CHAPTER IV

FREYA

The name of Ulysses Ferragut began to be famous among the captains of

the Spanish ports, although the nautical adventures of his early days

contributed very little to this popularity. The most of them had

encountered greater dangers, but they appreciated him because of the

instinctive respect that energetic and simple men have for an

intelligence which they consider superior to their own. Reading nothing

except what pertained to their career, they used to speak with

consternation of the numerous books that filled Ferragut's stateroom,

many of them upon matters which appeared to them most mysterious. Some

even made inexact statements in order to enlarge the prestige of their

comrade.

"He knows much.... He is a lawyer as well as a sailor."

Consideration of his fortune also contributed to the general

appreciation. He was an important share-holder of the company by which

he was employed. His companions loved to calculate with proud

exaggeration the riches of his mother, piling it up into millions.

He met friends on every ship carrying the Spanish flag, whatever might

be its home port or the nationality of its crews.

They all liked him:--the Basque captains, economical in words, rude and

sparing in affectionate discourse; the Asturian and Galician captains,

self-confident and spendthrift in strange contrast to their sobriety

and avaricious character when ashore; the Andalusian captains,

reflecting in their witty talk white Cadiz and its luminous wines; the

Valencian captains who talk of politics on the bridge, imagining that

they are going to become the navy of a future republic; and the

captains from Catalunia and Mallorca as thoroughly acquainted with

business affairs as are their ship-owners. Whenever necessity obliged

them to defend their rights, they immediately thought of Ulysses.

Nobody could write as he could.

The old mates who had worked their way up from the lower ranks, men of

the sea who had begun their career on coasting vessels and could only

with great difficulty adjust their practical knowledge to the handling

of books, used to speak of Ferragut with pride.

"They say that men of the sea are an uncultivated people.... Here they

have _Don Luis_ who is one of us. They may ask him whatever they

wish.... A real sage!"

The name of Ulysses always made them stammer. They believed it a

nickname, and not wishing to show any lack of respect, they had finally

transformed it into "Don Luis." For some of them, Ferragut's only

defect was his good luck. So far not a single boat of which he had had

command had been lost. And every sailor constantly on the sea ought to

have at least one of these misfortunes in his history in order to be a

real captain. Only landlubbers never lose their boats.

When his mother died, Ulysses was very undecided about the future, not

knowing whether to continue his sea life, or undertake something

entirely different. His relatives at Barcelona, merchants quick to

understand and appraise a fortune, added up what the notary and his

wife had left him and put with that what Labarta and the doctor had

contributed, until it amounted to a million pesetas.... And was a man

with as much money as that to go on living like a poor captain

dependent upon wages to maintain his family!...

His cousin, Joaquin Blanes, proprietor of a factory for knit goods,

urged him repeatedly to follow his example. He ought to remain on shore

and invest his capital in Catalan industry. Ulysses belonged to this

country both on his mother's side and because he was born in the

neighboring land of Valencia. There was great need of men of fortune

and energy to take part in the government. Blanes was entering local

politics with the enthusiasm of a middle-class man for novel adventure.

Cinta never said a word to influence her husband. She was the daughter

of a sailor and had accepted the life of a sailor's wife. Furthermore,

she looked upon matrimony in the light of the old familiar

traditions:--the woman absolute mistress of the interior of the home,

but trusting outside affairs to the will of the lord, the warrior, the

head of the hearth, without permitting herself opinions or objections

to their acts.

It was Ulysses, therefore, who decided to abandon the seafaring life.

Worked upon by the suggestions of his cousins, it needed only a little

dispute with one of the directors of the shipping firm to make him hand

in his resignation, and refuse to reconsider it, although urged by the

protests and entreaties of the other stockholders.

In the first months of his existence ashore, he was amazed at the

desperate immovability of everything. The world was made up of

revolting rigidity and solidity. He felt almost nauseated at seeing all

his possessions remain just where he left them, without the slightest

fluctuation, or the least bit of casual caprice.

