This reef, holding its prey, as if showing it off, was terrible to behold. Inanimate objects sometimes display a somber, hostile ostentation directed against man. There was defiance in the attitude of these rocks. They seemed to be waiting for something.
It was a scene of pride and arrogance: the vessel defeated, the abyss triumphant. The two rocks, still dripping with water after yesterday's storm, were like two combatants sweating after their exertions. The wind had died down, there were quiet ripples on the sea, and the presence of jagged rocks just under the surface was suggested by the plumes of foam that rose and fell gracefully above them. From the open sea came a sound like the murmuring of bees. Everything around was level except the two Douvres, towering up vertically like two black columns. Up to a certain height they were hairy with seaweed. Their sheer flanks had the sheen of armor. They seemed ready to reengage in combat. It was borne in on anyone seeing them that their roots were in underwater mountains. They had an air of tragic omnipotence.
Usually the sea conceals its attacks. It maintains a deliberate obscurity. This incommensurable expanse of darkness gives nothing away. It is very rare for a thing of mystery to yield up its secrets. There is something of the quality of a monster in catastrophe, but in unknown quantity. The sea is both open and secret; it hides, and is not anxious to divulge its actions. It brings about a shipwreck and then covers it over; it swallows up its victims out of a sense of shame. The waves are hypocrites: they kill, steal, conceal stolen property, plead ignorance, and smile. They roar, and then they bleat.157
It was very different here. The two Douvres, raising the dead Durande above the waves, had an air of triumph. It was like two monstrous arms emerging from the abyss and displaying to the storms this corpse of a ship. It was like a murderer boasting of his achievement.
To this was added the sacred awe of the hour. The dawn has a mysterious grandeur, made up of a remnant of the dreams of night and the first thoughts of day. At this uncertain moment there are still specters about. The huge capital H formed by the two Douvres linked by the crossbar of the Durande stood out against the horizon in a kind of crepuscular majesty.
Gilliatt was wearing his seagoing clothes--a woolen shirt, woolen stockings, hobnailed shoes, knitted pea-jacket, trousers of rough, coarse material, with pockets, and one of the red woolen caps then worn by sailors, known last century as galley caps.
He recognized the Douvres reef and steered toward it.
The Durande was the very opposite of a ship sent to the bottom: she was a ship suspended in midair. It was a strange kind of salvage that Gilliatt was undertaking.
It was broad daylight when he arrived off the reef. As we have said, there was very little movement on the sea. The only agitation on the water came from its confinement between the rocks. In any channel, large or small, there is always some lapping of the waves. Within a strait the sea always has a covering of foam.
Gilliatt approached the Douvres with extreme caution, taking frequent soundings.
He had some cargo to unload. Accustomed as he was to frequent absences from home, he always had his emergency supplies ready for departure: a sack of biscuit, a sack of rye flour, a basket of salt fish and smoked beef, a large can of fresh water, a Norwegian chest painted with flowers containing some coarse woolen shirts, his oilskins and tarpaulin leggings and a sheepskin that he wore at night over his pea jacket. When leaving the Bu de la Rue he had quickly stowed all this in the paunch, together with a loaf of fresh bread. In his haste to get away the only tools he had taken with him were his blacksmith's hammer, his ax and hatchet, a saw, and a knotted rope with a grapnel at the end. If you have a ladder of this kind and know how to use it, you can tackle the most difficult climbs, and with it a good sailor can scale the steepest rock face. Visitors to the island of Sark can observe what the fishermen of Havre Gosselin are able to do with a knotted rope.
Gilliatt's nets and lines and other fishing tackle were also in the boat. He had taken them on board from force of habit, without thinking; for to carry out his enterprise he was going to spend some time in an archipelago of rocks and shoals where there would be no scope for using them.
When Gilliatt arrived at the reef the sea was ebbing, which was a circumstance in his favor. The falling tide had left exposed, at the foot of the Little Douvre, a number of slabs of rock, level or gently sloping, not unlike the corbels supporting the flooring of a building. These surfaces, some narrow and some broader, were set at irregular intervals along the base of the great monolith and continued to form a narrow ledge under the Durande, whose hull protruded between the two rocks, caught as if in a vise.
