strength failing. He had returned to his work of emptying out the water, but his arms were so exhausted that he could hardly raise the scoop when it was full of water. He was naked and shivering with cold. He felt the sinister approach of the last extremity.

One possible chance occurred to him. There might be another vessel out at sea. Perhaps some fisherman sailing in the waters off the Douvres might come to his aid. The moment had come when it was absolutely necessary to have someone to help him. One man and a lantern, and the situation could still be saved. Two men could easily bale out the paunch, and when she was empty she would rise to her normal waterline, the hole in the hull would be above the water, and it would be possible to make good the damage. The plug could be replaced by a piece of planking, the makeshift arrangement for stopping the leak by a permanent repair. But if there was no hope in that direction it would be necessary to wait until daylight—to wait throughout the whole long night: a delay that could be fatal. Gilliatt was in a fever of impatience. If by chance some vessel's light were within sight he could signal to it from the top of the Great Douvre. The weather was calm; there was no wind and the sea was quiet. A man waving against the background of the starlit sky had a good chance of being noticed. The captain of a ship or the skipper of a fishing boat sailing at night in these waters would certainly, as a necessary precaution, keep his telescope trained on the Douvres. Gilliatt hoped that he would be seen.

He climbed onto the wreck, seized hold of the knotted rope, and scaled the Great Douvre. Not a sail on the horizon. Not a light anywhere. As far as the eye could reach, the sea was empty. There was no hope of assistance, no hope of further resistance. For the first time Gilliatt felt helpless and at a loss. An obscure fatality was now his mistress. With his boat, with the engines of the Durande, with all his toil, with all his success, with all his courage, he was now at the mercy of the abyss. He had no means of continuing the struggle; he was now purely passive. How could he stop the incoming tide, stop the water from rising and the night from continuing? His only hope now lay in the temporary plug he had constructed, exhausting himself and stripping himself naked in the process. He could neither strengthen it nor make it any firmer; such as it was, it must stay that way; there was nothing further to be done. The makeshift contrivance for stopping the leak was now within the power of the sea. How would this inert obstacle behave? The fight was now to be carried on by this contrivance, not by Gilliatt; by a scrap of material, not by human will. The swelling of a wave could reopen the breach. It all now turned on a greater or lesser degree of pressure.

The matter was now to be determined by a struggle between two mechanical quantities. Gilliatt could no longer either help his ally or resist his enemy. He was now merely a spectator of his fate—his life or his death. He had hitherto been the directing intelligence; now, at this supreme moment, he had given place to a mindless resistance. None of the trials and the terrors he had passed through was the equal of this.

When he had arrived at the Douvres he had found himself surrounded and, as it were, caught up by solitude, which not only encompassed him but enveloped him. He had been confronted by a thousand threats, all at the same time. The wind was there, ready to blow; the sea was there, ready to roar. There was no means of gagging that mouth, the wind; no means of blunting those jaws, the sea. And yet he had struggled; a man, he had fought hand to hand with the ocean; he had wrestled with the storm.

He had faced up to other anxieties and still other necessities. He had coped with every kind of distress. He had had to work without tools, move heavy weights without aid, solve problems without the necessary knowledge, eat and drink without food supplies, sleep without a bed and without a roof over him. On the reef—that tragic torturer's rack—he had been successively put to the question by the various fatalities of nature, henchmen in the service of that nature who is a mother when she wills, an executioner when she thinks fit.

He had vanquished isolation, vanquished hunger, vanquished thirst, vanquished cold, vanquished fever, vanquished toil, vanquished sleep. He had encountered a variety of obstacles leagued against him to bar his progress. After lack of resources there had been the sea; after the sea, the storm; after the tempest, the devilfish; after the monster, the specter. And now there was this final lugubrious irony. On this reef from which Gilliatt had hoped to depart in triumph Clubin's skull had stared at him with a sardonic grin. The grin on the specter's face was justified. Gilliatt realized that he was lost; he was no less dead than Clubin.

Winter, hunger, fatigue, the dismantling of the wreck, the transfer of the Durande's engines to the paunch, the equinoctial gales, the wind, the thunder, the devilfish: all these counted for nothing compared with the leak. There were resources for dealing with these various difficulties, and Gilliatt had possessed them. Against cold there was fire; against hunger, the shellfish on the reef; against thirst, rain; against the difficulties of salvaging the wreck, industry and energy; against the tides and the storm, the breakwater; against the devilfish, his knife. Against the leak there was nothing.

The hurricane was taking this sinister farewell of him: a final assault, defenses that were failing him, a treacherous attack by the conquered on the conqueror. The tempest, fleeing in defeat, was firing this last Parthian shot. The rout was turning and striking back. It was a stab in the back by the abyss.

You can fight the tempest, but how can you fight a trickle of water?

If the plug gave way and the leak opened up again the paunch would certainly founder. It would be like undoing a ligature on an artery. And once the paunch was on the bottom, with the heavy load of the Durande's engines, there was no possibility of raising her. The tremendous effort of two months' titanic labor would end in nothing. There could be no question of starting again. Gilliatt now had no forge and no materials. Perhaps at daybreak he would see all his work sinking slowly and irremediably into the abyss. It was terrible to feel the somber force beneath him. The abyss was drawing him into its grasp.

