Articles and paragraphs on the same topic, also, not infrequently appeared about that time, in daily and weekly papers; of one of which the following is a portion:—“It is much to be hoped that as time and observation serve, Mr. Lee will give to the public a paper devoted to a close scientific examination of Victor Hugo’s description of the devil-fish, so as to settle to the minutest points wherein it is true to nature, and wherein the novelist has deviated from the severity of fact.” I confess the thought never before occurred to me to dissect the author’s description of the frightful animal he depicts, because I have always regarded it as an accumulation of intentionally fanciful and ingenious exaggerations, which, with great melodramatic power, he succeeded in combining into an embodiment of mysterious horror. But I accepted the suggestion, and have incorporated in a comparative analysis of M. Hugo’s stirring romance, a description of the organization of the octopus or pieuvre, and of those of its habits to which he alludes. Other circumstances of its life-history, which did not come within the scope of his work, are treated of in separate chapters. Before critically reviewing his narration of the incidents referred to, it may be desirable to give a brief summary of the plot of the story of which they form a part, and which made the octopus famous.
CHAPTER III.
“THE TOILERS OF THE SEA.”
The scene of “Les Travailleurs de la Mer” is Guernsey, and the two characters brought most prominently forward are Gilliatt and Clubin. Gilliatt was a man not much liked. He avoided company, neither drank, smoked, chewed, nor snuffed; and lived in a house which, if not then haunted, was suspected of having formerly been so. None, however, could deny that he was a thorough seaman, a successful fisherman, a skilful pilot, and an expert swimmer; and subsequent events proved him to possess dauntless courage, pertinacious determination, a soft heart, and chivalrous spirit. Clubin was in every moral quality exactly the reverse. He had the reputation of being a man of severe probity, strictly religious, and of unsurpassable integrity; and thus was appointed master of a little steamer named the “Durande,” which traded between Guernsey and St. Malo, and belonged to a Monsieur Lathierry. But although Clubin had gained the good opinion of his neighbours by his cunning and adroitness, he was a consummate hypocrite, and an unscrupulous scoundrel. A former partner of Lathierry, named Rantaine, had robbed their joint cash-box ten years previously of a hundred thousand francs, fifty thousand of which, of course, belonged to Lathierry. Nothing had been seen or heard of him since he absconded, until one day Clubin caught sight of him in St. Malo, watched him enter the shop of a money-changer, and receive three bank-notes of 1000l. each (75,000 francs), and, at once surmising that they were the proceeds of the embezzlement, determined to possess them. He prepared his plans carefully, obtained with some difficulty a revolver (then a novelty in fire-arms), ascertained that Rantaine intended to escape from France in a vessel, the captain of which had agreed to send a boat ashore for him; and just as he was about to embark, after killing a coastguardsman to prevent his giving an alarm, presented the revolver at his head, and demanded “restitution,” as he called it, of the plunder. An altercation ensued; but the formidable weapon gave its owner superiority, and Rantaine was made to toss to his opponent from a distance the three bank-notes, enclosed in an iron tobacco-box, and was then allowed to depart. Clubin had already decided on the measures he would adopt to enable him to enjoy his ill-obtained wealth in a foreign country, without exciting a suspicion of his evil deed. The “Durande” was to leave St. Malo the next day, on her return trip to Guernsey with passengers and cargo. Weather-wise mariners predicted a fog, and urged Clubin not to leave port; but he resolutely disregarded their advice, and put to sea, placed a bottle of brandy in the secret hiding-place used by his tippling steersman, who fell into the trap and got drunk; and when the expected fog came on, the austere and puritanical captain sent him forward with a reprimand, and, to the admiration and satisfaction of the passengers, took the helm himself, and went on at full steam for his destination. There were some on board who thought he was running a great risk in not slackening speed; and one passenger, a Guernsey man, felt sure that they were not in their right course, and told the captain that more than once, when the fog had lifted a little, he had recognised the land a-head as a point called the “Hanois.” But Clubin kept straight on; for this was just the spot where he had deliberately determined to run the vessel ashore. In a few minutes she struck. The boat was got over the side and launched, passengers and crew took their places in her, and then all waited for the captain. But the devoted man refused to leave his vessel. He would do his duty to the last, and sink with her; and so, finding persuasion useless, they were obliged to put off without him; some weeping for sorrow, and all regarding him as an hero, and the most honest man that ever sailed the seas. Here, then, was Clubin, alone in the very position he desired, with 75,000 francs in his pocket, and having succeeded, whilst perpetrating all his villainy, in gaining, instead of losing, the esteem of his fellow-men. He would give the over-crowded boat time to get away—to be lost, perhaps, with all on board. The short mile to the shore would be nothing for a swimmer like him to traverse; he would soon gain the land, conceal himself for a time, and then quit the neighbourhood; whilst he would be supposed to be dead, and would leave an honoured name behind him. He waited, and