Toilers of the Sea Part 5

At the extremity of the ridge on which the Bu de la Rue was situate, was a large rock, which the fis.h.i.+ng people of Houmet called the "Beast's Horn." This rock, a sort of pyramid, resembled, though less in height, the "Pinnacle" of Jersey. At high water the sea divided it from the ridge, and the Horn stood alone; at low water it was approached by an isthmus of rocks. The remarkable feature of this "Beast's Horn" was a sort of natural seat on the side next the sea, hollowed out by the water, and polished by the rains. The seat, however, was a treacherous one. The stranger was insensibly attracted to it by "the beauty of the prospect," as the Guernsey folks said. Something detained him there in spite of himself, for there is a charm in a wide view. The seat seemed to offer itself for his convenience; it formed a sort of niche in the peaked _facade_ of the rock. To climb up to it was easy, for the sea, which had fas.h.i.+oned it out of its rocky base, had also cast beneath it, at convenient distances, a kind of natural stairs composed of flat stones. The perilous abyss is full of these snares; beware, therefore, of its proffered aids. The spot was tempting: the stranger mounted and sat down. There he found himself at his ease; for his seat he had the granite rounded and hollowed out by the foam; for supports, two rocky elbows which seemed made expressly for him; against his back, the high vertical wall of rock which he looked up to and admired, without thinking of the impossibility of scaling it. Nothing could be more simple than to fall into reverie in that convenient resting-place. All around spread the wide sea; far off the s.h.i.+ps were seen pa.s.sing to and fro. It was possible to follow a sail with the eye, till it sank in the horizon beyond the Casquets. The stranger was entranced: he looked around, enjoying the beauty of the scene, and the light touch of wind and wave. There is a sort of bat found at Cayenne, which has the power of fanning people to sleep in the shade with a gentle beating of its dusky wings. Like this strange creature the wind wanders about, alternately ravaging or lulling into security. So the stranger would continue contemplating the sea, listening for a movement in the air, and yielding himself up to dreamy indolence. When the eyes are satiated with light and beauty, it is a luxury to close them for awhile. Suddenly the loiterer would arouse; but it was too late. The sea had crept up step by step; the waters surrounded the rock; the stranger had been lured on to his death.

A terrible rock was this in a rising sea.

The tide gathers at first insensibly, then with violence; when it touches the rocks a sudden wrath seems to possess it, and it foams.

Swimming is difficult in the breakers: excellent swimmers have been lost at the Horn of the Bu de la Rue.

In certain places, and at certain periods, the aspect of the sea is dangerous--fatal; as at times is the glance of a woman.

Very old inhabitants of Guernsey used to call this niche, fas.h.i.+oned in the rock by the waves, "Gild-Holm-'Ur" seat, or Kidormur; a Celtic word, say some authorities, which those who understand Celtic cannot interpret, and which all who understand French can--"_Qui-dort-meurt:_"[1] such is the country folks' translation.

The reader may choose between the translation, _Qui-dort-meurt_, and that given in 1819, I believe in _The Armorican_, by M. Athenas.

According to this learned Celtic scholar, Gild-Holm-'Ur signifies "The resting-place of birds."

There is, at Aurigny, another seat of this kind, called the Monk's Chair, so well sculptured by the waves, and with steps of rock so conveniently placed, that it might be said that the sea politely sets a footstool for those who rest there.

In the open sea, at high water, the Gild-Holm-'Ur was no longer visible; the water covered it entirely.

The Gild-Holm-'Ur was a neighbour of the Bu de la Rue. Gilliatt knew it well, and often seated himself there. Was it his meditating place? No.

We have already said he did not meditate, but dream. The sea, however, never entrapped him there.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] He who sleeps must die.

BOOK II

MESS LETHIERRY

I

A TROUBLED LIFE, BUT A QUIET CONSCIENCE

Mess Lethierry, a conspicuous man in St. Sampson, was a redoubtable sailor. He had voyaged a great deal. He had been a cabin-boy, seaman, topmast-man, second mate, mate, pilot, and captain. He was at this period a s.h.i.+p-owner. There was not a man to compare with him for general knowledge of the sea. He was brave in putting off to s.h.i.+ps in distress.

In foul weather he would take his way along the beach, scanning the horizon. "What have we yonder?" he would say; "some craft in trouble?"

Whether it were an interloping Weymouth fisherman, a cutter from Aurigny, a bisquine from Courseulle, the yacht of some n.o.bleman, an English craft or a French one--poor or rich, mattered little. He jumped into a boat, called together two or three strong fellows, or did without them, as the case might be, pushed out to sea, rose and sank, and rose again on rolling waves, plunged into the storm, and encountered the danger face to face. Then afar off, amid the rain and lightning, and drenched with water, he was sometimes seen upright in his boat like a lion with a foaming mane. Often he would pa.s.s whole days in danger amidst the waves, the hail, and the wind, making his way to the sides of foundering vessels during the tempest, and rescuing men and merchandise.

