Toilers of the Sea Part I Book 4 Chapter V - Well-Merited Success Is Always Hated

In which the industrious affairs of Mess Lethierry are surveyed with a contemplative eye, revealing the flourishing yet precarious enterprise centred upon the steamboat Durande, whose success is shadowed by cautious scepticism and the old-world favouring of sails over steam. The narrative gently unfolds the tension between innovation and tradition, as the island’s commerce balances on the edge of progress and the conservative murmurs that fear the uncertain smoke of the future.