 Section 6 of the Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. The child remained motionless on the rock with his eyes fixed, no calling out, no appeal. Though this was unexpected by him he spoke not a word. The same silence reigned in the vessel. No cry from the child to the men, no farewell from the men to the child. There was on both sides a mute acceptance of the widening distance between them. It was like a separation of ghosts on the banks of the sticks. The child, as if nailed to the rock, which the high tide was beginning to bathe, watched the departing bark. It seemed as if he realized his position. What did he realize? Darkness. A moment later the hooker gained the neck of the crook and entered it. Once the clear sky the mass had been visible, rising above the split blocks between which the straight wound had between two walls. The truck wandered to the summit of the rocks and appeared to run into them. Then it was seen no more, all was over, the bark had gained the sea. The child watched its disappearance. He was astounded by dreamy. The stupefaction was complicated by a sense of the dark reality of existence. It seemed as if there were experience in this dawning being. Did he perchance already exercise judgment? Experience coming to early constructs sometimes. In the obscure depths of a child's mind some dangerous balance we know not what, in which the poor little soul weighs God. Feeling himself innocent he yielded. There was no complaint. The irreproachable does not reproach. His rough expulsion drew from him no sign. He suffered a sort of internal stiffening. The child did not bow under this sudden blow of fate. Which seemed to put an end to his existence, erited well begun. He received the thunder-stroke standing. It would have been evident to any one who could have seen his astonishment unmixed with ejection, that in the group which abandoned him there was nothing which loved him, nothing which he loved. Brooding he forgot the cold. Suddenly the wave wetted his feet. The tide was flowing, a gust passed through his hair. The north wind was rising. He shivered. There came over him from head to foot the shudder of awakening. He cast his eyes about him. He was alone. Up to this day there had never existed for him any other man than those who were now in the hooker. Those men had just stolen away. Let us add what seems a strange thing to state. Those men, the only ones he knew, were unknown to him. He could not have said who they were. His childhood had been passed among them, without his having the consciousness of being of them. He was in juxtaposition to them, nothing more. He had just been, forgotten, by them. He had no money about him, no shoes to his feet, scarcely a garment to his body, not even a piece of bread in his pocket. It was winter, it was night. It would be necessary to walk several leagues before a human habitation could be reached. He did not know where he was. He knew nothing, unless it was that those who had come with him to the brink of the sea had gone away without him. He felt himself put outside the pail of life. He felt that man failed him. He was ten years old. The child was in a desert between depths where he saw the night rising, and depths where he heard the waves murmur. He stretched his thin little arms and yawned. Then suddenly, as one who makes of his mind bold in throwing off his numbness, with the agility of a squirrel or perhaps of an acrobat, he turned his back on the creek and set himself to climb off the cliff. He escalated the path, left it, returned to it quick and venturous. He was hurrying landward, just as though he had a destination marked out. Nevertheless he was going nowhere. He hastened without an object, a fugitive before a fate. To climb is the function of a man. To clamber is that of an animal. He did both. As the slopes of Portland face southward there was scarcely any snow on the path. The intensity of cold had, however, frozen that snow into dust very troublesome to the walker. The child freed himself of it. His man's jacket, which was too big for him, complicated matters and got in his way. Now and then, on an overhanging crowd or in the declivity, he came upon a little ice which caused him to slip down. Then after hanging some moments over the precipice he would catch hold of a dry branch or projecting stone. Once he came on a vein of slate which suddenly gave way under him, letting him down with it. Crumbling slate is treacherous. For some seconds the child slid like a tile on a roof. He rolled to the extreme edge of the decline. A tuft of grass which he clutched to the right moment saved him. He was as mute inside of the abyss as he had been inside of the men. He gathered himself up and re-ascended silently. The slope was steep, so he had to tack in ascending. The precipice grew in the darkness, the vertical rock had no ending. It receded before the child in the distance of his height. As the child ascended so seemed the summit to ascend. While he clambered he looked up at the dark entablature, placed like a barrier between heaven and him. At last he reached the top. He jumped on the level ground, or rather landed, for he rose from the precipice. Scarcely was he on the cliff when he began to shiver. He felt in his face the bite of the night, the north wind. The bitter northwester was blowing. He tightened his rough sailor's jacket about his chest. It was a good coat, called in ship language a souesta, because that sort of stuff allows little of the southwesterly rain to penetrate. The child, having gained the table-land, stopped, placed his feet firmly on the frozen ground and looked about him. Behind him was the sea, in front the land above the sky, but a sky without stars and opaque mist masked the zenith. On reaching the summit of the rocky wall he found himself turned towards the land, and looked at it attentively. It lay before him as far as the skyline, flat frozen and covered with snow. Some tufts of heather shivered in the wind. No roads for visible, nothing, not even a shepherd's cot. Here and there pale spiral vortices might be seen, which were worlds of fine snow, hatched from the ground by the wind and blown away. Successive undulations of ground become suddenly misty, roll themselves into the horizon. The great dull plains were lost under the white fog. Deep silence, it spread like infinity and was hush as the tomb. The child turned again towards the sea. The sea, like the land, was white, the one with snow, the other with foam. There is nothing so melancholy as the light produced by this double whiteness. Certain lights of night are very clearly cut in their hardness. The sea was like steel, the cliff like ebony. From the height where the child was, the Bay of Portland appeared almost like a geographical map, pale in a semicircle of hills. There was something dreamlike in that nocturnal landscape, a one disk belted by a dark crescent. The moon sometimes had a similar appearance. From cape to cape along the whole coast, not a single spark indicating a hearth with a fire, not a lighted window, not an inhabited house was to be seen. As in heaven so on earth, no light, not a lamp below, not a star above. Here and there came sudden risings in the great expanse of waters in the gulf, as the wind disarranged and wrinkled the vast sheet. The hooker was still visible in the bay as she fled. It was a black triangle, gliding over the livid waters. Far away the waste of water stirred confusedly in the ominous clear, obscure of immensity. And that uttina was making quick way. She seemed gross smaller every minute. Nothing appeared so rapid as the flight of a vessel melting into the distance of ocean. Suddenly she lit the lantern at her prow. Probably the darkness falling round her made those on board uneasy, and the pilot thought it necessary to throw light on the waves. This luminous point, a spark seen from afar, clung like a corpse light to the high and long black form. You would have said it was a shroud raised up and moving in the middle of the sea, under which someone wandered with a star in his hand. A storm threatened in the air. The child took no account of it, but a sailor would have trembled. It was that moment of preliminary anxiety, when it seems as though the elements are changing into persons, and one is about to witness the mysterious transfiguration of the wind into the wind-god. The sea becomes ocean. Its power reveals itself as will. That which one takes for a thing is a soul. It will become visible, hence the terror. The soul of man fears to be thus confronted with the soul of nature. Chaos was about to appear. The wind rolling back the fog and making a stage of the clouds behind set the scene for that fearful drama of wave and winter which has called us no storm. Vessels putting back home in sight. For some minutes past the roads had no longer been deserted. Every instant troubled barks hastening towards an anchorage appeared from behind the capes. Some were doubling Portland Bill, the others St. Albans' head. From afar ships were running in. It was a race for refuge. South was the darkness thickened, and clouds full of night boarded on the sea. The weight of the tempest hanging overhead made a dreary lull on the waves. It certainly was no time to sail, yet the hooker had sailed. She had made the south of the cape. She was already out of the gulf and in the Osprey Sea. Inside there came a gust of wind. The Matatina, which was still clearly in sight, made all sail as if resolved to profit by the hurricane. It was the Norwester, a wind sullen and angry. Its weight was felt instantly. The