These rock platforms were convenient for landing and surveying the position. The stores brought in the paunch could be unloaded and kept there for a time; but it was necessary to make haste, for the rocks would be exposed only for a few hours. When the tide rose they would again be submerged.
Gilliatt brought his boat in to these slabs of rock, some of them level and some sloping down. They were covered with a wet and slippery mass of seaweed, the sloping ones being even more slippery.
Gilliatt took his shoes off, sprang barefoot onto the seaweed, and moored the paunch to a spur of rock. Then he walked along the narrow ledge of rock until he was under the Durande, looked up and examined her.
The Durande was wedged in between the two pillars of rock, suspended some twenty feet above the water. It must have been a very heavy sea that cast her up so high.
To seamen such violence of the waves is nothing new. To take only one example, on January 25, 1840, in the Gulf of Stora,158 the last violent wave of a storm tossed a brig right over the wreck of a corvette, the Marne, and embedded it between two cliffs.
There was in fact only half of the Durande caught between the Douvres. She had been snatched from the waves and, as it were, uprooted from the water by the hurricane. The violence of the wind had buckled the hull, the stormy sea had held it firmly in its grasp, and the vessel, pulled in opposite directions by the two hands of the tempest, had snapped like a lath of wood. The after part, with the engines and the paddle wheels, had been hoisted out of the sea and driven by all the fury of the cyclone into the narrow gap between the two Douvres as far as her midship beam and was held fast there. The wind had struck a mighty blow; in order to drive this wedge between the two rocks the hurricane had turned itself into a sledgehammer. The forward part of the Durande, carried away and buffeted by the blast, had smashed to pieces on the rocks below.
The hold, broken open, had discharged the drowned cattle into the sea.
A large section of the forward part of the ship's side was still attached to the after part, hanging from the riders of the port paddle box on a few damaged braces that could easily be struck off with an ax. Farther away, scattered about in crevices in the reef, could be seen beams, planks, rags of canvas, lengths of chain and debris of all kinds, lying quietly amid the rocks.
Gilliatt examined the Durande carefully. Her keel made a kind of ceiling over his head.
The horizon, its limitless expanse of water barely moving, was serene. The sun was rising in its pride from this vast circle of blue.
Every now and then a drop of water fell from the wreck into the sea.
II
THE PERFECTION OF DISASTER
The two Douvres differed from each other in both shape and size. The Little Douvre, which was narrower and curving, was patterned from base to summit with veins of softer brick-red rock that divided the interior of the granite into compartments. Where these veins surfaced there were cracks that would be helpful to a climber. One of these cracks, a little above the level of the wreck, had been gouged out and worn away by the breakers until it had become a kind of niche that could have housed a statue. The granite had a rounded surface and was soft to the feel, like touchstone, but was nonetheless hard for that. The Little Douvre ended in a point shaped like a horn. The Great Douvre, rising in an unbroken perpendicular mass, had a smooth, polished exterior, as if hewn by
a sculptor, and looked as if it were made of black ivory. Not a hole, not an irregularity in its smooth surface. Its steep sides were inhospitable; a convict could not have used it to help in his escape, nor a bird to make its nest. The summit was flat, like that of the Homme; but it was totally inaccessible. It was possible to climb the Little Douvre, but not to find lodging on the top; the Great Douvre had room enough on the top but was unclimbable.
After his first survey Gilliatt returned to the paunch, landed her cargo on the broadest of the rock ledges above the water, rolled up his modest stores and equipment in a tarpaulin, ran a sling around the bundle, with a loop for hoisting, and pushed it into a recess in the rocks where it was out of reach of the waves. Then, clutching the Little Douvre and clinging with hands and feet to every projection and every cranny in the rock, he climbed up to the Durande, stranded in midair, and, coming level with the paddle boxes, sprang onto the deck.
