Chapter XXI

It was seven o’clock by the sun when the steamer came into the waters of the Vergoyer. A perfect fleet followed it. They had come from Cayeux, Hourdel, Berck, Crotoy, even from Treport, and, perhaps, Etaples. Nowadays news travels far by telegraph, and, thanks to the connection between the Maritime Bureaus, word was scattered far and wide that they were going to explore the gulf; that the living were to see with their own eyes the abode of the dead.

Like so many birds of prey after a wounded whale, boats of all sizes and all rigs, sloops, barges, luggers, _flambarts_, followed in the wake of the steamer. They were all after plunder, all hoping to get rich easily. Divers often used explosives at the bottom of the sea to break up wrecks, and then the _débris_ floated. If they came across any such wreckage, it might be very valuable.

Elise was on the bridge of the steamer with the captain. Having told how the night before she and Silvere had discovered the lost sailors’ gulf, she was directed to lay their course to their float.

The captain, a handsome, white-haired old man, passed her orders to the man at the wheel, who steered accordingly.

Elise’s dress made a strong contrast with the gold-laced suits of the officers who surrounded her, but among all these grave faces she seemed none the less dignified nor beautiful. Her white neckerchief, on her dark waist, caught the sunlight, as if to emphasize her emotion, and her face was full of sweetness. One would have said that an emanation from her soul floated about her like an aureole, clothing her in all the grace of a new hope.

The steamer went its way, followed by the fleet of white, brown, gray, and red sails. It seemed, with this army which followed it, as if advancing to certain victory. And it was Elise who led all these people to the conquest of the Vergoyer.

“Stop her!” The steamer lay motionless. The large launch was put into the water, then the other boats and the long-boat, in which Elise took her place with the commissaire and the principal officers.

“Captain, if you will look to larboard, you can see our float.”

It lay two cable-lengths away, and became at once the center of action. The captain shouted orders in all directions through his trumpet, and each boat took its position for work around the frail float, which, tossed roughly by the waves, seemed a prey hunted down by a ring of fishing-boats.

The launch came into the wind close abreast of it.

Facing her, just far enough away not to interfere in the work, lay the long-boat, and beside it another, in which were Silvere, Chrétien, and Mother Loirat. They were like two galleries of spectators--the officers sitting in judgment, and the relatives waiting the revelations of this strange search.

The launch and the large boats were anchored. Further away, making up the circle, several boats lay on their oars, ready to answer any sudden call. After the soundings had been verified as sixty fathoms, the divers began to work. Elise’s heart beat wildly. Over the side of the launch was unrolled into the sea a rope ladder, which seemed long enough to reach the center of the earth. So many rounds were paid out, and disappeared under the waves in endless succession, that it seemed as if it would descend into eternity. Still twenty-five fathoms and one hundred steps to pay out. Never had living man gone to such depths to search for the dead. Elise shivered to her very marrow.

The unrolling of the ladder stopped. A man stepped over the side of the boat, dressed in a suit of rubber with a head-piece having squares of glass and two tubes in it. He had more than an inch of lead on each of his shoes. It was to help him descend into the abyss.

Unfortunate man! He seized the first rounds and touched the water. He began to descend--his feet, his legs, the lower part of his body disappeared beneath the waves. Misery! All the stuff of his suit puffed up on his shoulders as if it were his skin which had swollen. For one instant it seemed as if he stopped, hesitating, as if the gulf pushed him back and would none of him.

“Stop him!” cried Elise. “I wish above everything to find my father, but it is not right to make another lose his life on my account. I will make the descent. Order him back, captain.”

Why did all the officers hear this innocent demand from Elise with a smile? Was it wrong to wish to snatch an innocent man from an abyss? She had seen her father so unhappy in those depths. Was it necessary for others to lose their lives, also, and unnecessarily? Barnabé, too; he was there since yesterday.

“Captain, I beg you, order the man back. I wish to take his place.”

“No, not you,” cried Chrétien, “I will go, Mam’selle Elise.”

But all these offers were made in vain. The diver was out of sight; only the tremblings of the ladder, and the paying out of safety cords and the tube, showed that he was descending. Bubbles of air broke suddenly by the hundred about them.

“Oh, captain, look! it is just like a drowning man.”