hooker, caught broadside on, staggered, but recovering held her course to sea. This indicated a flight rather than a voyage. This fear of seathen of land and a greater heed of pursuit from man than from wind. The hooker passing through every degree of diminution sank into the horizon. The little star which he carried into shadow paled. More and more the hooker became amalgamated with the night, then disappeared. This time for good and all. At least the child seemed to understand it so. He ceased to look at the sea. His eyes turned back upon the plains, the waist of the hills, towards the space where it might not be impossible to meet something living. Into this unknown he set out. The man who laughs by Victor Hugo. Part 1 Book I Chapter 4 Questions What kind of band was it which had left the child behind in its flight? Were those fugitives Comprachikos? We have already seen the account of the measures taken by William III, and passed by Parliament, against the male and female benefactors called Comprachikos, otherwise Comprachikuinos, otherwise Kailas. There are laws which disperse. The law acting against the Comprachikos determined not only the Comprachikos, but vagabonds of all sorts on a general flight. It was the devil take the hindmost. The greater part of the Comprachikos returned to Spain. Many of them, as we have said, being Basques. The law for the protection of children had at first this strange result. It caused many children to be abandoned. The immediate effect of the penal statute was to produce a crowd of children, found or rather lost. Nothing is easier to understand. Every wandering gang containing a child was liable to suspicion. The mere fact of the child's presence was in itself a denunciation. They are very likely Comprachikos. Such was the first idea of the sheriff, of the bailiff, of the constable. Hence arrested inquiry. People simply unfortunate, reduced to wander and to beg, were seized with the terror of being taken for Comprachikos, although they were nothing of the kind. But the weak have grave misgivings of possible errors in justice. Beside these vagabond families are very easily scared. The accusation against the Comprachikos was that they traded in other people's children. But the promiscuousness caused by poverty and indigence is such that at times it might have been difficult for a father and mother to prove a child their own. How came you by this child? How were they to prove that they held it from God? The child became a peril. They got rid of it. To fly unencumbered was easier. The parents resolved to lose it. Now in a wood, now on a strand, now down a well. Children were found drowned in systems. Let us add that, in imitation of England, all Europe henceforth hunted down the Comprachikos. The impulse of pursuit was given. There is nothing like bellying the cat. From this time forward the desire to seize them made rivalry and emulation among the police of all countries, and the Aguazil was not less keenly watchful than constable. One could still read, 23 years ago, on a stone of the gate of Otero, an untranslatable inscription, the words of a code outraging for propriety. In it, however, the shade of difference, which existed between the buyers and the stealers of children, is very strongly marked. Here is part of the inscription in somewhat rough Castilian, Acquiqueden las orejas de la Comprachikos y bolsas de los robanáneos mientras que se van elas a trabajo de mar. We see the confiscation of ears, etc., did not prevent the owners going to the galleys. Wins followed a general route among all vagabonds. They started frightened, they arrived trembling. On every shore in Europe their furtive advent was watched, impossible for such a band to embark with a child, since the disembark with one was dangerous. To lose the child was much simpler of accomplishment, and this child, of whom we have caught a glimpse in the shadow of the solitudes of Portland, by whom he had been cast away, to all appearance by Comprachikos. End of Section 7, Recording by David Cole, Medway, Massachusetts. Section 8 of The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Thomas Cous, Kuzmarski. The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. Part 1, Book I, Chapter 5, The Tree of Human Intervention. It might be about seven o'clock in the evening. The wind was now diminishing. A sign, however, of a violent recurrence impending. The child was on the table land at the extreme south point of Portland. Portland is a peninsula, but the child did not know what a peninsula is, and was ignorant even of the name of Portland. He knew but one thing, which is, that one can walk until one drops down. An idea is a guide. He had no idea. They had brought him there, and left him there, they and there. These two enigmas represented his doom. They were humankind. There was the universe. For him, in all creation, there was absolutely no other basis to rest on but the little piece of ground where he placed his heel, ground hard and cold to his naked feet. In the great twilight world, open on all sides, what was there for the child? Nothing. He walks towards this nothing. Around him was the vastness of human desertion. He crossed the first plateau diagonally. Then a second. Then a third. At the extremity of each plateau, the child came upon a break in the ground. The slope was sometimes steep, but always short. The high, bare plains of Portland resemble great flagstones overlapping each other. The south side seems to enter under the protruding slab. The north side rises over the next one. These made a sense, which the child stepped over nimbly. From time to time he stopped, and seemed to hold counsel with himself. The night was becoming very dark. His radius of sight was contracting. He now only saw a few steps before him. All of a sudden he stopped, listened for an instant, and with an almost imperceptible nod of satisfaction, turned quickly and directed his steps towards an eminence of moderate height, which he dimly perceived on his right, at the point of the plain nearest the cliff. There was, on the eminence, a shape which in the mist looked like a tree. The child had just heard a noise in this direction, which was the noise neither of the wind nor of the sea, nor was it the cry of animals. He thought that someone was there, and in a few strides he was at the foot of the hillock. In truth, someone was there. That which had been indistinct on the top of the eminence was now visible. It was something like a great arm, thrust straight out of the ground, at the upper extremity of the arm a sort of forefinger, supported from beneath by the thumb, pointed out horizontally. The arm, the thumb, and the forefinger drew a square against the sky. At the point of juncture, of this peculiar finger and this peculiar thumb, there was a line from which hung something black and shapeless. The line moving in the wind sounded like a chain. This was the noise the child had heard. Seen closely, the line was that which the noise indicated, a chain, a single chain cable. By that mysterious law of amalgamation, which, throughout nature, causes appearances to exaggerate realities, the place, the hour, the mist, the mournful sea, the cloudy turmoil on the distant horizon, added to the effect of this figure, and made it seem enormous. The mass linked to the chain presented the appearance of a scabbard. It was swaddled, like a child, and long like a man. There was a round thing at its summit, about which the end of the chain was rolled. The scabbard was riven asunder at the lower end, and shreds of flesh hung out between the rents. A feeble breeze stirred the chain, and that which hung to it swayed gently. The passive mass obeyed the vague motions of space. It was an object to inspire indescribable dread. Horror, which disproportion's everything, blurred its dimensions while retaining its shape. It was a condensation of darkness which had a defined form. Night was above and within the spectre. It was a prey of ghastly exaggeration. Night and moonrise, stars setting behind the cliff, floating things in space, the clouds, winds from all quarters, had ended by penetrating into the composition of this visible nothing. The species of log hanging in the wind partook of the impersonality diffused far over sea and sky, and the darkness completed this phase of the thing which had once been a man. It was that which is no longer. To be not but a reminder, such a thing is beyond the power of language to express. To exist no more, yet to persist, to be in the abyss, yet out of it, to reappear above death as if indescribable, there is a certain amount of impossibility mixed with such reality. Thence comes the inexpressible. This being, was it a being? This black witness was a remainder, and an awful remainder, a remainder of what? Of nature first and then of society, not and yet total. The lawless inculmency of the weather held it at its will. The deep oblivion of solitude environed it. It was given up to unknown chances. It was without defence against the darkness, which did with it what it willed. It was forever the patient it submitted, the hurricane that ghastly conflict of winds was upon it. The specter was given over to pillage. It underwent the horrible outrage of rotting in the open air. It was an outlaw of the tomb. There was no peace for it, even in annihilation. In the summer it fell away into dust, in the winter into mud. Death should be veiled, the grave should have its reserve. Death was neither veil nor reserve, but cynically avowed putrefaction. It is effrontery in death to display its work. It offends all the