At night, after feats like these, he would return home, and pa.s.s his time in knitting stockings.

For fifty years he led this kind of life--from ten years of age to sixty--so long did he feel himself still young. At sixty, he began to discover that he could no longer lift with one hand the great anvil at the forge of Varclin. This anvil weighed three hundredweight. At length rheumatic pains compelled him to be a prisoner; he was forced to give up his old struggle with the sea, to pa.s.s from the heroic into the patriarchal stage, to sink into the condition of a harmless, worthy old fellow.

Happily his rheumatism attacks happened at the period when he had secured a comfortable competency. These two consequences of labour are natural companions. At the moment when men become rich, how often comes paralysis--the sorrowful crowning of a laborious life!

Old and weary men say among themselves, "Let us rest and enjoy life."

The population of islands like Guernsey is composed of men who have pa.s.sed their lives in going about their little fields or in sailing round the world. These are the two cla.s.ses of the labouring people; the labourers on the land, and the toilers of the sea. Mess Lethierry was of the latter cla.s.s; he had had a life of hard work. He had been upon the continent; was for some time a s.h.i.+p carpenter at Rochefort, and afterwards at Cette. We have just spoken of sailing round the world; he had made the circuit of all France, getting work as a journeyman carpenter; and had been employed at the great salt works of Franche-Comte. Though a humble man, he had led a life of adventure. In France he had learned to read, to think, to have a will of his own. He had had a hand in many things, and in all he had done had kept a character for probity. At bottom, however, he was simply a sailor. The water was his element; he used to say that he lived with the fish when really at home. In short, his whole existence, except two or three years, had been devoted to the ocean. Flung into the water, as he said, he had navigated the great oceans both of the Atlantic and the Pacific, but he preferred the Channel. He used to exclaim enthusiastically, "That is the sea for a rough time of it!" He was born at sea, and at sea would have preferred to end his days. After sailing several times round the world, and seeing most countries, he had returned to Guernsey, and never permanently left the island again. Henceforth his great voyages were to Granville and St. Malo.

Mess Lethierry was a Guernsey man--that peculiar amalgamation of Frenchman and Norman, or rather English. He had within himself this quadruple extraction, merged and almost lost in that far wider country, the ocean. Throughout his life and wheresoever he went, he had preserved the habits of a Norman fisherman.

All this, however, did not prevent his looking now and then into some old book; of taking pleasure in reading, in knowing the names of philosophers and poets, and in talking a little now and then in all languages.

II

A CERTAIN PREDILECTION

Gilliatt was a child of Nature. Mess Lethierry was the same.

Lethierry's uncultivated nature, however, was not without certain refinements.

He was fastidious upon the subject of women's hands. In his early years, while still a lad, pa.s.sing from the stage of cabin-boy to that of sailor, he had heard the Admiral de Suffren say, "There goes a pretty girl; but what horrible great red hands." An observation from an admiral on any subject is a command, a law, an authority far above that of an oracle. The exclamation of Admiral de Suffren had rendered Lethierry fastidious and exacting in the matter of small and white hands. His own hand, a large club fist of the colour of mahogany, was like a mallet or a pair of pincers for a friendly grasp, and, tightly closed, would almost break a paving-stone.

He had never married; he had either no inclination for matrimony, or had never found a suitable match. That, perhaps, was due to his being a stickler for hands like those of a d.u.c.h.ess. Such hands are, indeed, somewhat rare among the fishermen's daughters at Portbail.

It was whispered, however, that at Rochefort, on the Charente, he had, once upon a time, made the acquaintance of a certain grisette, realising his ideal. She was a pretty girl with graceful hands; but she was a vixen, and had also a habit of scratching. Woe betide any one who attacked her! yet her nails, though capable at a pinch of being turned into claws, were of a cleanliness which left nothing to be desired. It was these peculiarly bewitching nails which had first enchanted and then disturbed the peace of Lethierry, who, fearing that he might one day become no longer master of his mistress, had decided not to conduct that young lady to the nuptial altar.

Another time he met at Aurigny a country girl who pleased him. He thought of marriage, when one of the inhabitants of the place said to him, "I congratulate you; you will have for your wife a good fuel maker." Lethierry asked the meaning of this. It appeared that the country people at Aurigny have a certain custom of collecting manure from their cow-houses, which they throw against a wall, where it is left to dry and fall to the ground. Cakes of dried manure of this kind are used for fuel, and are called _coipiaux_. A country girl of Aurigny has no chance of getting a husband if she is not a good fuel maker; but the young lady's especial talent only inspired disgust in Lethierry.