The interior of the wreck was a grievous sight. The Durande bore all the marks of a frenzied attack. She had suffered a fearful rape at the hands of the storm. A tempest behaves like a band of pirates. A shipwreck is a vicious attack on a vessel's life. Cloud, thunder, rain, wind, waves, and rocks are an abominable gang of accomplices in crime.
The scene on this dismantled deck suggested that the Durande had been trampled into ruin by the furious spirits of the sea. Everywhere there were marks of their rage. Bizarrely twisted ironwork bore witness to the frantic violence of the wind. The between decks were like the cell of a madman who had broken up everything in it.
No wild beast is as ruthless as the sea in tearing its prey to pieces. Water has countless claws. The wind bites, the sea devours; waves are voracious jaws. Objects are torn off and destroyed in the same movement. The ocean strikes as smartly as a lion.
What was remarkable about the destruction of the Durande was that it was so detailed and meticulous. It was as if she had been viciously dissected. Much of the damage looked as if it had been done on purpose. Anyone observing would be tempted to think, What deliberate wickedness! The torn planking seemed to have been fretted into shape. Ravages of this kind are characteristic of the cyclone. It is the caprice of that great devastating force to shred and diminish whatever lies in its path. A cyclone has the refined cruelty of an executioner. The disasters that it brings about are like tortures. One might think it harbored a grudge against its victims; it has the intense ferocity of a savage. In exterminating its victims, it also dissects them. It torments them, it revenges itself on them, it takes pleasure in destruction--showing in all this a certain pettiness of spirit.
Cyclones are rare in our climes, and are all the more redoubtable for being unexpected. A rock in their path may become the pivot of a storm. The squall had probably formed a spiral over the Douvres and on striking the reef had turned into a whirlwind, which had tossed the Durande so high up between the rocks. In a cyclone a ship caught by the wind weighs no more than a stone in a sling.
The Durande had suffered the same kind of wound as a man cut in two; it was a torso torn open to release a mass of debris resembling entrails. Ropes swung free, trembling; chains dangled, shivering; the fibers and nerves of the vessel were exposed and hung loose. Anything that was not totally shattered was disjointed; the remaining fragments of the nail-studded casing of the hull were like currycombs bristling with points; the whole ship was a ruin; a handspike was now no more than a piece of iron, a sound no more than a piece of lead, a deadeye no more than a piece of wood, a halyard no more than an end of hemp, a strand of rope no more than a tangled skein, a stay rope reduced to a thread. All around was evidence of tragic, pointless destruction. Everything was broken off, dismantled, cracked, eaten away, disjointed, cast adrift, annihilated. It was a ghastly pile of fragments that no longer belonged together. Everywhere was dismemberment, dislocation, and disruption, in the kind of disorder and fluidity that is characteristic of all states of confusion, from the melees of men that are called battles to the melees of the elements that are called chaos.
Everything was collapsing and falling away; the flux of planks, panels, ironwork, cables, and beams had been halted just at the great fracture in the hull, from which the least shock might precipitate it all into the sea. What remained of the vessel's powerful frame, once so triumphant--the whole of the after part of the Durande, now suspended between the two Douvres and perhaps liable to fall at any moment--was split wide open at various points, revealing the dark and mournful interior.
Down below the sea foamed, spitting in contempt of this wretched object.
III
SOUND, BUT NOT SAFE
Gilliatt had not expected to find only half of the vessel. Nothing in the account by the skipper of the Shealtiel, which had been so exact and detailed, had given any indication that the Durande had split in two. The break had probably taken place when the skipper heard a "devil of a crash." No doubt he had been some distance away when the final blast of wind struck, and what he had thought was merely a heavy sea had in fact been a waterspout. Later, when he had drawn closer to observe the wreck, he had been able to see only the forward part of the vessel, the rest--that is, the wide break that had separated the bow from the stern--having been concealed from him by the enclosing rocks.
In other respects the skipper of the Shealtiel had reported the position accurately. The hull of the Durande was lost, but the engines were intact.
Such chances are common in shipwrecks, as they are in fires. The logic of disaster escapes us.