calmness of shadow when it does its task outside its laboratory, the grave. The dead thing had been stripped. To strip one already stripped, relentless act. His marrow was no longer in his bones. His entrails were no longer in his body. His voice no longer in his throat. A corpse is a pocket, which death turns inside out and empties. If he ever had a me, where was the me? There still perchance, and this was fearful to think of. Being wandering about something in chains, can one imagine a more mournful lineament in the darkness? Realities exist here below, which serve as issues to the unknown, which seem to facilitate the eagerness of speculation, and at which hypothesis snatches. Conjecture has its compel entrere. In passing, by certain places and before certain objects, one cannot help stopping a prey to dreams into the realms of which the mind enters. In the invisible, there are dark portals ajar. No one could have met this dead man without meditating. In the vastness of dispersion he was wearing silently away. He had had blood which had been drunk, skin which had been eaten, flesh which had been stolen. Nothing had passed him by without taking somewhat from him. December had borrowed cold of him. Midnight, horror, the iron, rust, the plague, miasma, the flowers, perfume. His slow disintegration has a toll paid to all. A toll of the corpse to the storm, to the rain to the dew, to the reptiles to the birds. All the dark hands of night had rifled the dead. He was indeed an inexpressibly strange tenant, a tenant of the darkness. He was on a plain and on a hill, and he was not. He was palpable yet vanished. He was a shadow accruing to the night. After disappearance of day into the vast of silent obscurity, he became in legubrius accord with all around him. By his mere presence he increased the gloom of the tempest and the calm of stars. The unautable, which is in the desert, was condensed in him. Wave of an unknown fate, he commingled with all the wild secrets of the night. There was in his mystery a vague reverberation of all enigmas. About him life seemed sinking to its lowest depths. Certainly and confidence appeared to diminish in his environs. The shiver of the brushwood and the grass, a desolate melancholy, an anxiety in which a conscience seemed to lurk, appropriated with tragic force the whole landscape to that black figure suspended by the chain. The presence of a specter in the horizon is an aggravation of solitude. He was a sign, having unappeasable winds around him. He was implacable. Perpetual shuddering made him terrible. Fearful to say, he seemed to be a center in space, with something immense leaning on him. Perhaps that equity hath seen and set at defiance which transcends human justice. There was in his unburied continuance the vengeance of men and his own vengeance. He was a testimony in the twilight and the waste. He was in himself a disquieting substance, since we tremble before the substance which is the ruined habitation of the soul. For dead matter to trouble us, it must once have been tenanted by spirit. He denounced the law of earth to the law of heaven. Placed there by man, he there awaited God. Above him floated, blended with all the vague distortions of the cloud and the wave, boundless dreams of shadow. Who could tell what sinister mysteries lurked behind this phantom? The illimitable, circumstrived by not, nor tree, nor proof, nor passer by, was around the dead man. When the unchangeable broods over us, when heaven, the abyss, the life, grave, and eternity appear patent, then it is, we feel, that all is inaccessible, all is forbidden, all is sealed. When infinity opens to us, terrible indeed is the closing of the gate behind. The child was before this thing, dumb, wandering, and with eyes fixed. To a man it would have been a gibbet, to the child it was an apparition. Where a man would have seen a corpse, the child saw a spectre. Besides, he did not understand. The attractions of the obscure are manifold. There was one on the summit of that hill. The child took a step, then another. He ascended, wishing all the while to descend, it approached, wishing all the while to retreat. Bold yet trembling, he went close up to survey the spectre. When he got close under the gibbet, he looked up and examined it. The spectre was tarred, here and there it shone. The child distinguished the face. It was coated over with pitch, and this mask which appeared viscous and sticky varied its aspect with the night's shadows. The child saw the mouth, which was a hole. The nose, which was a hole. The eyes, which were holes. The body was wrapped and apparently corded up, and coarse canvas soaked in naphtha. The canvas was moldy and torn, a knee protruded through it. A rent disclosed to the ribs partly corpse partly skeleton. The face was the color of earth. Slugs wandering over it had traced across it vague ribbons of silver. The canvas glued to the bones showed in reliefs like the robe of a statue. The skull, cracked and fractured, gaped like a rotten fruit. The teeth were still human, for they retained a laugh. The remains of a cry seemed to murmur in the open mouth. There were a few hairs of beard on the cheek. The inclined head had an air of attention. Some repairs had recently been done. The face had been tarred afresh as well as the ribs in the knee which protruded from the canvas. The feet hung out below. Just underneath in the grass were two shoes, which snow and rain had rendered shapeless. These shoes had fallen from the dead man. The barefooted child looked at the shoes. The wind which had become more and more restless was now and then interrupted by pauses which foretell the approach of a storm. For the last few minutes it had altogether ceased to blow. The corpse no longer stirred. The chain was as motionless as a plum line. Like all newcomers into life and taking into account the peculiar influences of his fate, the child no doubt felt within him that awakening of ideas characteristic for early years which endeavours to open the brain and which resembles the pecking of the young bird in the egg. But all there was in his little consciousness just then was resolved into stupor. Excess of sensation has the effect of too much oil and ends by putting out thought. A man would have put himself questions. The child put himself none. He only looked. The tar gave the face of wet appearance. Drops of pitch congealed in what had once been the eyes produced the effect of tears. However, thanks to the pitch, the ravage of death, if not annulled, was visibly slackened and reduced to the least possible decay. That which was before the child was a thing of which care was taken. The man was evidently precious. They had not cared to keep him alive, but they cared to keep him dead. The gibbet was old, worm-eaten, although strong, and had been in use many years. Was an immemorial custom in England to tar smugglers. They were hanged on the seaboard, coated over with pitch and left swinging. Examples must be made in public and tarred examples last longest. The tar was mercy. By renewing it, they were spared making too many fresh examples. They placed gibbets from point to point along the coast as nowadays they do beacons. The hanged man did duty as a lantern. After his fashion he guided his comrades, the smugglers. The smugglers from far out at sea perceived the gibbets. There is one, first warning, another, second warning. It did not stop smuggling, but public order is made up of such things. The fashion lasted in England up to the beginning of this century. In 1822 three men were still seen to be hanging in front of Dover Castle. But for that matter the preserving process was employed not only with smugglers. England turned robbers and sendiers and murderers to the same account. Jack Painter, who set fire to the government storehouses at Portsmouth, was hanged and tarred in 1776. Le Becoyer, who describes him as Jean Le Pen-Trois, saw him again in 1777. Jack Painter was hanging above the ruin he had made and was retard from time to time. His corpse lasted—I had almost had lived—nearly fourteen years. It was still doing good service in 1788. In 1790, however, they were obliged to replace it by another. The Egyptians used to value the mummy of a king. A Plobean mummy can also, it appears, be of service. The wind, having great power on the hill, had swept it all of its snow. It reappeared on it, interspersed here and there with a few thistles. The hill was covered by that close short grass which grows by the sea, and which causes the tops of cliffs to resemble green cloth. Under the gibbet, on the very spot over which hung the feet of the executed criminal, was a long and thick tuft uncommon on such poor soil. Corpses, crumbling there for centuries past, accounted for the beauty of the grass. Earth feeds on man. Through refascination held the child. He remained there, open-mouthed. He only dropped his head a moment when a nettle which felt like an insect stung his leg. Then he looked up again, and he looked above him at the face which looked down on him. It appeared to regard him the more steadfastly because it had no eyes. It was a comprehensive glance, having an indescribable fixedness in which they were both light and darkness, and which emanated from the skull and the teeth as well as the empty arches of the brow. The whole head of a dead man seems to have vision, and this is awful. No eyeball, yet we feel we are looked at. A horror of worms. Little by little the child himself was becoming an object of terror. He no longer moved, torpor was coming over him. He did not perceive that he was losing