The Man Who Laughs Read online

  "Yes."

  "Have you tested the log?"

  "I tested the sand-glass by the bullet, and checked the log by a round shot."

  "Of what size was the shot?"

  "One foot in diameter."

  "Heavy enough?"

  "It is an old round shot of our war hooker, La Casse de Par-Grand."

  "Which was in the Armada?"

  "Yes."

  "And which carried six hundred soldiers, fifty sailors, and twenty-five guns?"

  "Shipwreck knows it."

  "How did you compute the resistance of the water to the shot?"

  "By means of a German scale."

  "Have you taken into account the resistance of the rope supporting the shot to the waves?"

  "Yes."

  "What was the result?"

  "The resistance of the water was 170 pounds."

  "That's to say she is running four French leagues an hour."

  "And three Dutch leagues.

  "But that is the difference merely of the vessel's way and the rate at which the sea is running?"

  "Undoubtedly."

  "Whither are you steering?"

  "For a creek I know, between Loyola and St. Sebastian."

  "Make the latitude of the harbour's mouth as soon as possible."

  "Yes, as near as I can."

  "Beware of gusts and currents. The first cause the second."

  "Traidores." [1]

  "No abuse. The sea understands. Insult nothing. Rest satisfied with watching."

  "I have watched, and I do watch. Just now the tide is running against the wind, by and by, when it turns, we shall be all right."

  "Have you a chart?"

  "No; not for this channel."

  "Then you sail by rule of thumb?"

  "Not at all. I have a compass."

  "The compass is one eye, the chart the other."

  "A man with one eye can see." "How do you compute the difference between the true and apparent course?"

  "Well, I've got my standard compass, and I make a guess."

  "To guess is all very well. To know for certain is better."

  "Christopher [2] guessed."

  "When there is a fog and the needle revolves treacherously, you can never tell on which side you should look out for squalls, and the end of it is that you know neither the true nor apparent day's work. An ass with his chart is better off than a wizard with his oracle."

  "There is no fog in the breeze yet, and I see no cause for alarm."

  "Ships are like flies in the spider's web of the sea."

  "Just now both winds and waves are tolerably favourable."

  "Black specks quivering on the billows, such are men on the ocean."

  "I dare say there will be nothing wrong to-night."

  "You may get into such a mess that you will find it hard to get out of it."

  "All goes well at present."

  The doctor's eyes were hoed on the northeast. The skipper continued:

  "Let us once reach the Gulf of Gascony, and I answer for our safety. Ah! I should say I am at home there. I know it well, my Gulf of Gascony. It is a little basin, often very boisterous; but there, I know every sounding in it and the nature of the bottom; mud opposite San Cipriano, shells opposite Cizarque, and off Cape Peñas, little pebbles off Boncaut de Mimizan; and I know the colour of every pebble."

  The skipper broke off, the doctor was no longer listening.

  The doctor gazed at the northeast. Over that icy face passed an extraordinary expression. All the agony of terror possible to a mask of stone was depicted there. From his mouth escaped this word, "Good!"

  His eyeballs, which had all at once become quite round like an owl's, were dilated with stupor on discovering a speck on the horizon. He added.

  "It is well. As for me, I am resigned."

  The skipper looked at him. The doctor went on talking to himself, or to some one in the deep:

  "I say, Yes."

  Then he was silent, opened his eyes wider and wider with renewed attention on that which he was watching, and said:

  "It is coming from afar, but not the less surely will it come."

  The arc of the horizon which occupied the visual rays and thoughts of the doctor, being opposite to the west, was illuminated by the transcendent reflection of twilight, as if it were day. This arc, limited in extent, and surrounded by streaks of grayish vapour, was uniformly blue, but of a leaden rather than cerulean blue. The doctor, having completely returned to the contemplation of the sea, pointed to this atmospheric arc, and said:

  "Skipper, do you see?"

  "What?"

  "That."

  "What?"

  "Out there."

