By teaching himself trades such as carpentry, blacksmithing, and navigation, he has established an independent and isolated life. Due to his secret and epic love for Déruchette, he assumes a task equivalent to suicide: retrieving the engine of the broken La Durande. For two months, he faces hunger, storms, cold, and a giant octopus on the Douvre rocks, achieving the impossible. When he returns and sees that the girl who is his prize appears happy with someone else (Ebenezer), he chooses the silent withdrawal typical of great heroics. He sends the young couple away and ends his epic life in tragedy by allowing the waters to swallow him in a hollow by the ocean.