consciousness. He was becoming benumbed and lifeless. The traitor was silently delivering him over to night. There is something of the traitor in winter. The child was all but a statue. The coldness of stone was penetrating his bones. Darkness, that reptile, was crawling over him. The drowsiness resulting from snow creeps over a man like a dim tide. The child was being slowly invaded by that stagnation resembling that of the corpse. He was falling asleep. The hand of sleep is the finger of death. The child felt himself seized by that hand. He was on the point of falling under the gibbet. He no longer knew whether he was standing upright. The end always impending. No transition between to be and not to be. The return into the crucible, the slip possible every minute, such as the precipice which is creation. Another instant, the child and the dead, life in sketch and life in ruin, would be confounded in the same obliteration. The specter appeared to understand and not to wish it. Of a sudden, it stirred. One would have said it was warning the child. It was the wind beginning to blow again. Nothing stranger than this dead man in movement. The corpse at the end of the chain pushed by the invisible gust took an oblique attitude. Rose to the left then fell back, re-ascended to the right, and fell and rose with slow and mournful precision. A weird game of seesaw. It seemed as though one saw in the darkness the pendulum of the clock of eternity. This continued for some time. The child felt himself waking up at the side of the dead. Through his increasing numbness he experienced a distinct sense of fear. The chain at every oscillation made a grinding sound with hideous regularity. It appeared to take breath and then to resume. This grinding was like the cry of a grasshopper. An approaching squall is heralded by sudden gusts of wind. While it once, the breeze, increased into a gale, the corpse emphasized its dismal oscillations. It no longer swung. It tossed. The chain which had been grinding now shrieked. It appeared that this shriek was heard. If it was an appeal, it was obeyed. From the depths of the horizon came the sound of a rushing noise. It was the sound of wings. An incident occurred, a stormy incident, peculiar to graveyards and solitudes. It was the arrival of a flight of ravens. Black flying specks pricked the clouds, pierced through the mist, increased in size, came near. Amalgamated, thickened, hastening towards the hill, uttering cries. It was like the approach of a legion. The winged vermin of the darkness alighted on the gibbet. The child, scared, drew back. Swarms obey words of command. The birds crowded on the gibbet. Not one was on the corpse. They were talking among themselves. The croaking was frightful. The howl, the whistle, and the roar are signs of life. The croak is a satisfied acceptance of putrefaction. In it you fancy you hear the tomb breaking silence. The croak is night-like in itself. The child was frozen even more by terror than by cold. Then the ravens held silence. One of them perched on the skeleton. This was a signal. They all precipitated themselves upon it. There was a cloud of wings. And all their feathers closed up and the hanged man disappeared under a swarm of black blisters, struggling in the obscurity. Just then the corpse moved. Was it the corpse? Was it the wind? It made a frightful bound. The hurricane, which was increasing, came to its aid. The phantom fell into convulsions. The squall, already blowing with full lungs, laid hold of it, and moved it about in all directions. It became horrible. It began to struggle, an awful puppet with a gibbet chain for a string. Some humorist of night must have seized the string and been playing with the mummy. It turned and leapt as if it would feign dislocate itself. The birds frightened flew off. It was like an explosion of all those unclean creatures. Then they returned and a struggle began. The dead man seemed to possess with Hitty's vitality. The winds raised him as though they meant to carry him away. He seemed struggling and making efforts to escape. But his iron collar held him back. The birds adapted themselves to all his movements retreating, then striking again scared but desperate. On one side a strange flight was attempted on the other, the pursuit of a chained man. The corpse, impelled by every spasm of the wind, had shocks, starts, fits of rage. It went, it came, it rose, it fell, driving back the scattered swarm. The dead man was a club, the swarms were dust. The fiercest sailing flock would not leave their hold and grew stubborn. The man, as of maddened by the cluster of beaks, redoubled his blind chastisement of space. It was like the blows of a stone held in a sling. At times the corpse was covered by talons and wings, then it was free. There were disappearances of the horde then sudden furious returns, a frightful torment continuing after life was passed. The birds seemed frenzied. The airholes of hell must surely give passage to such warms, thrusting of claws, thrusting of beaks, croakings, rendings of shreds no longer flesh, creakings of the gibbet, shudderings of the skeleton jingling of the chain, the voices of the storm and tumult, what conflict more fearful, a hobgoblin warring with devils, a combat with a spectre. At times the storm redoubling its violence, the hanged man revolved on his own pivot, turning every way at once towards the swarm as if he wished to run after the birds. His teeth seemed to try and bite them. The wind was for him, the chain against him. It was as if black deities were mixing themselves up in the fray. The hurricane was in the battle. As the dead man turned himself about, the flock of birds wound round him spirally. It was a whirl in a whirlwind. A great roar was heard from below. It was the sea. The child saw this nightmare. Suddenly he trembled in all his limbs. A shiver thrilled his frame. He staggered, tottered, nearly fell, recovered himself, pressed both hands to his forehead as if he felt his forehead a support. Then haggard, his hair streaming in the wind, descending the hill with long strides. His eyes closed himself almost a phantom. He took flight, leaving behind that torment in the night. End of Section 9. The North Point of Portland. He ran until he was breathless, at random, desperate, over the plain into the snow into space. His flight warmed him. He needed it. Without the run and the fright he had died. When his breath failed him he stopped, but he dared not look back. He fancied that the birds would pursue him, that the dead man had done his chain and was perhaps herring behind him, and no doubt the givet itself was descending the hill, running after the dead man. He feared to see these things if he turned his head. When he had somewhat recovered his breath he resumed his flight. To account for facts does not belong to childhood. He received impressions which were magnified by terror, but he did not link them together in his mind, nor form any conclusion on them. He was going on, no matter how or where. He ran in agony and difficulty as one in a dream. During the three hours or so since he had been deserted his onward progress still vague had changed its purpose. At first it was a search, now it was a flight. He no longer felt hunger nor cold. He felt fear. One instinct had given place to another. To escape was now his whole thought. To escape from what? From everything. On all sides life seemed to enclose him like a horrible wall. If he could have fled from all things he would have done so. But children know nothing of that breaking from prison which is called suicide. He was running. He ran on for an indefinite time, but fear dies with lack of breath. All at once, as if seized by a sudden accession of energy and intelligence, he stopped. One would have said he was ashamed of running away. He drew himself up, stamped his foot, and with head erect looked around. There was no longer hill nor givet nor flights of crows. The fog had resumed possession of the horizon. The child pursued his way. He now no longer ran but walked. To say that meeting with a corpse had made him a man of him would be to limit the manifold and confused impression which possessed him. There was, in his impression, much more and much less. The givet, a mighty trouble in the rudiment of comprehension, nascent in his mind, still seemed to him an apparition. But a trouble overcome is strength gained, and he felt himself stronger. Had he been of an age to probe self, he would have detected within him a thousand other germs of meditation. But the reflection of children is shapeless, and the utmost they feel is the bitter aftertaste of that which, obscure to them, the man later on calls indignation. Let us add that a child has the faculty of quickly accepting the conclusion of a sensation, the distant fading boundaries which amplify painful subjects escape him. A child is protected by the limit of feebleness against emotions which are too complex. He sees the fact, and little else beside. The difficulty of being satisfied by half ideas did not exist for him. It is not until later that experience comes, with its belief, to conduct the lawsuit of life. Then he confronts group of facts which have crossed his path. The understanding, cultivated and enlarged, draws comparisons. The memories of youth reappear under the passions, like the traces of a palimpsest under the erasure. These memories form the bases of logic, and that which was a vision in the child's brain becomes a syllogism in the mounds. Experience is, however, various, and turns to good or evil according to natural