“Be quiet,” cried Mother Loirat. “Let the man attend to his business, and do you attend to yours. Women should not interfere with men who are at work.”

The ladder stopped shaking, the paying out ceased, and the lieutenant in charge in the launch spoke, and then listened at the end of one of the tubes. He gave orders to the four sailors, who had been steadily working a pump. Then he went on listening and speaking, stopping at intervals, to give out orders. By his direction a great lantern was lowered by a tackle, which lighted up the seas like the rays of the sun. At the same time, from the boat’s side, ropes were paid out, one with an armful of tubes, picks, pickaxes, and shovels; the other with an empty sack, which came up less than a quarter of an hour afterward, filled with sand--that sand under which Elise’s father was lying.

The talking through the tubes began again. Soon a second tackle was rigged, from which swung an iron cask, which was lowered into the sea. Then a new pump worked, and there was a half hour during which Elise leaned over the abyss, exhausted with watching and frightened by hopes and fears.

At a signal from the depths, the lieutenant called: “Hoist the cask!”

The pulley of the tackle turned many times under the rope. It hardly creaked. It seemed to be lifting no weight at all. At last they saw the cask below the surface, with a shadow so long that it seemed to reach the bottom. “Halt!” The cask is at the surface.

“Look after the wreckage!” cried the captain through his trumpet, and two little boats left their station in the circle and placed themselves one on either side of the tackle.

“Hoist!” The cask rose, with the water streaming from it like a fountain. Instantly the cordage bit the pulley, which began to creak dolorously. “Halt!” The block stopped. It was held rigidly by the great weight below it.

“Make the wreckage fast!” When the little boats had done this, the cask was swung inward and its burden was aboard the launch.

“What is it?” cried the captain.

“A mizzen sail--two dead bodies in it.”

The officers uncovered, and bowed their heads devoutly.

“Alongside!” ordered the captain, as he put on his hat. “Alongside!”

By his cheerful voice one could see that he was well satisfied.

His instructions were exact. To make experiments with the improved apparatus at depths hitherto unexplored, to study the comparative influence of pressure, the action of eddies and currents on the movements of divers, to find whether the sand was solid or movable, to establish, in a word, a sort of chart for the use of submarine investigations in these dangerous waters; such had been the captain’s task, a sort of preparatory investigation, with which the search for dead bodies had only been indirectly connected.

Happily these experiments had been terminated sooner than he had hoped. He had been directed, if it were advisable, to accede to Elise’s petition, but he had not thought this detail of much importance, as it seemed to him entirely foreign to the scientific side of the matter. But the results had been so favorable that, in less than an hour of work, the men whom he had been ordered to look for had been found.

“Well, my daughter, are you satisfied? You see they have found your father. Are you satisfied?”

“It is not my father, captain. It is Barnabé of Crotoy, and his uncle from Saint-Valery. They were capsized here only yesterday. My father lies under the sand.”

The old officer frowned. So much the worse. After all, drowned men are all alike. They had brought back two bodies from a depth of sixty fathoms. The question was as satisfactorily proved by these as it would have been by the others. Was one to dig for eight days in one place when there was so much to explore?

Besides, the sky made him anxious. The wind, which for three days had been uncertain, and which had passed from north to south by way of east, showed an inclination to return to the north by way of west, making thus a complete circuit. It was an ominous sign. When the wind amuses itself, let the sailor have a care.

“Lieutenant, are your experiments finished? Yes? Order the man up.”

Elise rose in revolt.

“But my father, captain. Are you not going to look for him? Now that the man is on the bottom, it will be very little trouble to dig in the sand.”

“Order the man up!”

“Captain, make him dig instead. If he comes up, is he to go down again?”

The captain snapped his fingers impatiently. He was not accustomed to resistance to his authority, and habits of discipline had given him that shortness of manner which distinguishes sailors aboard ship.

“Be quiet, my daughter. You did not wish to let him go down a moment ago, and now you do not wish him to come up. Caprice cannot govern a ship. Lieutenant, order the man up.”

Elise was desperate. All her strength left her suddenly. She sank down, with clasped hands and uplifted look. Two tears, gliding slowly from her soft, black eyes stopped, trembling, on her lashes, and, sparkling in the sunlight, seemed to witness the depth of her disappointment.