The masts had snapped off and fallen, but the funnel was not even bent; the heavy iron plating on which the engines were based had preserved them intact, in one piece. The planking of the paddle boxes had been torn apart like the slats of a venetian blind, but in the gaps thus left it could be seen that the two wheels were sound, with only one or two blades missing.
In addition to the engines, the main capstan in the stern had survived. It still had its chain, and, solidly mounted on heavy beams, could still be of service, provided that the strain on the voyal did not split the planking. The flooring of the deck was giving way almost everywhere; all this part of the structure was decidedly shaky.
The section of the hull caught between the two Douvres, however, was firmly fixed, as we have seen, and appeared to be holding together.
There was something derisory in the preservation of the engines that added to the irony of the catastrophe. The somber malice of the unknown sometimes finds expression in such bitter mockeries. The engines were saved, but at the same time they were lost. The ocean was preserving them only to destroy them at leisure, as a cat plays with a mouse. They were going to suffer a long death agony, gradually falling to pieces. They were to be a toy for the savage play of the foam. They would shrink day by day and, as it were, melt away. But what could be done to prevent this? It seemed madness even to imagine that this heavy piece of machinery, massive but also delicate, condemned to immobility by its weight, exposed in this solitude to the forces of demolition, delivered up by the reef to the discretion of the winds and the waves, could, in this implacable setting, escape gradual destruction.
The Durande was held prisoner by the Douvres. How could she be extricated? How could she be liberated? For a man to escape is difficult enough; how much more of a problem it is for a piece of machinery!
IV
A PRELIMINARY SURVEY
Gilliatt was surrounded by urgent tasks. The most immediately pressing was to find a place to moor the paunch and some kind of lodging for himself.
The Durande having settled down more to port than to starboard, the right-hand paddle box was higher than the left-hand one.
Gilliatt climbed onto the right-hand paddle box. From there he could look down on the rocks below; and, although the channel through them changed direction several times beyond the Douvres, he was able to study the plan of the reef. This was his first concern.
As we have already noted, the Douvres were like two tall gable-ends marking the narrow entrance to a lane fla
nked by low granite cliffs with sheer vertical faces. It is not uncommon to find singular corridors such as this, seeming as if hewn by an ax, in ancient submarine rock formations.
This very tortuous defile was never without water, even at low tide. There was always a turbulent current flowing through it from end to end. The sharpness of its turnings was good or bad, depending on the direction of the wind: sometimes it disconcerted the waves and reduced their violence; sometimes it exasperated them. The latter effect was more frequent. An obstacle infuriates the sea and drives it into excesses; the foam thus produced is an exaggerated form of the waves. In such narrow passages a storm wind is similarly compressed and feels the same malignant fury. It is a case of the tempest suffering from strangury.159 The violent wind is still violent but is more narrowly concentrated. It is both a club and a spear. It pierces at the same time as it crushes. It is a hurricane compressed into a draft.
The two lines of rock bordering this street in the sea gradually decreased in height and disappeared together under the waves at some distance beyond the Douvres. At the far end was another gorge, lower than the one at the Douvres but still narrower, which was the eastern entrance to the defile. The two ridges of rock evidently continued under the water to the rock called the Homme, which stood like a square citadel at the far end of the reef. At low tide, as it was when Gilliatt was surveying the scene, they could be seen continuing all the way, sometimes just under the water, sometimes just emerging from it.
The whole reef was bounded and buttressed in the east by the Homme and in the west by the two Douvres. In a bird's-eye view it would be seen as a long chaplet of jagged rocks winding its way between the Douvres and the Homme.
The Douvres reef, taken as a whole, was constituted by the emergence of two gigantic sheets of granite, almost touching each other, rising vertically to form the crests of peaks in the depths of the ocean--immense offshoots of the abyss. Winds and waves had fretted out this crest and patterned it like the teeth of a saw. All that was visible on the surface was the top of the formation, the reef. What was concealed by the sea must have been enormous. The narrow passage into which the Durande had been cast by the storm was the gap between these two colossal sheets of rock.