  "A blue spot? Yes."

  "What is it?,"

  "A niche in heaven."

  "For those who go to heaven; for those who go elsewhere it is another affair." And he emphasised these enigmatical words with an appalling expression which was unseen in the darkness.

  A silence ensued. The skipper, remembering the two names given by the chief to this man, asked himself the question:

  "Is he a madman, or is he a sage?"

  The stiff. and bony finger of the doctor remained immovably pointing, like a sign-post, to the misty blue spot in the sky.

  The skipper looked at this spot.

  "In truth," he growled out, "it is not sky but clouds."

  "A blue cloud is worse than a black cloud," said the doctor; "and," he added, "it's a snow-cloud."

  "La nube de la nieve," said the skipper, as if trying to understand the word better by translating it.

  "Do you know what a snow-cloud is?" asked the doctor.

  "No."

  "You'll know by and by."

  The skipper again turned his attention to the horizon.

  Continuing to observe the cloud, he muttered between his teeth:

  "One month of squalls, another of wet; January with its gales, February with its rains, that's all the winter we Asturians get. Our rain even is warm. We've no snow but on the mountains. Ay, ay, look out for the avalanche. The avalanche is no respectre of persons. The avalanche is a brute."

  "And the waterspout is a monster," said the doctor, adding, after a pause, "Here it comes." He continued, "Several winds are getting up together. A strong wind from the west, and a gentle wind from the east."

  "That last is a deceitful one," said the skipper.

  The blue cloud was growing larger.

  "If the snow," said the doctor, "is appalling when it slips down the mountain, think what it is when it falls from the Pole!"

  His eye was glassy. The cloud seemed to spread over his face and simultaneously over the horizon. He continued, in musing tones:

  "Every minute the fatal hour draws nearer. The will of Heaven is about to be manifested."

  The skipper asked himself again this question: "Is he a madman?

  "Skipper," began the doctor, without taking his eyes off the cloud, "have you often crossed the Channel?"

  "This is the first time."

  The doctor, who was absorbed by the blue cloud, and who, as a sponge can take up but a definite quantity of water, had but a definite measure of anxiety, displayed no more emotion at this answer of the skipper than was expressed by a slight shrug of his shoulders.

  "How is that?"

  "Master Doctor, my usual cruise is to Ireland. I sail from Fontarabia to Black Harbour, or to the Achille Islands. I go sometimes to Braich-y-Pwll, a point on the Welsh coast. But I always steer outside the Scilly Islands. I do not know this sea at all."

  "That's serious. Woe to him who is inexperienced on the ocean! One ought to be familiar with the Channel: the Channel is the Sphinx. Look out for shoals."

  "We are in twenty-five fathoms here."

  "We ought to get into fifty-five fathoms to the west, and avoid even twenty fathoms to the east."

  "We'll sound as we get on."

  "The Channel is not all ordinary sea. The water rises fifty feet with the spring tid
es and twenty-five with neap tides. Here we are in slack water. I thought you looked scared."

  "We'll sound to-night."

  "To sound you must heave-to, and that you can not do."

  "Why not?"

  "On account of the wind."

  "We'll try."

  "The squall is close on us."

  "We'll sound, Master Doctor."

  "You could not even bring-to."

  "Trust in God."

  "Take care what you say. Pronounce not lightly the awful name."

  "I will sound, I tell you."

  "Be sensible; you will have a gale of wind presently."

  "I say that I will try for soundings."

  "The resistance of the water will prevent the lead from sinking, and the line will break. Ah! so this is your first time in these waters?"

  "The first time."

  "Very well; in that case listen, skipper."

  The tone of the word Listen was so commanding, that the skipper made an obeisance.

  "Master Doctor, I am all attention."

  "Port your helm, and haul up on the starboard tack."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Steer your course to the west."

  "Caramba!"

  "Steer your course to the west."

  "Impossible."

  "As you will. What I tell you is for the others' sake. As for myself, I am indifferent."

