The Toilers of the Sea (44 page)

The voice was heard again:

“Mademoiselle!”

Déruchette started.

The voice went on:

“Ah! I am waiting.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“Your answer.”

“God has heard it,” said Déruchette.

Then the voice became almost sonorous, and at the same time still softer than before. From the clump of trees, as from a burning bush, there emerged these words:

“You are my betrothed. Arise and come to me. Let this blue ceiling above us with all the stars be present at this acceptance by your soul of my soul, and may our first kiss mingle with the firmament!”

Déruchette rose and stayed for an instant motionless, looking straight ahead of her, no doubt meeting another glance. Then, slowly, her head held high, her arms hanging loose, and her fingers outspread as when we are walking on unfamiliar ground, she moved toward the clump of trees and disappeared into it.

A moment later, in place of one shadow on the sand there were two mingling into one, and Gilliatt saw at his feet the embrace of these two shadows.

Time flows from us as from an hourglass, and we are not conscious of its flight, particularly in certain supreme moments. On one side there was this couple, who were unaware of this witness and could not see him, and on the other the witness, who could not see the couple but knew that they were there: how many minutes did they remain thus, in this mysterious state of suspension? Impossible to say. Suddenly there was a burst of noise in the distance, a voice was heard crying “Help!” and the harbor bell began to ring. The tumult was probably not heard by the happy pair, drunk with celestial bliss.

The bell continued to ring. Anyone looking for Gilliatt in his corner by the wall would have found him no longer there.

I

JOY SURROUNDED BY ANGUISH

Mess Lethierry tugged vigorously at the bell; then suddenly stopped. A man had turned the corner of the quay. It was Gilliatt.

Mess Lethierry ran up to him, or rather flung himself upon him, took Gilliatt's hand in both of his, and looked into his eyes for a moment in silence—one of those silences that reflect an explosion unable to find a way out.

Then, shaking him and embracing him, he pulled Gilliatt into the ground-floor room of Les Bravées, kicking the door with his foot and leaving it half open, and sat down, or rather sank into a chair beside a large table illuminated by the moon, the reflection of which gave a vague pallor to Gilliatt's face, and cried, in a voice mingling laughter and tears:

“Oh, my son! the man with the bagpipes! Gilliatt! I knew it was you! That paunch of yours—tell me all about it! So you went there? A hundred years ago you would have been burned at the stake! It is pure magic! There's not a screw missing. I've examined it all, recognized it all, handled it all. I guessed that the paddle wheels were in the two crates. And so here you are at last! I have been looking for you in your cabin. I rang the bell. I was looking for you. I was saying to myself, ‘Where is he? I want to eat him!' Well, I must say, the most extraordinary things do happen. Here's this fellow back from the Douvres. He brings me back my life. Heavens above! You are an angel. Yes, yes, yes: it's my engines. Nobody will believe it. They'll look at it, they'll say, ‘It's not true.' It's all there, too! It's all there! There's not a tap, not a pin missing! The feed pipe has not moved an inch. You just can't believe that there's no damage! All it needs is a little oil. But how did you manage it? And to think that the Durande is going to sail again! The paddle-wheel axle has been dismantled by a proper craftsman! Tell me, on your word of honor, that I'm not crazy!”

He stood up, drew breath, and went on:

“Swear it! What a revolution! I have to pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming. You are my child, you are my boy, you are my God! Oh, my son! To go out to get that brute of a machine! In the open sea, too! To that devilish reef! I've seen some pretty queer things in my life, but never anything to equal this. I've seen Parisians who were real Satans, but I'll warrant they could never do this. It beats the Bastille. I've seen gauchos plowing in the pampas: all they have for a plow is a crooked branch of a tree, and for a harrow a bunch of thornbushes drawn by a leather rope, and yet they manage to harvest grains of corn the size of a hazelnut. But that's nothing compared with what you have done. It was a miracle—a real miracle. What a rascal you are! I must hug you. You've made the fortune of the whole district. And aren't they going to gripe in St. Sampson! I'm going to set about rebuilding the boat at once. It's astonishing: the crank is none the worse. Just think of it! He has been to the Douvres. To the Douvres, I say! There isn't a worse rock in the sea. Have you heard, Gilliatt? It's proved, Clubin wrecked the Durande on purpose to swindle me out of the money he was supposed to bring me. He made Tangrouille drunk. It's a long story: I'll tell you another day about his pirate's trick. What a fool I was to have confidence in Clubin! But he was caught, the villain, for he can't have got away with it. There is a God after all, you blackguard! So we're going to rebuild the Durande, Gilliatt—at once, double-quick, right away! We'll make her twenty feet longer. They build them longer these days. I'll buy wood at Danzig and Bremen. Now that I have the engines, I'll be able to get credit. They'll have confidence in me again.”

