Victor Hugo - The Man Who Laughs - Cosmopolitan University 2

The chief and the captain parted, each reverting to his own meditation,
and a little while afterwards the _Matutina_ left the gulf.
Now came the great rolling of the open sea. The ocean in the spaces
between the foam was slimy in appearance. The waves, seen through the
twilight in indistinct outline, somewhat resembled plashes of gall. Here
and there a wave floating flat showed cracks and stars, like a pane of
glass broken by stones; in the centre 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 bold swimmer, the _Matutina_ crossed the dangerous
Shambles shoal. This bank, a hidden obstruction at the entrance of
Portland roads, is not a barrier; it is an amphitheatre--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 Jungfrau, only drowned--a
coliseum of the ocean, seen by the diver in the vision-like transparency
which engulfs him,--such is the Shambles shoal. There hydras fight,
leviathans 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 nineteenth century, the Shambles bank is in ruins; the
breakwater recently constructed has overthrown and mutilated, by the
force of its surf, that high submarine architecture, just as the jetty,
built at the Croisic 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.
CHAPTER IV.
A CLOUD DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS ENTERS ON THE SCENE.
The old man whom the chief of the band had named first the Madman, 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 watched the
north-east.
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 elbows resting
on his hips, with outstretched hands, the 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 to talk to himself, or that
hearing some one behind incited him to speech, began to soliloquize