exulted over his success. Suddenly, through a rift in the fog, a huge object attracted his horrified gaze. He had been deceived in his position. Instead of having run the “Durande” on the Hanois, before him was the formidable “Rocher Douvres”—the “Man-Rock.” Hideous and instant is the change in his condition—five leagues of sea, instead of one mile, between him and the main! To swim that distance is impossible; he can never reach the land. Death from cold and hunger stare him in the face. His 75,000 francs will not here purchase him a crust of bread. His only hope now lies in his being seen by some passing ship, and eagerly he looks to seaward. A sail appears—approaches—the vessel is a cutter. But those on board will never see him where he stands. If he can but reach the rock he will no doubt be perceived. There is not a minute to lose; he will try; two hundred strokes will do it, and he will be saved. He throws off all his clothes, buckles around his naked body the leather belt in which is the tobacco-box containing the notes, and plunges into the sea. He touches the bottom, grazes for a moment the side of a submerged rock, then makes an effort to rise to the surface. At this instant he feels himself seized by the foot.
In this horrible situation the author leaves him for a time, and follows the course of events on the island which the miserable wretch was destined never to reach. The boat was seen by a small coaster, and its occupants taken on board, and conveyed to St. Peter Port. The rescued crew and passengers of the “Durande” quickly spread the tidings of the disaster, which fell with crushing effect on her owner, Lathierry; the whole blame was laid on Tangrouille, the drunken steersman, who was imprisoned, and the magnanimity of Clubin was everywhere extolled. The master of a cutter, which arrived a few hours after the landing of the saved people, reported that, hearing the bellowing of the oxen which were a portion of the little steamer’s freight, and the fog having dispersed, he had borne down to the wreck and approached near enough to be certain that there was no one on board; and consequently an opinion was expressed that the heroic captain had been taken off by some sloop or lugger belonging to Granville or St. Malo, and his return was hourly expected. The steamer had broken her back, said the cutter’s master, but the engine appeared not to be damaged. It was suggested that it might be possible to preserve it; but the seaman shook his head, and gravely replied that “The man did not exist who could go there and remove it.” Renewed hope roused Lathierry from his stupor, and he exclaimed, with a solemn oath, that he would give his daughter, Deruchette, in marriage to the man who would perform the feat. Gilliatt had long secretly loved the girl, and he determined if possible to achieve the task, and thus to win her. He quietly stole away from the crowd, and the same night, alone and unaided, got under weigh his fishing craft, which he had won as a prize for seamanship in a regatta, and proceeded to the wreck. After much toil and endurance of hardship for more than two months, he succeeded in extricating the engine and getting it on board his boat. His work completed, he had only to wait for the tide to return in triumph with his prize. But he was faint with hunger. He had long since exhausted the stock of provisions he had brought with him, and had subsisted on the molluscs and crustaceans he had been able to find on the rocks; and, now, it became necessary to search for one more meal before his departure. Profiting by the low tide, and taking his knife between his teeth, he descended, by the help of hands and feet, the steep escarpment into a pool. The water came up to his shoulders. During his search for lobsters, cray-fish, and crabs, he espied a cavern, the arched portal of which was partly uncovered. He entered. A fine crab, frightened at his approach, escaped into a horizontal fissure in the rock. He thrust his hand into the crevice, and suddenly felt himself seized. Something slender, rough, adhesive, chilling, and living, was twisting itself in the gloom around his naked arm. It proved to be one of the limbs of a pieuvre (octopus), or “devil-fish,” and he had a terrible fight with the creature. It will be convenient to consider in detail the particulars of the combat after finishing our epitome of the narrative of which it fills the most remarkable chapters. Gilliatt, after a desperate struggle, succeeded in cutting himself free, and in killing the animal with his knife; and then, panting with his exertions, turned to leave the place where he had encountered so dangerous a foe. As he did so, something which startled him caught his eye. He fancied he saw at the back of the cavern a face which laughed at him. He approached, and stooping down, found it was a human skull, with the rest of the skeleton. It was surrounded by a multitude of crabs, but they were dead and their shells empty. It was the larder of the “devil-fish”; the monster had eaten the crabs; the crabs had eaten the man. There were no articles of clothing to be seen; but, scraping away the crab-shells beneath which the skeleton was half buried, Gilliatt perceived around the vertebral column a leather belt, which had evidently been buckled about the body of the man before his death. The leather was wet, the buckle rusty; so Gilliatt cut the girdle with his knife. It contained an old iron tobacco-box, which he forced open, and found in it three bank-notes of £1000 each (75,000 francs), and twenty guineas in gold. He examined the belt more closely; and there, traced in indelible lithographic ink, were the words, “Sieur Clubin.” The skull, the bones, and the belt were all that remained of the robber and hypocrite: the “devil-fish” had held him under water and drowned him; the crabs had eaten him.