disposition, and with the good it ripens, and with the bad it rots. The child had run quite a quarter of a league, and walked another quarter, when suddenly he felt the craving of hunger. A thought which altogether eclipsed the hideous apparition on the hill occurred to him forcibly, that he must eat. Happily, there is in a manner brute which serves to lead him back to reality. But what to eat? Where to eat? How to eat? He felt his pockets mechanically, well-knowing that they were empty. Then he quickened his steps, without knowing whether he was going. He hastened towards a possible shelter. His faith in an inn is one of the convictions enrooted by God in man. To believe in a shelter is to believe in God. However, in that plain of snow there was nothing like a roof. The child went on, and the waste continued to bear as far as the eye could see. There had never been a human habitation on the table-land. It was at the foot of the cliff, in holes on the rocks, that, lacking wood to build themselves huts, had dwelt long ago the aboriginal inhabitants, who had slings for arms, dried cow dung for firing, and a god, the idle hail, standing in a glade at Dorchester, for the trade of fishing of that false-gray coral, which the Gauls call Plin, and the Greeks Isidis Plokamos. The child found his way as best he could, destiny is made up of crossroads, and option of path is dangerous. This little being had an early choice of doubtful chances. He continued to advance, but although the muscles of his thighs seemed to be of steel, he began to tire. There were no tracks in the plain, or if there were any, the snow had obliterated them. Instinctively he inclined eastwards. Sharp stones had wounded his heels. Had it been daylight, pink stains made by his blood might have been seen in the footprints he left in the snow. He recognized nothing. He was crossing the plain of Portland from south to north, and it is probable that the band with which he had come, to avoid meeting any one, had crossed it from east to west. They had most likely sailed in some fisherman's or smuggler's boat, from a point on the coast of Oakscomb, such as St. Catherine's Cape or Swancri, to Portland to find the hooker which awaited them. They must have landed in one of the creeks of Weston, and re-embarked in one of those of Easton. That direction was intersected by the one the child was now following. It was impossible for him to recognize the road. On the plain of Portland there are, here and there, raised strips of land, abruptly ended by the shore and cut perpendicular to the sea. The wandering child reached one of these culminating points and stopped on it, hoping that a larger space might reveal further indications. He tried to see around him. Before him, in place of a horizon, was a vast, livid opacity. He looked at this attentively, and under the fixedness of his glance it became less indistinct. At the base of a distant fold of land towards the east, in the depths of that obaque levidity, a moving and one sort of precipice, which resembled a cliff of the night, float and floated some vague black wrents, some dim shreds of vapor. The pale opacity was fog, the black shreds were smoke. Where there is smoke there are men. The child turd his steps in that direction. He saw some distance off a descent, and at the foot of the descent among shapeless conformations of rock, blurred by the mist what seemed to be either a sand bank or a tongue of land, joined probably to the plains of the horizon, the table land he had just crossed. It was evident he must pass that way. He had in fact arrived at the isthmus of Porthland, a diluvian alluvium, which is called Chest Hill. He began to descend the side of the plateau. The descent was difficult and rough. It was, with less of reckiness, however, the reverse of the ascent he had made on leaving the creek. Every ascent is balanced by a decline. After having clambered up, he crawled down. He leapt from one rock to another at the risk of a sprain, at the risk of falling into the vague depths below. To save himself when he slipped on the rock or on the ice, he caught hold of handfuls of wheeze and furs, thick with thorns, and their points ran into his fingers. At times he came on an easier declivity, taking breath as he descended. Then came on the precipice again, and each step necessitated an expedient. In descending precipices every movement solves a problem. One must be skillful under pain of death. These problems the child solved with an instinct which would have made him the admiration of apes and mountabags. The descent was steep and long. Nevertheless he was coming to the end of it. Little by little it was drawing nearer to the moment when he should land on the Isthmus, of which from time to time he caught a glimpse. At intervals which he, while he bounded or dropped from rock to rock, he pricked up his ears, his head erect, like a listening deer. He was hearkening to a diffused and faint uproar, far away to the left, like the deep note of a clarion. It was a commotion of winds, preceding that fearful north blast which is heard rushing from the pole, like an in-road of trumpets. At the same time the child felt now and then on his brow, on his eyes, on his cheeks, something which was like the palms of cold hands being placed on his face. These were large frozen flakes. They were blown at first softly in space, then eddying and heralding a snowstorm. The child was covered with them. The snowstorm, which for the past hour had been on the sea, was beginning to gain the land. It was slowly invading the plains. It was entering obliquely by the north-west, the table-land of Portland. End of CHAPTER CHAPTER ONE SUPERHUMAN LAWS The snowstorm is one of the mysteries of the ocean. It is the most obscure of things, meteorological, obscure in every sense of the word. It is a mixture of fog and storm, and even in our days we cannot well account for the phenomenon, hence many disasters. We try to explain all things by the action of wind and wave. Yet in the air there is a force which is not the wind, and in the waters a force which is not the wave. That force, both in the air and in the water, is a fluvium. Air and water are two nearly identical liquid masses, and turn into the composition of each other by condensation and dilatation, so that to breathe is to drink. A fluvium alone is fluid. The wind and the wave are only impulses. A fluvium is a current. The wind is visible in clouds. The wave is visible in foam. A fluvium is invisible. From time to time, however, it says, I am here. It, I am here, is a clap of thunder. The snowstorm offers a problem analogous to the dry fog. If the solution of the Calina of the Spaniards and the Quabar of the Ethiopians be possible, assuredly the solution will be achieved by a tent of observation of magnetic fluvium. Without a fluvium, a crowd of circumstances would remain enigmatic. Strictly speaking, the changes in the velocity of the wind, varying from three feet per second to two hundred twenty feet, would supply a reason for the variations of the waves rising from three inches in a calm sea, two thirty-six feet in a raging one. Strictly speaking, the horizontal direction of the winds, even in a squall, enables us to understand how it is that a wave thirty feet high can be fifteen hundred feet long. Though why are the waves of the Pacific four times higher near America than near Asia, that is to say, higher in the East than in the West? Why is the contrary true of the Atlantic? Why under the equator are they higher in the middle of the sea? Wherefore these deviations in the swell of the ocean? This is what magnetic fluvium, combined with terrestrial rotation and side-rail attraction, can alone explain. Is not this mysterious complication needed to explain an oscillation of the wind, varying, for instance, by the West from southeast to northeast, then suddenly returning in the same great curve from northeast to southeast, so as to make in thirty-six hours a prodigious circuit of five hundred sixty degrees? Such was the preface to the snowstorm of March 17th, 1867. The storm waves of Australia reached a height of eighty feet. This fact is connected with the vicinity of the pole. Storms in those latitudes result less from disorder of the winds than from submarine electrical discharges. In the year 1866 the transatlantic cable was disturbed at regular intervals and it's working for two hours in the twenty-four from noon to two o'clock by sort of intermittent fever. Certain compositions and decompositions of forces produce phenomena and impose themselves on the calculations of the semen under pain of shipwreck. The day that navigation, now a routine, shall become a mathematics. The day we shall, for instance, seek to know why it is that in our regions hot winds come sometimes from the north and cold winds from the south. The day we shall understand that diminutations of temperature are connected to oceanic depths. The day we realize that the globe is a vast lodestone polarized in immensity with two axes, an axis of rotation and an axis of a fluvium intersecting each other at the center of the Earth and that the magnetic poles turn around the geographical poles when those who risk life will choose to risk it scientifically, when men shall navigate a shirt from studied certainty, when the captain shall be a meteorologist, when the pilot shall be a chemist, then will many catastrophes be avoided, the sea is magnetic as much as aquatic, an ocean of unknown forces floats in the ocean of the waves, or, one might say, on the surface. Only to behold in the sea a mass of water is not