  "But, Master Doctor, steer west?"

  "Yes, skipper."

  "The wind will be dead ahead."

  "Yes, skipper."

  "She'll pitch like the devil."

  "Moderate your language. Yes, skipper."

  "The vessel would be in irons."

  "Yes, skipper."

  "That means very likely the mast will go."

  "Possibly."

  "Do you wish me to steer west?"

  "Yes."

  "I can not."

  "In that case settle your reckoning with the sea."

  "The wind ought to change."

  "It will not change all night."

  "Why not?"

  "Because it is a wind twelve hundred leagues in length."

  "Make headway against such a wind. Impossible."

  "To the west, I tell you."

  "I'll try, but in spite of everything she will fall off."

  "That's the danger."

  "The wind sets us to the east."

  "Don't go to the east."

  "Why not?"

  "Skipper, do you know what is for us the word of death?"

  "No."

  "Death is the east."

  "I'll steer west."

  This time the doctor, having turned right round, looked the skipper full in the face, and with his eyes resting on him, as though to implant the idea in his head, pronounced slowly, syllable by syllable, these words:

  "If to-night out at sea we hear the sound of a bell, the ship is lost."

  The skipper pondered in amaze.

  "What do you mean?"

  The doctor did not answer. His countenance, expressive for a moment, was now reserved. His eyes became vacuous. He did not appear to hear the skipper's wondering question. He was now attending to his own monologue. His lips let fall, as if mechanically, in a low murmuring tone, these words:

  "The time has come for sullied souls to purify themselves."

  The skipper made that expressive grimace, which raises the chin toward the nose.

  "He is more madman than sage," he growled, and moved off.

  Nevertheless he steered west.

  But the wind and the sea were rising.

  [1] Traitors.

  [2] Columbus.

  * * *

  V

  HARDQUANONNE

  THE MIST was deformed by all sorts of inequalities, bulging out at once on every point of the horizon, as if invisible mouths were busy puffing out the bags of wind. The formation of the clouds was becoming ominous. In the west, as in the east, the sky's depths were now invaded by the blue cloud: it advanced in the teeth of the wind. These contradictions are part of the wind's vagaries.

  The sea, which a moment before wore scales, now wore a skin--such is the nature of that dragon. It was no longer a crocodile, it was a boa. The skin, lead-coloured and dirty, looked thick, and was crossed by heavy wrinkles. Here and there, on its surface, bubbles of surge, like pustules, gathered and then burst. The foam was like a leprosy. It was at this moment that the hooker, still seen from afar by the child, lighted her signal.

  A quarter of an hour elapsed.

  The skipper looked for the doctor: he was no longer on deck. Directly the skipper had left him, the doctor had stooped his somewhat ungainly form under the hood, and had entered the cabin: there he had sat down near the stove, on a block. He had taken a shagreen ink-bottle and a cordwain pocketbook from his pocket; he had extracted from his pocketbook a parchment folded four times, old, stained, and yellow; he had opened the sheet, taken a pen out of his ink-case, placed the pocketbook flat on his knee, and the parchment on the pocketbook; and, by the rays of the lantern, which was lighting the cook, he set to writing on the back of the parchment. The roll of the waves inconvenienced him. He wrote thus for some time.

  As he wrote, the doctor remarked the gourd of aguardiente, which the Provençal tasted every time he added a grain of pimento to the puchero, as if he were consulting it in reference to the seasoning.

  The doctor noticed the gourd, not because it was a bottle of brandy, but because of the name which was plaited in the wicker-work with red rushes on a background of white. There was light enough in the cabin to permit of his reading the name.

  The doctor paused, and spelled it in a low voice:

  "Hardquanonne."

  Then he addressed the cook.

  "I had not observed that gourd before, did it belong to Hardquanonne?"

  "Yes," the cook answered; "to our poor comrade, Hardquanonne."