Besides, he had in his love matters a kind of rough country folks'

philosophy, a sailor-like sort of habit of mind. Always smitten but never enslaved, he boasted of having been in his youth easily conquered by a petticoat, or rather a _cotillon_; for what is now-a-days called a crinoline, was in his time called a _cotillon_; a term which, in his use of it, signifies both something more and something less than a wife.

These rude seafaring men of the Norman Archipelago, have a certain amount of shrewdness. Almost all can read and write. On Sundays, little cabin-boys may be seen in those parts, seated upon a coil of ropes, reading, with book in hand. From all time these Norman sailors have had a peculiar satirical vein, and have been famous for clever sayings. It was one of these men, the bold pilot Queripel, who said to Montgomery, when he sought refuge in Jersey after the unfortunate accident in killing Henry II. at a tournament, with a blow of his lance, "_Tete folle a ca.s.se tete vide_." Another one, Touzeau, a sea-captain at St.

Brelade, was the author of that philosophical pun, erroneously attributed to Camus, "_Apres la mort, les papes deviennent papillons, et les sires deviennent cirons_."

III

THE OLD SEA LANGUAGE

The mariners of the Channel are the true ancient Gauls. The islands, which in these days become rapidly more and more English--preserved for many ages their old French character. The peasant in Sark speaks the language of Louis XIV. Forty years ago, the old cla.s.sical nautical language was to be found in the mouths of the sailors of Jersey and Aurigny. When amongst them, it was possible to imagine oneself carried back to the sea life of the seventeenth century. From that speaking trumpet which terrified Admiral Hidde, a philologist might have learnt the ancient technicalities of manoeuvring and giving orders at sea, in the very words which were roared out to his sailors by Jean Bart. The old French maritime vocabulary is now almost entirely changed, but was still in use in Jersey in 1820. A s.h.i.+p that was a good plyer was _bon boulinier_; one that carried a weather-helm in spite of her foresails and rudder was _un vaisseau ardent_; to get under way was _prendre aire_; to lie to in a storm, _capeyer_; to make fast running rigging was _faire dormant_; to get to windward, _faire chapelle_; to keep the cable tight, _faire teste_; to be out of trim, _etre en pantenne_; to keep the sails full, _porter plain_. These expressions have fallen out of use.

To-day we say _louvoyer_ for to beat to windward, they said _leauvoyer_; for _naviguer_, sail, they said _naviger_; for _virer vent devant_, to tack, _donner vent devant_; for _aller de l'avant_, to make headway, _tailler de l'avant_; for _tirez d'accord_, haul together, _halez d'accord_; for _derapez_, to weigh anchor, _deplantez_; for _embraquez_, to haul tight, _abraquez_; for _taquets_, cleats, _bittons_; for _burins_, toggles, _tappes_; for _balancine_, fore-lift, main-lift, etc., _valancine_; for _tribord_, starboard, _stribord_; for _les hommes de quart a babord_, men of the larboard watch, _les basbourdis_.

Tourville wrote to Hocquincourt: _nous avons singlet_ (sailed), for _cingle_. Instead of _la rafale_, squall, _le raffal_; instead of _bossoir_, cat-head, _boussoir_; instead of _drosse_, truss, _drousse_; instead of _loffer_, to luff, _faire une olofee_; instead of _elonger_, to lay alongside, _alonger_; instead of _forte brise_, stiff breeze, _survent_; instead of _jouail_, stock of an anchor, _jas_; instead of _soute_, store-room, _fosse_.

Such, at the beginning of this century, was the maritime dialect of the Channel Islands. Ango would have been startled had he heard the speech of a Jersey pilot. Whilst everywhere else the sails _faseyaient_ (s.h.i.+vered), in these islands they _barbeyaient_. A _saute de vent_, sudden s.h.i.+ft of wind, was a _folle-vente_. The old methods of mooring known as _la valture_ and _la portugaise_ were alone used, and such commands as _jour-et-chaque!_ and _bosse et vilte!_ might still be heard. While a sailor of Granville was already employing the word _clan_ for sheave-hold, one of St. Aubin or of St. Sampson still stuck to his _ca.n.a.l de pouliot_. What was called _bout d'alonge_ (upper fultock) at St. Malo, was _oreille d'ane_ at St. Helier. Mess Lethierry, as did the Duke de Vibonne, called the sheer of the decks _la tonture_, and the caulker's chisel _la patara.s.se_.

It was with this uncouth sea dialect in his mouth that Duquesne beat De Ruyter, that Duguay Trouin defeated Wasnaer, and that Tourville, in 1681, poured a broadside into the first galley which bombarded Algiers.

It is now a dead language. The idiom of the sea is altogether different.

Duperre would not be able to understand Suffren.