With his boat engulfed by the sea, he would be left to die of hunger and cold, like the man on the Homme rock.

For two long months the consciousnesses and providences that exist in the invisible world had watched the contest. On one side were ranged the vast expanses of the ocean, the waves, the winds, the lightning, the meteors, on the other one man; on one side the sea, on the other a human soul; on one side the Infinite, on the other an atom. There had been a battle. And now perhaps this prodigious effort was to be wasted. This extraordinary heroism was to be reduced to impotence; this formidable combat, the challenge to which had been accepted, this struggle between Nothing and Everything, this one-man Iliad was to end in despair.

Gilliatt, at a loss, gazed into space. He had not a single garment left: he was naked in face of immensity.

Then, despondent in face of all this unknown enormity, no longer knowing what was wanted of him, confronting the darkness, in presence of this irreducible obscurity, amid the noise of the water, the waves, the swell, the foam, and the squalls, under the clouds, under the winds, under these vast scattered forces, under this mysterious firmament of wings, stars, and tombs, subject to the unknown intentions of these vast presences, with the ocean around him and below him and the constellations above him, oppressed by the unfathomable, he sank down, gave in, and lay down at full length with his back on the rock, looking up to the stars, vanquished, and, raising his joined hands in face of these terrible depths, cried to the Infinite: “Have mercy!” Defeated by the immensity, he was making his submission.

He lay there, alone in the night on this rock in the middle of the ocean, prostrated by exhaustion, like a man struck by lightning, as naked as a gladiator in the circus, with in place of a circus the abyss; in place of wild beasts, the darkness; in place of the watching eyes of spectators, the glance of the Unknown; in place of the vestal virgins, the stars; in place of Caesar, God.

He felt his whole being dissolving in the cold, in fatigue, in impotence, in prayer, in darkness, and his eyes closed.

VII

THERE IS AN EAR IN THE UNKNOWN
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Some hours passed.

The sun rose in all its brilliance. Its first ray lit up a motionless form on the summit of the Great Douvre. It was Gilliatt.

He was still stretched out on the rock. This naked body, cold and rigid, no longer shivered. The closed eyelids had a pallid hue. It would have been difficult for an observer to decide whether it was a living body or a corpse.

The sun seemed to be looking at him.

If this naked man was not dead, he was so close to death that the least cold wind would be enough to carry him off.

The wind began to blow, a mild, life-giving wind: the spring breath of May.

Now the sun was rising higher in the deep blue sky; its rays, falling less horizontally, took on a tinge of red. Its light became heat. It enveloped Gilliatt.

Gilliatt did not move. If he was breathing it was with a faint respiration that would barely tarnish a mirror.

The sun continued its ascent, now shining less obliquely on Gilliatt. The wind, which had originally been merely mild, was now warm.

The rigid naked body was still without movement, but the skin now seemed less pallid.

The sun, approaching the zenith, fell vertically on the summit of the Great Douvre. A prodigality of light streamed down from the sky, and was joined by the vast reverberations from the serene ocean. The rock began to warm up, and conveyed some of its warmth to the man.

A sigh stirred Gilliatt's chest: he was alive.

The sun continued its caresses, which were now almost ardent. The wind, which was already the wind of midday and of spring, drew close to Gilliatt, like a mouth breathing gently on him. He moved.

The sea was ineffably calm. Its murmur was like the lullaby of a nurse cradling a child. The waves seemed to be rocking the reef to sleep.

The seabirds, now familiar with Gilliatt, fluttered anxiously above him—no longer with their former wariness but with an air of tenderness and sympathy. They uttered little cries, as if calling to him. A seagull, which seemed fond of him, was tame enough to perch near him and began to talk to him. He seemed not to hear. It jumped onto his shoulder and gently pecked at his lips.

Gilliatt opened his eyes. The birds, pleased but still shy, flew off.

He stood up, stretched like a lion awakened from sleep, ran to the edge of the summit platform, and looked down at the defile between the two Douvres. The paunch was still there, intact. The plug had held: the sea had probably not troubled it much. All was saved.

Gilliatt was no longer tired. He had recovered his strength. His faintness had been merely a sleep. He baled out the paunch, bringing the breach in the hull above the waterline; then he dressed, ate and drank, and was happy.

The leak, inspected in daylight, required more work to repair it than Gilliatt had thought. The damage had been serious and took the whole of the day to put right.

On the following morning, at daybreak, he took down the barrier he had constructed and opened up the way out of the defile. Then, clad in the rags that had mastered the leak and wearing Clubin's belt with its seventy-five thousand francs, standing erect in the paunch, now fully seaworthy, with the Durande's engines beside him, with a favorable wind and a tranquil sea, Gilliatt left the Douvres reef and set his course for Guernsey.

As he left the reef he might have been heard—if anyone had been there to hear him—humming under his breath the tune of “Bonny Dundee.”