Mess Lethierry stopped, raised his eyes in the kind of glance that sees the heavens through the ceiling, and said between his teeth: “Yes, there is one.”

Then he laid the middle finger of his right hand between his eyebrows, with the nail resting on the root of the nose—an action that indicates a project passing through the mind—and went on:

“All the same, to let me begin again on a large scale, a little ready money would have been a great help. Ah, if I only had my three banknotes, the seventy-five thousand francs which that brigand Rantaine returned to me and that other brigand Clubin stole from me!”

Gilliatt, in silence, felt in his pocket for something and put it down in front of him. It was the leather belt he had brought back with him. He opened it up and spread it out on the table. In the moonlight the name
Clubin
could be picked out on the inside of the belt. Then he drew a box out of the pocket in the belt and extracted from it three folded slips of paper, which he unfolded and passed to Mess Lethierry.

Mess Lethierry examined the three slips of paper. There was enough light to make out the figure 1,000 and the word
thousand.
Mess Lethierry took the three banknotes, put them down on the table one beside the other, looked at them, looked at Gilliatt, and for a moment seemed dumbfounded. Then he burst out, in an eruption following his earlier explosion:

“You've got them, too! What a fellow you are! All three of my banknotes! My seventy-five thousand francs! So you must have gone down to hell to get them. It is Clubin's belt. Of course! I can read his accursed name. Gilliatt brings back both the engines and the money! Here's a fine story for the newspapers! I'll buy top-quality wood. I suppose you found his carcass—Clubin rotting in some corner. We'll get the fir wood in Danzig and the oak in Bremen; we'll have first-rate planking, oak inside and fir outside. In the past they didn't build ships so well, but they lasted longer: the timber was better seasoned, because they didn't build so many. Perhaps we should make the hull of elm. Elm is good for the parts under water. When timber is sometimes dry and sometimes wet it tends to rot; but elm likes being always wet, it feeds on water. What a fine Durande we're going to have! They're not going to lay down the law to me! I shan't need to get credit: I have the money. Was there ever such a man as this Gilliatt! I was struck to the ground, laid low, a dead man; and he has set me up again on my two feet. And I wasn't even thinking about him! He'd passed completely out of my mind. It all comes back to me now. Poor fellow! And now, of course, you'll marry Déruchette.”

Gilliatt sank back against the wall, like a man who is unsteady on his feet, and in a low voice, but very distinctly, said:

“No.”

Mess Lethierry started up.

“What do you mean, No?”

Gilliatt replied:

“I do not love her.”

Mess Lethierry went to the window, opened it and closed it again, returned to the table, took the three banknotes, folded them, put the iron box on top of them, scratched his head, seized Clubin's belt, threw it violently against the wall, and said:

“There's something funny here.”

Thrusting his hands in his pockets, he went on:

“You don't love Déruchette! So when you played your bagpipes you were playing for me?”

Gilliatt, still leaning against the wall, paled like a man about to expire. As he grew pale, Mess Lethierry grew red.

“Here's a fine fool! He doesn't love Déruchette! Well, just make up your mind to love her, for she's not going to marry anyone but you. What sort of a cock-and-bull story is this of yours? You're not going to get me to believe it! Are you ill? Then send for the doctor, but don't talk such nonsense! You haven't had time to quarrel and fall out with her. Lovers, of course, are so silly! Come now: have you any reasons? If you have, tell me what they are. There must be some reason for behaving so foolishly. After the shock I have had there is cotton wool in my ears: perhaps I didn't hear properly. Tell me again what you said just now.”

Gilliatt replied:

“I said No.”

“You said No! He sticks to it, the brute! There's something wrong with you, that's for sure! This is stupidity beyond belief! People get ducked for a lot less than this! So you don't love Déruchette! Then it must have been for love of the old man that you've done what you've done? It was for his sake that you went to the Douvres, that you put up with cold and heat, that you were tormented by hunger and thirst, that you ate the vermin of the rocks, that you slept at night in fog, rain, and wind, that you managed to bring me back my engines, as you might bring back to a pretty woman a canary that had escaped from its cage! And just think of the storm we had the other day! Don't imagine that I don't realize what it was like. You must have had a rough time all right! It was for the sake of my old noddle that you cut and hacked away and shaped and twisted and dragged about and glued and sawed and nailed together and worked out what to do and scratched around and worked more miracles, all on your own, than all the saints in paradise? Oh, what a fool you must be! And you were such a torment to me with your bagpipes, too! They call them
biniou
in Brittany. Always the same tune, God help me! And so you don't love Déruchette! I don't know what's wrong with you! I remember it all perfectly well now: I was in the corner over there, and Déruchette said, ‘I'll marry him.' And she
will
marry you! You don't love her, you say. I still don't understand. Either you are mad or I am. And he still doesn't say a word! You can't do all that you have done and then come back and say: ‘I don't love Déruchette.' People don't do services to others in order to put them in a rage. Very well: if you don't marry her, then she'll remain a spinster. Besides,
I
need you. You will be the Durande's pilot. You don't imagine I'm going to let you go off like that? No, no, my fine fellow, I've got you and I'm not going to let you go. I won't hear of it. Where is a seaman like you to be found? You're the man for me. But for God's sake say something!”