Gilliatt started on his return passage to Guernsey in joyful certainty that he had earned the fulfilment of his wishes. Deruchette would be his wife. He had saved the engine of her father’s vessel, and, more than that, had recovered the old man’s stolen fortune. True to his natural shrinking from observation, he timed his voyage so that he arrived in port after dark, moored his sloop with her cargo of machinery to the old ring in the harbour wall to which the “Durande’s” cable used to be made fast, and then, without announcing his return to anyone, retired to a nook overhung with brambles and ivy, where he had often watched for hours—himself unseen, and his love unsuspected—the house where dwelt the mistress of his heart, and the garden in which she often walked. Near him, at the side of one of the paths, was a rustic seat. As he gazed fixedly on the windows of her chamber, and thought rapturously of his future happiness, Deruchette herself left the house and came towards him. She sat down on the bench, in his full view, and with pensive, meditative air, remained motionless, as if in a dream. The thought of speaking to her never entered his head. He saw her, was near her—that was enough for him for the moment. A sound of approaching footsteps roused her from her reverie, and him from his ecstasy. It was the young rector, the Rev. Ebenezer Caudray, who had sought her to make her an offer of marriage before leaving for England on the following morning. Unhappy Gilliatt was a witness of his pleadings, her yielding, their betrothal and embrace.
Meanwhile Lathierry had seen from his window the funnel of the “Durande” standing at the old moorings; and, scarcely believing his eyes, rushed to the harbour bell, and rang it long and violently. Amongst those who appeared was Gilliatt, who, accompanying him to his home, laid before him the bank-notes and Clubin’s belt. The old man, wild with joy, confirmed his offer of his daughter’s hand to the man who had so nobly won his gratitude. But Gilliatt, to his astonishment, refused her: he knew that her affections were pledged to another, and determined in his own mind that she should marry the man of her choice. The next morning he met the lovers, and, with feverish haste, insisted on the immediate performance of the marriage ceremony; dragged them to the church, where, by an artifice, he substituted his rival for himself as bridegroom, and then hurried them on board the packet-boat which was just setting sail. His work accomplished, the desperate man locked up his house, and strode along the shore to a point of land close to which the vessel bearing Ebenezer and Deruchette must pass. At its extremity was a kind of “lovers’ seat,” called the “Chaise Gild-Holm’-Ur,” covered by the sea at every tide, and near to which he had once rescued the young curé from drowning. There he sat, watching the craft, on the deck of which he could see the newly-wedded pair. It advanced nearer; the tide rose to his ankles:—it came opposite to him; the water reached his waist:—it passed: he watched and watched, and the tide rose and rose, until, as the vessel was lost to view, his head disappeared beneath the waves.
CHAPTER IV.
THE DEVIL-FISH OF FICTION AND OF FACT.
Bearing in mind that the famous story of “The Toilers of the Sea” should be regarded as a romance and not as a scientific treatise, I will now endeavour to compare the “devil-fish” of the author with the octopus of nature, and to indicate the points on which M. Hugo’s representation of his “monster” is either substantially correct, partly true, or entirely unreal.