  The doctor went on:

  "To Hardquanonne, the Fleming of Flanders?"

  "Yes."

  "Who is in prison?"

  "Yes."

  "In the dungeon at Chatham?"

  "It is his gourd," replied the cook, "and he was my friend. I keep it in remembrance of him. When shall we see him again? It is the bottle he used to wear slung over his hip."

  The doctor took up his pen again, and continued laboriously tracing somewhat straggling lines on the parchment. He was evidently anxious that his handwriting should be very legible; and, at length, notwithstanding the tremulousness of the vessel and the tremulousness of age, he finished what he wanted to write.

  It was time, for, suddenly, a sea struck the craft, a mighty rush of waters besieged the hooker, and they felt her break into that fearful dance in which ships lead off with the tempest.

  The doctor arose and approached the stove, meeting the ship's motion with his knees dexterously bent, dried as best he could, at the stove where the pot was boiling, the lines he had written, refolded the parchment in the pocketbook, and replaced the pocketbook and the inkhorn in his pocket.

  The stove was not the least ingenious piece of interior economy in the hooker. It was judiciously isolated. Meanwhile, the pot heaved--the Provençal was watching it.

  "Fish broth," said he.

  "For the fishes," replied the doctor. Then he went on deck again.

  * * *

  VI

  THEY THINK THAT HELP IS AT HAND

  THROUGH HIS growing preoccupation, the doctor in some sort reviewed the situation; and any one near to him might have heard these words drop from his lips:

  "Too much rolling, and not enough pitching."

  Then, recalled to himself by the dark workings of his mind, he sank again into thought, as a miner into his shaft. His meditation in nowise interfered with his watch on the sea. The contemplation of the sea is in itself a reverie.

  The dark punishment of the waters, eternally tortured, was commencing. A lamentation arose from the whole main. Preparations, confused and melancholy, were f
orming in space. The doctor observed all before him, and lost no detail. There was, however, no sign of scrutiny in his face. One does not scrutinise hell.

  A vast commotion, yet half latent, but visible through the turmoils in space, increased and irritated, more and more, the winds, the vapours, the waves. Nothing is so logical and nothing appears so absurd as the ocean. Self-dispersion is the essence of its sovereignty, and is one of the elements of its redundance. The sea is ever for and against. It knots, that it may unravel, itself; one of its slopes attacks, the other relieves. No apparition is so wonderful as the waves. Who can paint the alternating hollows and promontories, the valleys, the melting bosoms, the sketches? How render the thickets of foam, blendings of mountains and dreams? The indescribable is everywhere there, in the rending, in the frowning, in the anxiety, in the perpetual contradiction, in the chiaroscuro, in the pendants of the cloud, in the keys of the ever-open vault, in the disaggregation without rupture, in the funereal tumult caused by all that madness!

  The wind had just set due north. Its violence was so favourable and so useful in driving them away from England that the captain of the Matutina had made up his mind to set all sail. The hooker slipped through the foam as at a gallop, the wind right aft, bounding from wave to wave in a gay frenzy. The fugitives were delighted, and laughed; they clapped their hands, applauded the surf, the sea, the wind, the sails, the swift progress, the flight, all unmindful of the future. The doctor appeared not to see them, and dreamed on.

  Every vestige of day had faded away. This was the moment when the child, watching from the distant cliff, lost sight of the hooker. Up to then, his glance had remained fixed, and, as it were, leaning on the vessel. What part had that look in fate? When the hooker was lost to sight in the distance, and when the child could no longer see aught, the child went north and the ship went south.

  All were plunged in darkness.

  * * *

  VII

  SUPERHUMAN HORRORS

  ON THEIR PART it was with wild jubilee and delight that those on board the hooker saw the hostile land recede and lessen behind them. By degrees the dark ring of ocean rose higher, dwarfing in twilight Portland, Purbeck, Tineham, Kimmeridge, the Matravers, the long streaks of dim cliffs, and the coast dotted with light-houses.