Meanwhile the harbor bell had awakened the household and the whole neighborhood.

Douce and Grace had got up and had just come into the room, struck dumb with astonishment. Grace had a candle in her hand. A group of neighbors, townspeople, seamen, and countryfolk had rushed out of their houses and were standing on the quay, gazing in wonderment at the funnel of the Durande in the paunch. Some of them, hearing Mess Lethierry's voice in the ground-floor room, were slipping silently into the room through the half-open door. Between the faces of two gossips could be seen the head of Sieur Landoys, who had the good fortune always to be there when something was happening that he would have been sorry to miss.

In moments of great joy people are glad to have an audience. They like a crowd for the platform it offers; it gives them a fresh boost. Mess Lethierry suddenly realized that he had people around him, and at once welcomed his audience.

“Ah, there you are, my friends. That's good. You have heard the news. This fellow here has been there, and has brought the thing back. How d'you do, Sieur Landoys? When I awoke just now I saw the funnel. It was under my window. There's not a screw missing in the whole thing. They produce prints of Napoleon's feats; but
I
prefer this to the Battle of Austerlitz. You are just out of your beds, good people. The Durande arrived while you were still asleep. While you are putting on your nightcaps and blowing out your candles there are others who are heroes. We are a lot of faint-hearts and do-nothings, coddling our rheumatism; but thankfully there are other daredevil characters who go out to where they are needed and do what has to be done. The man who lives at the Bû de la Rue is just back from the Douvres reef. He has rescued the Durande from the bottom of the sea and fished out my money from Clubin's pockets, still deeper down.—But how did you manage it? All the devil's works were against you, the wind and the tide, the tide and the wind. It's true that you're a warlock. Those who say so are not far wrong. The Durande is back! The storms can rage, but they've been put in their place smartly! I tell you, my friends, there has been no shipwreck. I've examined the engines: they are as good as new, complete and undamaged. The pistons work easily, as if they were made yesterday. You know that waste water from the engines is discharged in a tube that is inside the tube feeding water in, so as to use the heat: well, both tubes are still there. She's all there, including the paddle wheels. Ah, you shall marry her!”

“Marry whom—the engines?” asked Sieur Landoys.

“No, the girl. Yes, the engines. Both. He'll be my son-in-law twice over. He'll be captain. Welcome on board, Captain Gilliatt! There's going to be a new Durande! We're going to do good business, with passengers and goods and cargoes of cattle and sheep! I wouldn't exchange St. Sampson for London itself! And here's the man who did it. I tell you, what a deed it was! You'll read about it on Saturday in old Mauger's
Gazette.
Gilliatt the Cunning One is cunning, all right!—But what are these louis d'or I see?”

Mess Lethierry had just noticed, under the half-open lid of the box holding down the banknotes, that the box contained a number of gold coins. He took up the box, opened it fully, emptied it into his hand, and put the handful of guineas on the table.

“These are for the poor. Sieur Landoys, give this money from me to the constable of St. Sampson. You know about Rantaine's letter: I showed it to you, Well, now I've got the banknotes. They'll allow us to buy oak and fir and set to work. Just look! You remember the weather we had three days ago? What a battering of wind and rain! The heavens were firing all they had at us! Gilliatt was faced with all that on the Douvres reef, but he still managed to pick up the Durande as easily as I would pick up my watch. Thanks to him I am on my legs again. Old Lethierry's galliot is going to sail again. A walnut shell with two wheels and a funnel—I've always had my heart set on that. I've always said to myself, I'll make one of these! The idea first came to me in Paris, in the café at the corner of Rue Christine and Rue Dauphine, when I read about it in a newspaper. I tell you, Gilliatt could have put the Marly waterworks
²¹³
in his pocket and gone for a walk with them! He's made of wrought iron, that man—of tempered steel, of diamond; he's a seaman that hasn't his like anywhere, a blacksmith, a tremendous fellow, a more astonishing character than the prince of Hohenlohe.
²¹⁴
That's what I call a man of spirit! None of the rest of us are up to much: old sea dogs we—you or I—may call ourselves, but the lion of the sea is this man here. Hurrah for Gilliatt! I don't know how he did it, but certainly he's a devil of a fellow all right; and what can I do but give him Déruchette!”