She had hoped so much from this visit to the Vergoyer. She would accomplish her task. She would acquit her debt to her father. She would gain his pardon and would earn her reward, she would see Firmin again. This result, so long delayed, won by so many efforts and sufferings, was denied her; it was snatched from her at the moment when she held it, as it were, in her hand.

“Captain, listen. If the man comes up I wish to go down. If he does not dare to dig, I will. I will dare everything for----”

Choked by a sob, she could not finish. The diver had returned, and, freed from his head-piece, talked freely and gave in a strong voice the details of his descent.

At that depth he had been hardly able to walk, even with his pick as a walking-stick. He had been moved about like one who floats aimlessly and lightly, his equilibrium lost, fearing constantly that he would turn feet upward. He had been obliged to make the shovel fast to the lower part of one leg and the pickaxe to the other, and drag them behind him like two anchors, to keep a foothold on the sand. It was only in this way that he had managed to walk. He had found the wreck near him. It was there by itself. He had seen another, without doubt a vessel’s hull, a little further off, but he had not dared to go so far. At sixty fathoms one could not count on his equilibrium.

Besides these two wrecks there was nothing but sand. The bottom spread out like a flat valley at the foot of a mountain-peak. The smooth surface was raised in places by little mounds, on which the sand seemed firmer than it was around them. Just where he had descended, at the place marked by the anchor which Silvere had dropped the night before, the man had come on one of these mounds which seemed to him higher than the others. He had dug a yard downward without discovering anything, but had not been able to go further because the wet sand filled the hole as fast as he dug.

“You hear what he says,” said the captain, turning toward Elise. “We are not equipped for this kind of work. Excavators are needed. I will speak of it in my report to the Minister.”

“The Minister is a long way off,” said Elise, “and we are here. Let me go down.”

“Say no more,” said the captain rudely. “Haul the ladder aboard.”

“No,” cried Elise, exasperated. “If you take up the ladder, I will throw myself overboard. It is too cowardly to have come here to investigate, and go away without finding anything.”

“We have brought up two bodies.”

“Neither of them is my father. You were ordered here to search for him. If you abandon the work, at least let me go on with it. You have two suits. Silvere will go down with me.”

“Let me take your place, Mam’selle Elise,” cried Chrétien. “I should always feel ashamed if you were lost. If I reach the bottom I will dig hard, remembering that I am doing it to please you.”

“Lise is right,” added Mother Loirat, “people who are in trouble must help themselves.”

The captain, giddy at all these demands, stamped the deck impatiently.

“Let them have their way. Bring the small boat alongside.” It took on board Elise, Silvere, and Chrétien, and carried them to the launch.

“The girl goes first.”

“No! let me,” said the two men, with one voice, “me--me.”

“The girl first. Hurry, lieutenant.”

There was no answer possible. The captain had his reasons for not yielding. Wishing to put an end, as quickly as possible, to the claims of these rustics, he sent Elise first, with the secret hope that the deadening effect of the compressed air would bring a girl to terms more quickly than men used to painful exposures. In this way, one trip alone would suffice to discourage all these would-be divers.

Elise slipped off her dress, wrapping her skirt about each knee, and put on the rubber suit, except the head-piece. Her face, with its fine profile, stood out haughtily above this strange armour, and showed not a tremor when the sailor came to put on the visor with its four squares of glass.

The head-piece was screwed down on its frame. How it weighed on her shoulders! The heavy folds of the collar and sleeves prevented her from moving her arms. Her feet can never lift those leaden soles.

“Are you ready to descend?”

Who was speaking to her? Elise has lost her individuality. She is nothing but an inert will, the soul of a machine. Without stopping to think, she finds herself on the ladder, drawn down by the heavy weights.

Who holds up her feet? There is no longer any weight in their soles. Something supports them. When will she enter the water? She will know, by its chill, when she touches it. No. She is under the water. Through the largest light in her visor she sees the waves about her. She is giddy. Who whistled in her ears? It sounded like the wind!

“Open the valve of the head-piece.”