to see it at all, the sea is an ebb and flow a fluid as much as flux and reflex of liquid. It is, perhaps, complicated by attractions even more than by hurricanes. Molecular adhesion manifested among other phenomena by capillary attraction, although microscopic, a fluvium sometimes aches, sometimes counteracts, the wave of the air and the wave of the waters. He who is ignorant of electric law is ignorant of hydraulic law, for the one intermixes with the other. It is true there is no study more difficult, no more obscure. It verges on empiricism, just as astronomy verges on astrology, and yet without this study there is no navigation. Having said this much, we will pass on. One of the most dangerous components of the sea is the snowstorm. The snowstorm is above all things magnetic, the pole produces it as it produces the aureliborealis. It is in the fog of the one as in the light of the other, and in the flake of the snow as in the streak of flame a fluvium is visible. Storms are the nervous attacks and delirious frenzies of the sea. The sea has its ailments. Tempest may be compared to maladies. Some are mortal, others not. Some may be escaped, others not. The snowstorm is supposed to be generally mortal. Jerabia, one of the pilots of Magalene, termed it a cloud-issuing from the devil's sore side. The old Spanish navigators called this kind of squaw la navada, when it came with snow la helada, when it came with hail. According to them, bats fell from the sky with the snow. Snowstorms are characteristics of polo-latitudes. Nevertheless, at times they glide. One might almost say tumble into our climates. So much ruin is mingled with the chances of the air. The Matutina, as we have seen, plunged resolutely into the great hazard of the night, a hazard increased by the impending storm. She had encountered its menace with a sort of tragic audacity. Nevertheless, it must be remembered that she had received due warning. End of Section 11. Recording by Anna Childs. Section 12 of The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. Section 13. Book II. Chapter II. Our first rough sketches filled in. While the hooker was in the Gulf of Portland, there was but little sea on. The ocean, if gloomy, was almost still, and the sky was yet clear. The wind took little effect on the vessel. The hooker hugged the cliff as closely as possible. It served to screen her. There were ten on board the little besky in Filuca, three men in crew, and seven passengers of whom two were women. In the light of the open sea, which broadens twilight into day, all the figures on board were clearly visible. Besides, they were not hiding now. They were all at ease. Each one re-assumed his freedom of manner, spoke in his own note, showed his face. Departure was to them a deliverance. The motley nature of the group shone out. The women were of no age. Wandering life produces premature old age, and indigences made up of wrinkles. One of them was a bask of the dry ports. The other, with the large rosary, was an Irish woman. They wore that air of indifference common to the wretched. They had squatted down close to each other when they got on board, on chests at the foot of the mast. They talked to each other. The bask are, as we have said, kindred languages. The bask woman's hair was scented with onions and basil. The skipper of the hooker was a bask of Guise Puscoa. One sailor was a bask of the northern slope of the Pyrenee. The other was of the southern slope. That is to say, they were of the same nation, although the first was French and the latter Spanish. The basques recognized no official country. Andres se llama montaña. My mother is called a mountain. As Zellerius, the mule tear used to say. Of the five men who were with the two women, one was a Frenchman of Languedoc, one a Frenchman of Provence, one a Genoese, one an old man, he who wore the sombrero without a hole for a pipe, appeared to be a German. The fifth, the chief, was a bask of the lands from Biscarros. It was he who, just as the child was going on board the hooker, had with a kick of his heel cast the plank into the sea. This man, robust, agile, sudden in movement, covered, as may be remembered, with trimming, slashings, and glistening tinsel, could not keep in his place. He stooped down, rose up, and continually passed to and fro from one end of the vessel to the other, as if debating uneasily on what had been done and what was going to happen. One of the band, the captain, and the two men of the crew, all four Basques, spoke sometimes Basque, sometimes Spanish, sometimes French. These three languages being common on both slopes of the Pyrenee. But generally speaking, excepting the women, all talked something like French, which was the foundation of their slang. The French language about this period began to be chosen by the peoples as something intermediate between the excess of consonants in the north and the excess of vowels in the south. In Europe, French was the language of commerce and also of felony. It will be remembered that Gibby, a London thief, understood the cartouche. The hooker, a fine sailor, was making quick way. Still, ten persons, besides their baggage, was a heavy cargo for one of such light draft. The fact of the vessels aiding the escape of a band did not necessarily imply that the crew were accomplices. It was sufficient that the captain of the vessel was a Vascongato and that the chief of the band was another. Among that race, mutual assistance is a duty which admits of no exception. A Basque, as we have said, is neither Spanish nor French. He is Basque, and always and everywhere he must sucker a Basque. Such is Pyrenean fraternity. All the time the hooker was in the gulf, the sky, although threatening, did not frown enough to cause the fugitives any uneasiness. They were flying. They were escaping. They were brutally gay. One laughed. Another sang. The laugh was dry but free. The song was low but careless. The languidocene cried, Qu'au gnaux! Cocañé expresses the highest pitch of satisfaction in Narbonne. He was a longshore sailor, a native of the waterside village of Grisson, on the southern side of the clap. A barge-man, rather than a mariner, but accustomed to work the reaches of the inlet of Barge, and to draw the dragnet full of fish over the salt sands of St. Lucie. He was of the race who wear a red cap, make complicated signs of the cross after the Spanish fashion, drink wine out of goatskins, eat scraped ham, kneel down to blaspheme, and implore their patron saint with threats. Great saint! Grant me what I ask, or I'll throw a stone at thy head, or t'effet gon' pique. He might be, at need, a useful addition to the crew. The Provençal in the caboose was blowing up a turf fire under an iron pot and making broth. The broth was a kind of puchero in which fish took the place of meat, and into which the Provençal threw chickpeas, little bits of bacon cut in squares, and pods of red pimento, concessions made by the eaters of Boullabaisse to the eaters of Oyapodrida. One of the bags of provisions beside him unpacked. He had lighted over his head an iron lantern glazed with talc, which swung on a hook from the ceiling. By its side, on another hook, swung the weathercock Halcyon. There was a popular belief in those days that a dead Halcyon, swung by the beak, always turned its breast to the quarter whence the wind was blowing. While he made the broth, the Provençal put the neck of a gourd into his mouth, and now and then swallowed a draft of aguardiente. It was one of those gourds covered with wicker, broad and flat with handles, which used to be hung to the side by a strap, and which were then called hip gourds. Between each gulp he mumbled one of those country songs of which the subject is nothing at all. A hollow road, a hedge. You see in the meadow through a gap in the bushes, the shadow of a horse and cart elongated into sunset, and from time to time above the hedge the end of a fork loaded with hay appears and disappears. You want no more to make a song. A departure, according to the bent of one's mind, is a relief or a depression. All seemed lighter in spirits excepting the old man of the band, the man with the hat that had no pipe. This old man who looked more German than anything else, although he had one of those unfathomable faces in which nationality is lost, was bald and so grave that his baldness might have been a tonsure. Every time he passed before the virgin on the prow, he raised his felt hat so that you could see the swollen and senile veins of his skull, a sort of full gown, torn and threadbare, a brown Dorchester surge, but half hid his closely fitting coat, tight, compact and hooked up to the neck like a cassock. His hands inclined across each other and had the mechanical junction of habitual prayer. He had what might be called continence, for the continence is above all things a reflection and it is an error to believe that idea is colorless. That continence was evidently the surface of a strange interstate, the result of a composition of contradictions, some tending to drift away in good, others in evil, and to an observer it was the revelation of one who was less and more than human, capable of falling below the scale of the tiger or of rising above that of man. Such chaotic souls exist. There was something inscrutable in that face. Its secret reached the abstract. You felt that the man had known the foretaste of evil which is the calculation and the aftertaste which is the zero. In his impassibility, which was perhaps only on the surface, were imprinted two petrifications, the petrification of the heart proper