No character was ever thrown into such strange
relief as Gilliat. The great circle of sea-birds that come
wanderingly around him on the night of his arrival, strikes
at once the note of his pre-eminence and isolation. He fills
the whole reef with his indefatigable toil; this solitary
spot in the ocean rings with the clamour of his anvil; we see
him as he comes and goes, thrown out sharply against the
clear background of the sea. And yet his isolation is not to
be compared with the isolation of Robinson Crusoe, for
example; indeed, no two books could be more instructive to
set side by side than LES TRAVAILLEURS and this other of the
old days before art had learnt to occupy itself with what
lies outside of human will. Crusoe was one sole centre of
interest in the midst of a nature utterly dead and utterly
unrealised by the artist; but this is not how we feel with
Gilliat; we feel that he is opposed by a "dark coalition of
forces," that an "immense animosity" surrounds him; we are
the witnesses of the terrible warfare that he wages with "the
silent inclemency of phenomena going their own way, and the
great general law, implacable and passive:" "a conspiracy of
the indifferency of things" is against him. There is not one
interest on the reef, but two. Just as we recognise Gilliat
for the hero, we recognise, as implied by this indifferency
of things, this direction of forces to some purpose outside
our purposes, yet another character who may almost take rank
as the villain of the novel, and the two face up to one
another blow for blow, feint for feint, until, in the storm,
they fight it epically out, and Gilliat remains the victor; -
a victor, however, who has still to encounter the octopus.
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