The World's Greatest Books - Volume 5 Part 26

With the devil-fish, as with a furious bull, there is a certain moment in the conflict which must be seized. It is the instant when the bull lowers its neck; it is the instant when the devil-fish advances its head. The movement is rapid. He who loses that moment is destroyed.

Suddenly it loosened another antenna from the rock, and darting it at him, seized him by the left arm. At the same moment it advanced its head.

Rapid as was this movement, Gilliatt, by a gigantic effort, plunged the blade of his knife into the flat, slimy substance, and with a movement like the flourish of a whip, described a circle round the eyes and wrenched off the head as a man would draw a tooth.

The four hundred suckers dropped at once from the man and the rock. The ma.s.s sank to the bottom of the water.

Nearly exhausted, Gilliatt plunged into the water to heal by friction the numberless purple swellings which were p.r.i.c.king all over his body.

He advanced up the recess. Something caught his eye. He approached nearer. The thing was a bleached skeleton; nothing was left but the white bones. Yes, something else. A leather belt and a tobacco-tin. On the belt Gilliatt read the name of Clubin; in the tobacco-tin, which he opened with his knife, he found three thousand pounds.

When Gilliatt reached his sloop, with this belt and box in his possession, he found, to his unspeakable horror, that she had been making water fast. Had he come an hour later he would have found nothing above water but the funnel of the steamer.

He slung a tarpaulin by chains overboard and hung it over the hole.

Pressure of the sea held it tight. The wound was stanched. Gilliatt began to bale for dear life. As he emptied the hole the tarpaulin bulged in, as if a fist were pushing it from outside. He ran for his clothes; brought them, and stuffed them into the wound.

He was saved--for a few moments.

Death was certain. He had succeeded in the impossible, to fail in what a shipwright might have mended in a few minutes.

Upon that solitary rock he had been subjected by turns to all the varied and cruel tortures of nature. He had conquered his isolation, conquered hunger, conquered thirst, conquered cold, conquered fever, conquered labour, conquered sleep. A dismal irony was then the end of all.

Gilliatt climbed to the top of the rock and gazed wildly into s.p.a.ce. He had no clothing. He stood naked in the midst of that immensity.

Then, overwhelmed by the sense of that unknown infinity, like one bewildered by a strange persecution, confronting the shadows of night, in the midst of the murmur of the waves, the swell, the foam, the breeze, under that vast diffusion of force, having around him and beneath him the ocean, above him the constellations, under him the great unfathomable deep, he sank, gave up the struggle, laid down upon the rock, humbled, and uplifting his joined hands towards the terrible depths, he cried aloud, "Have mercy!"

When he issued from his swoon, the sun was high in a cloudless sky. The blessed heat had saved the poor, broken, naked man upon the rock. He rose up refreshed, and filled with divine energy. A day's work sufficed to mend the gap in the sloop's side. On the following day, dressed in the tattered garments which had stuffed the rent, with a favourable breeze and a good sea, Gilliatt pushed off from the Douvres.

_IV.--Fate's Last Blow_

Gilliatt arrived in harbour at night. He went ash.o.r.e in his rags, and hovered for a while about the darkness of Lethierry's house. Then he made his way into the garden, like an animal returning to its hole. He sat himself down and looked about him. He saw the garden, the pathways, the beds of flowers, the house, the two windows of Derouchette's chamber. He felt it horrible to be obliged to breathe; he did what he could to prevent it.

To see those windows was almost too much happiness for Gilliatt.

Suddenly he saw her.

Derouchette approached. She stopped. She walked back a few paces, stopped again; then returned and sat upon a wooden bench. The moon was in the trees; a few clouds floated among the pale stars; the sea murmured to the shadows in an undertone.

Gilliatt felt a thrill through him. He was the most miserable and yet the happiest of men. He knew not what to do. His delirious joy at seeing her annihilated him. He gazed upon her neck--her hair.

A noise aroused them both--her from her reverie, him from his ecstasy.

Someone was walking in the garden. It was the footsteps of a man.

Derouchette raised her eyes. The footsteps drew nearer, then ceased.

Accident had so placed the branches that Derouchette could see the newcomer while Gilliatt could not. He looked at Derouchette.

She was quite pale; her mouth was partly open, as with a suppressed cry of surprise. Her surprise was enchantment mingled with timidity. She seemed as if transfigured by that presence; as if the being whom she saw before her belonged not to this earth.

The stranger, who was to Gilliatt only a shadow, spoke. A voice issued from the trees, softer than the voice of a woman; yet it was the voice of a man. Gilliatt heard many words, then, "Mademoiselle, you are poor; since this morning I am rich. Will you have me for your husband? I love you. G.o.d made not the heart of man to be silent. He has promised him eternity with the intention that he should not be alone. There is for me but one woman on the earth; it is you. I think of you as of a prayer. My faith is in G.o.d, and my hope in you."