to the hangman and the mind proper to the Mandarin. One might have said for the monstrous has its mode of being complete that all things were possible to him even emotion. In every savant there is something in the corpse and this man was a savant. Only to see him you caught science imprinted in the gestures of his body and in the folds of his dress. His was a fossil face, the serious cast of which was counteracted by that wrinkled of the polyglot which verges on grimace, but a severe man with all, nothing of the hypocrite, nothing of the cynic, a tragic dreamer. He was one of those whom crime leaves pensive. He had the brow of an incendiary tempered by the eyes of an archbishop. His sparse gray locks turned to white over his temples. The Christian was evident in him, complicated with the fatalism of the Turk. Chalkstones deformed his fingers, dissected by leanness. The stiffness of his tall frame was grotesque. He had his sea legs, he walked slowly about the deck, not looking at anyone with an air decided and sinister. His eyeballs were vaguely filled with the fixed light of a soul studious of the darkness and afflicted by re-apparitions of conscience. From time to time the chief of the band abrupt and alert and making sudden turns about the vessel came to him and whispered in his ear, the old man answered by a nod. It might have been the lightning consulting the night. End of section 12 Chapter 1 Book II Chapter III Troubled men on the troubled ocean Two men on board the craft were absorbed in thought, the old man and the skipper of the hooker who must not be mistaken for the chief of the band. The captain was occupied by the sea, the old man by the sky. The former did not lift his eyes from the waters. The latter kept watch on the firmament. The skipper's anxiety was the state of the sea. The old man seemed to suspect the heavens. He scanned the stars through every break in the clouds. It was a time when days still lingers, but some few stars began faintly to pierce the twilight. The horizon was singular, the mist upon it varied, haze predominated on land, clouds at sea. The skipper, knowing the rising bellows, hauled all taut before he got outside Portland Bay. He would not delay so doing until he should pass the headland. He examined the rigging closely and satisfied himself that the lower shrouds were well set up, supported firmly the phoenix shrouds. Precautions of a man who means to carry on with the press of sail at all risk. The hooker was not trimmed, being two feet by the head. This was her weak point. The captain passed every minute from the binocle to the standard compass, taking bearings of objects on shore. The machetina had at first a soldier's wind, which was not unfavorable, though she could not lie within five points of her course. The captain took the helm as often as possible, trusting no one but himself to prevent her from dropping it to the leeward. The effect of the rudder being influenced by the carriageway. The difference between the true and apparent course being relative to the way on the vessel, the hooker seemed to lie closer to the wind than reality. The breeze was not a beam, nor was the hooker close hauled, but one cannot ascertain the true course made, except when the wind is abaffed. When you perceive long streaks of clouds meeting in a point on the horizon, you may be sure that the wind is in that quarter. But this evening the wind was variable. The needle fluctuated. The captain distressed the erratic movements of the vessel. He steered carefully but resolutely, left her up, watched her coming to, prevented her from yawing, and from running into the wind's eye. Noted leeway, the little jerks of the helm was observing of every roll and pitch of the vessel, of the difference in her speed, and at the variable gust of wind. For fear of accidents, he was constantly on the lookout for squalls from off the land he was hugging, and above all he was cautious to keep her full. The direction of the breeze indicated by the compass being uncertain from the small size of the instrument. The captain's eyes, frequently lowered, remarked every change in the waves. Once, none of the less, he raised them toward the sky and tried to make up the three stars of Orion's belt. These stars are called the Three Magi, an old proverb of the ancient Spanish pilot's declares that he who sees the Three Magi is not far from the saver. This glance of the captain's tallyed with an aside grout out at the other end of the vessel by the old man. We don't even see the pointers, nor the star and terries, red as he is, not one as distinct. No care troubled the other fugitives. Still, when the first celebrity they felt in their escape had passed away, they could not help remembering that they were at sea in the month of January, and that the wind was frozen. It was impossible to establish themselves in the cabin. It was much too narrow and too much encumbered by bales and baggage. The baggage belonged to the passengers, the bales to the crew, for the hooker was no pleasure boat and was engaged in smuggling. The passengers were obliged to settle themselves on deck, a condition to which these wanderers easily resigned themselves. Open-air habits make it simple for vagabonds to arrange themselves for the night. The open-air, La Belle Etoile, and the cold helps them to sleep, sometimes to die. This night, as we have seen, there was no Belle Etoile. The langadosian and the genoese, while waiting for supper, rolled themselves up near the women at the foot of the mast and some tarpaulin which the soldiers had thrown them. The old man remained at the bow motionless and apparently insensible to the cold. The captain of the hooker, from the helm where he was standing, uttered a sort of call, somewhat like the cry of the American bird, called the exclamer. It is called the chief of the brand, drew near, and the captain addressed him thus. Eteco Juana, these two words, which mean tiller of the mountain, formed with the old Contabri, a solemn preface to any subject which should command attention. Then the captain pointed the old man out to the chief and the dialogue continued to Spanish. It was not indeed a very correct dialogue, being that of the mountains. Here are the questions and answers. Eteco Juana, que es el hombre, un hombre que lengas el habla todos. Que cosa sabe? todos. Que pais ningun y todos. Que adiós, dios como el llamas el tanto. Como dices que el llamas el sabio. Que esta? Esta lo que esta. El jefe? No. Que esta? La alma. The chief and the captain parted, each reverting to his own meditation. And a little while afterwards, the magutina left the gulf. Now came the great rolling of the open sea. The ocean and the spaces between the foam were slimy in appearance. Seemed to the twilight in a distinct outline, somewhat resembled splashes of gall. Here and there a wave, floating flat, shoved cracks in stars, like a pane of glass broken by stones. In the center of these stars, in a revolving orifice, trembled a phosphorescence, like that feline reflection of vanished light which shines in the eyeballs of owls. Proudly, like a bull swimmer, the magutina crossed the dangerous shoal. This bank, a hidden obstruction at the entrance of Portland roads, is not a barrier. It is an amphitheater, a circus of sand under the sea. Its benches cut out by the circling of the waves. An arena, round and symmetrical, as high as a young fowl, only drowned. A coliseum of the ocean, seen by the diver in the vision-like transparency which engulfs him, such as the shambles shoal. There, Hydra's fight, Leviathan's meet. There, says the legend, at the bottom of the gigantic shaft are the wrecks of ships seized and sunk by the huge spider Kraken, also called the Fish Mountain. Such things lie in the fearful shadow of the sea. These spectral realities, unknown to man, are manifested at the surface by a slight shiver. In this 19th century, the shambles bank is in ruins. The breakwater recently constructed has overthrown and mutilated by the force of its surf by the highest submarine architecture, just as the jetty built at the Croisik in 1760 changed by a quarter of an hour the course of the tides. And yet the tide is eternal, but eternity obeys man more than man imagines. End of Section 13 Section 14 of The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Dave Kay of Southern Minnesota. The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo Part 1 Book 2 Chapter 4 A cloud different from the others enters on the scene. The old man, whom the chief of the band had named first the old man, then the sage, now never left the forecastle. Since they crossed the shambles shoal his attention had been divided between the heavens and the waters. He looked down, he looked upwards, and above all he watched the northeast. The skipper gave the helm to a sailor, stepped over the after-hatchway, crossed the gangway, and went on to the forecastle. He approached the old man, but not in front. He stood a little behind, with his elbows resting on his hips with outstretched hands, his head on one side, with open eyes and arched eyebrows, and a smile in the corners of his mouth, an attitude of curiosity hesitating between mockery and respect. The old man, either that it was his habit of self, or that hearing someone behind incited him to speech, began to soliloquise while he looked into space. The meridian from which the right ascension is calculated is marked in this century by four stars. The polar, Cassiopeia's chair, Andromeda's head, and the star Algenib, which is in Pegasus, but there is not one visible. These words followed each