No matter who it is who orders it, she obeys unconsciously. Misery! What a fright she has! There is a deafening rumble. Have the tubes burst, and is the water coming in upon her? She cannot think, her temples throb, there is a band about her forehead. Her skin is burning, her whole face feels pin-pricked! There are noises and sharp whistles in her ears! She gasps and strangles.

“Do you want to come up? Shall you be able to go to the bottom? You are not a quarter of the way yet.”

What will she find at the end of this endless ladder? Elise no longer feels what she touches; neither the rounds of the ladder in her hands, nor the head-piece on her shoulders.

“Do you not want to come back? Open the valve of the head-piece. Have no fear of the noise. It is only the air escaping.”

She was careful to obey. She was conscious of nothing, neither of him who spoke, nor of what, nor how. But to hear another’s voice was to be not alone, and without that companionship would she have had the boldness to go on into these glassy depths? What a vivid light this was about her, and what strange forms whisked suddenly by her!

She wished the voice would speak again. She had neither body nor weight. She seemed to float as a bird in air. There was nothing above her head, nothing under her feet. She felt nothing except shooting pains in her head. She kept on descending mechanically without knowing where it would bring her, or that the descent would ever end.

“Open the valve!”

* * * * *

At this command Elise woke suddenly from her stupor. She felt the rounds of the ladder which she held tightly. She was herself again. The pain in her head ceased.

“Attention! You are just reaching the bottom.”

It seemed to her that she had come to a land of sunlight. What dazzling gleams came through the lights of her visor. She had to close her eyes. A great lantern hung close to her, as powerful as that of a light-house. The depths shone joyously. How delighted she was after the night, the interminable night, to see clearly again. She regained her confidence when she found herself once more on her feet, with her shadow; her own familiar shadow, on which one depends as if it were something tangible.

How brightly the sand sparkled. The dead, whose cold remains it keeps, ought to be charmed with these bright gleams which presage their coming return to the light of day. Doubtless her father has felt the soft warmth of its rays, and has started in his wet prison. He is here, under these sands which for three months have served him as a winding-sheet, while he awaits his final burial.

But is it not impious to tramp about these sands which cover the dead? Is it not like walking over graves?

On her knees, with joined hands, Elise, in a pious revery, hears nothing; not the distant rumblings which re-echo from space to space in these limitless depths, nor the voice which calls her:

“Remount! A storm is coming. The captain gives you only five minutes. We are going to sail.”

She hears nothing, for she is praying. All her thoughts are with him whom she hopes soon to find.

“Father, if I have not looked for you earlier, it is not because I have failed in respect or loving memories. I remember, when a little thing on your knees, your laughing talk and speaking eyes. I have not forgotten them; nor how you taught Firmin and me, in your boat. You had an angry voice, but a warm heart.”

“Are you not coming back, then? The captain will not wait.”

“Father, when you left us, I kept your memory in my heart; since you have come back to me in visions, I have suffered with you.”

Chap. 21.]

“Make haste. We are taking up the anchor. The captain is just the than to go without you.”

“Father, if you will help, I will find you----”

* * * * *

Is it the force of the current which lifts her? She clings to the sand, digs her soles into it, clutches it with her hands. It is night again. The lantern has disappeared. Without a light how can she see to dig the sands, how be courageous enough to wait in this darkness in the midst of the frightful noise of the waves?

She cannot hear the voice now. She calls. She is alone in this abyss of water. Yet ought she to leave her father, to tear herself away at the moment when she is about to find him? Where is the ladder? She tries to seize it, her hands clutch only the void. What agitations stir this under ocean! Everything is whirling in these infernal depths. The surges break on the sand with terrible crashings, they tear it up, dig into it, and toss it about pitilessly. Poor father!

Elise is overturned. Rolled head over heels, stricken by this great upheaval, she loses consciousness, while the wild eddies spin her around and around.

* * * * *

The launch had been made fast on the deck of the steamer, which was running at full speed. Elise was not yet freed from the diver’s dress. She had a rush of blood to the head which stupefied, blinded, and deafened her, when the visor was removed and she breathed the fresh air. When at last she came to herself she saw Silvere and Chrétien bending anxiously over her, while the lieutenant was saying:

“What were you thinking of to stay below in the face of such a storm? Were you trying to play at obstinacy with the captain? He had given the order to cut the cord and tubes. Fortunately for you, the safety rope was strong.”