Gilliatt heard them talking--the woman he loved, the man whose shadow lay upon the path. Presently he heard the invisible man exclaim: "Mademoiselle! You are silent."

"What would you have me say?"

The man said, "I wait for your reply."

"G.o.d has heard it," answered Derouchette.

Then she went forward; a moment afterwards, instead of one shadow upon the path, there were two. They mingled together, and became one.

Gilliatt saw at his feet the embrace of those two shadows.

Suddenly a noise burst forth at a distance. A voice was heard crying "Help!" and the harbour bell rang out on the night air.

It was Lethierry ringing the bell furiously. He had wakened, and seen the funnel of the Durande in the harbour. The sight had driven him almost crazy. He rushed out crying "Help!" and pulling the great bell of the harbour. Suddenly he stopped abruptly. A man had just turned the corner of the quay. It was Gilliatt. Lethierry rushed at him, embraced him, hugged him, cried over him, and dragged him into the lower room of the Bravees. "Give me your word that I am not crazy!" he kept crying.

"It can't be true. Not a tap, not a pin missing. It is incredible. We have only to put in a little oil. What a revolution! You are my child, my son, my Providence. Brave lad! To go and fetch my good old engine. In the open sea among those cut-throat rocks. I have seen some strange things in my life; nothing like that."

Gilliatt gave him the belt and the box containing the three thousand pounds stolen by Clubin. Again Lethierry was thrown into a wild amazement. "Did anyone ever see a man like Gilliatt?" he concluded. "I was struck down to the ground, I was a dead man. He comes and sets me up again as firm as ever. And all the while I was never thinking of him. He had gone clean out of my mind; but I recollect everything now. Poor lad!

Ah, by the way, you know you are to marry Derouchette."

Gilliatt leaned with his back against the wall, like one who staggers, and said, in a tone very low, but distinct, "No."

Lethierry started. "How, no?"

"I do not love her."

Lethierry laughed that idea to scorn. He was wild with joy. Gilliatt, his son, his preserver, should marry Derouchette--he, and none other.

Neighbours had begun to flock in, roused by the bell. The room was crowded. Derouchette presently glided in, and was espied by Lethierry in the crowd. He seized her; told her the news. "We are rich again! And you shall marry the prodigy who has done this thing." His eye fell upon the man who had followed Derouchette into the room; it was the young priest whom Gilliatt had rescued from the seat in the rock. "Ah, you are there, Monsieur le Cure," exclaimed the old man; "you will marry these young people for us. There's a fine fellow!" he cried, and pointed to Gilliatt.

Gilliatt's appearance was hideous. He was in the condition in which he had that morning set sail from the rocks--in rags, his bare elbows showing through his sleeves, his beard long, his hair rough and wild, his eyes bloodshot, his skin peeling, his hands covered with wounds, his feet naked and torn. Some of the blisters left by the devil-fish were still visible upon his arms.

"This is my son-in-law!" cried Lethierry. "How he has struggled with the sea! He is all in rags. What shoulders! What hands! There's a splendid fellow!"

But Lethierry did not know Gilliatt. The poor broken creature escaped from the room. He himself made all the arrangements for the marriage of the priest and Derouchette; he placed the special license in their hands, secured a priest for the purpose, and secured pa.s.sages for them in the ship waiting in the roads for England.

When he had done all this, he made his way to the seat in the cliff, and sat there waiting to see the ship appear round the bight and disappear on the horizon.

The ship appeared with the slowness of a phantom. Gilliatt watched it.

Suddenly a touch and a sensation of cold caused him to look down. The sea had reached his feet.

He lowered his eyes, then raised them again. The ship was quite near.

The rock in which the rains had hollowed out this giant's seat was so completely vertical, and there was so much water at its base, that in calm weather vessels were able to pa.s.s without danger within a few cables' length.

The ship was already abreast of the rock. Gilliatt could see the stir of life on the sunlit deck. The deck was as visible as if he had stood upon it. He saw bride and bridegroom sitting side by side, like two birds, warming themselves in the noonday sun. A celestial light was in those two faces formed by innocence. The silence was like the calm of heaven.

The vessel pa.s.sed. He watched her till her masts and sails formed only a white obelisk, gradually decreasing against the horizon. He felt that the water had reached his waist. Sea-mews and cormorants flew about him restlessly, as if anxious to warn him of his danger.

The ship was rapidly growing less.

There was no foam around the rock where he sat; no wave beat against its granite sides. The water rose peacefully. It was nearly level with Gilliatt's shoulders.