other mechanically, confused, and scarcely articulated as if he did not care to pronounce them. They floated out of his mouth and dispersed. Soliloquy is the smoke exhaled by the inmost fires of the soul. The skipper broke in. My lord, the old man perhaps rather deaf as well as very thoughtful went on. Too few stars, and too much wind. The breeze continually changes its direction and blows in shore. Thence it rises perpendicularly. This results from the land being warmer than the water. Its atmosphere is lighter. The cold and dense wind of the sea rushes in to replace it. In the upper regions the wind blows towards the land from every quarter. It would be advisable to make long tacks between the true and apparent parallel. When the latitude by observation differs from the latitude by dead reckoning by not more than three minutes in thirty miles, or by four minutes in sixty miles you are in the true course. The skipper bowed, but the old man saw him not. The latter, who wore what resembled an Oxford or Göttingen University gown, did not relax his haughty and rigid attitude. He observed the waters as a critic of waves and of men. He studied the billows, but almost as if he was about to demand his turn to speak amidst their turmoil and teach them something. There was in him both Pettigog and Susser. He seemed an oracle of the deep. He continued his soliloquy which was perhaps intended to be heard. We might strive if we had a wheel instead of a helm. With a speed of twelve miles an hour a force of twenty pounds exerted on the wheel produces three hundred thousand pounds effect on the course. And more too, for in some cases with a double block and runner they can get two more revolutions. The skipper bowed a second time and said, my lord, the old man's eye rested on him. He had turned his head without moving his body. Call me doctor. Master doctor, I am the skipper. Just so, he said the doctor. The doctor, as henceforward we shall call him, appeared willing to converse. Skipper, have you an English sextant? No. Without an English sextant you cannot take an altitude at all. The basks, replied the captain, took altitudes before there were any English. Be careful you are not taken aback. I keep her away when necessary. Have you tried how many knots she is running? Yes. When? Just now. How? By the log. Did you take the trouble to look at the triangle? Yes. Did the sand run through the glass for nearly thirty seconds? Yes. Are you sure that the sand has not worn the hole between the globes? Yes. Have you proved the sand glass by the oscillations of a bullet? Suspended by a rope yarn drawn out from the top of a coil of soaked hemp? Undoubtedly. Have you waxed the yarn lest it should stretch? 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 warhooker La Casa de Pagan 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 one hundred and seventy pounds. That's to say she is running four French leagues an hour. And the three Dutch leagues. But that is the difference merely of the vessel's way and the rate at which the sea is running? Undoubtedly. Where are you steering? For a creek I know between Loyola and Saint Sebastian. Make the latitude of the harbour's mouth as soon as possible. Yes, as near as I can. Beware of gusts and currants. The first caused the second. Tridores. 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. A compass is one eye that chart the other. A man with one eye can see. How do you compute the difference between the true and apparent course? I have got my standard compass and I make a guess. To guess is all very well. To know for a certain is better. Christopher 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 and ass with his chart is better off than a wizard with his oracle. There is no fog in the breeze yet. I can 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 tonight. 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 fixed 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 Citarque. Sand off Cape Penaes. Little pebbles of Boncote de Mimithan. 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 past 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 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 someone 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 vapor 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 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 emphasized 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 signpost 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 is 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 as 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 Astorians get. Our rain even is warm. We've no snow but on the mountains. I, I look out for the avalanche the avalanche is no respecter of persons. The avalanche is a brute. And the water spout 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 the slight shrug of his shoulders. How's that? Master doctor my usual cruise is to Ireland I sail from Fontarabia to Black Harbor or to the Achille Islands I go sometimes to break Ipwyl a point on the Welsh coast but I always steer outside the Chilly 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 25 fathoms here we ought to get 55 fathoms to the west and avoid even 20 fathoms to the east we'll sound as we get on the channel is not an ordinary sea the water rises 50 feet with the tide springs and 25 with deep tides here we are in slack water I thought you looked scared we'll sound tonight to sound you must heave too and that you cannot 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 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 karamba steer your course to the west impossible as you will what I tell you is for the other's 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 cannot in that case settle your reckoning with the sea wind ought to change it will not change all night why not because it is a wind 1200 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 around looked the skipper full in the face and with his eyes resting upon 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 a maze 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 solid 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 end of section 14 recording by Dave Kay of southern Minnesota section 15 of The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo Part 1 Book II Chapter 5 Hard Quinone 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 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 winds 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 colored and dirty looked thick and was crossed by heavy wrinkles here and there on its surface bubbles of surge like postules 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 sat down near the stove on a block he had taken a shea-green ink bottle and a corduane pocketbook from his pocket he had extracted from his pocketbook a parchment folded four times old stained and yellow he had opened the sheet in the 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 the 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 provincelle tasted a grain of pimento to the bechero 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 a name which was plated 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 hard quinone then he addressed the cook I had not observed that gourd before did it belong hard quinone yes the cook answered to her poor comrade hard quinone the doctor went on to hard quinone the Fleming of Flanders yes who was in prison 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 not withstanding 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 water besieged the hooker and they fell their 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 as 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 provincelle was watching it fish broth said he for the fishes replied the doctor on deck again end of section 15 recording by Richard Kilmer Real Medina, Texas section 16 of The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo Part 1 Book 2 Chapter 6 They think that help is at hand Through his growing preoccupation the doctor in some sort reviewed the situation and anyone near to him might have heard these words drop from his lips too much rolling and not enough pitching then recalled to himself the feelings of his mind he sank again into thought as a miner into his shaft his meditation in no wise 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 in melancholy performing 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 scrutinize hell a vast commotion yet half latent but visible through the term oils in space increased and irritated more and more the winds, the vapors the waves 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 hallows 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 rendering in the frowning in the anxiety in the perpetual contradiction in the kioskoro in the pendants of the clouds in the keys of the ever open vault in the disaggregation without rupture in the funeral tumult caused by all that madness the wind had just set due north its violence was so favorable and so useful in driving them away from England that the captain of the maltutina had made up his mind to set all sail the hooker slipped through the foam has had a gallop the wind right aft came 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 dreamt on every vestige of day had faded away this was the moment the ship was sinking 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 ought the child went north and the ship went south all were plunged in darkness end of section 16 Recording by Richard Kilmer Real Medina, Texas