In the mornings upon opening his eyes, he at first experienced the

sweet sensation of irresponsible liberty. Nothing affected the fate of

that house. The lives of those that were sleeping on the other floors

above and below him had not been entrusted to his vigilance.... But in

a few days he began to feel that there was something lacking, something

which had been one of the greatest satisfactions of his existence,--the

sensation of power, the enjoyment of command.

Two maids were now always hastening to him with a frightened air at the

sound of his voice, or the ringing of his bell. That was all that was

left to him who had commanded dozens of men of such ugliness of temper

that they struck terror to all beholders when they went ashore in the

ports. Nobody consulted him now, while on the sea everybody was seeking

his counsel and many times had to interrupt his sleep. The house could

go on without his making the rounds daily from the cellars to the roof,

overseeing even the slightest spigot. The women who cleaned it in the

mornings with their brooms were always obliging him to flee from his

office. He was not permitted to make any comment nor could he extend a

gold-striped arm as when he used to scold the barefooted, bare-breasted

deck-swabbers, insisting that the deck should be as clean as the

saloon. He felt himself belittled, laid to one side. He thought of

Hercules dressed as a woman and spinning wool. His love of family life

had made him renounce that of a powerful man.

Only the considerate treatment of his wife, who surrounded him with

assiduous care as though wishing to compensate for their long

separations, made the situation bearable. Furthermore, his conscience

was enjoying a certain satisfaction in being a land-father, taking much

interest in the life of his son who was beginning to prepare to enter

the institute, looking over his books, and aiding him in understanding

the notes.

But even these pleasures were not of long duration. The family

gatherings in his home or at his relatives' bored him unspeakably; so

did the conversations with his cousins and nephews about profits and

business deals, or about the defects of centralized tyranny. According

to them, all the calamities of heaven and earth were coming from

Madrid. The governor of the province was the "Consul of Spain."

These merchants interrupted their criticisms only to listen in

religious silence to Wagner's music banged out on the piano by the

girls of the family. A friend with a tenor voice used to sing

_Lohengrin_ in Catalan. Enthusiasm made the most excitable roar, "the

hymn ... the hymn!" It was not possible to misunderstand. For them

there was only one hymn in existence, and in a trilling undertone they

would accompany the liturgic music of _Los Segadores_ (The Reapers).

[The revolutionary song of Catalunia, originated by a band of reapers

in the seventeenth century.]

Ulysses used to recall with homesickness his life as commander of a

transatlantic liner,--a wide, universal life of incessant and varied

horizons, and cosmopolitan crowds. He could see himself detained on

deck by groups of elegant maidens who would beg him for new dances in

the coming week. His footsteps were surrounded with white fluttering

skirts, veils that waved like colored clouds, laughter and trills,

Spanish chatter that appeared set to music:--all the frolicsome jargon

of a cage of tropical birds.

Ex-presidents of the South American republics,--generals or doctors who

were going to Europe to rest,--used to relate to him on the bridge,

with Napoleonic gravity, the principal events in their history. The

business men starting out for America confided to him their stupendous

plans:--rivers turned from their courses, railroads built across the

virgin forests, monstrous electric forces extracted from huge

waterfalls varying in breadth, cities vomited from the desert in a few

weeks, all the marvels of an adolescent world that desires to realize

whatever its youthful imagination may conceive. He was the demi-urge of

this little floating world: he disposed of joy and love as the spirit

moved him.

In the scorching evenings around the equator, it was enough for him to

give an order to rouse things and beings from their brutish drowsiness.

"Let the music begin, and refreshments be served." And in a few moments

dancers would be revolving the whole length of the deck, and smiling

lips and eyes would become brilliantly alight with illusion and desire.

Behind him, his praises were always being sounded. The matrons found

him very distinguished. "It is plain to be seen that he is an

exceptional person." Stewards and crew circulated exaggerated accounts

of his riches and his studies. Some young girls sailing for Europe with

imaginations seething with romance were very much aghast to learn that

the hero was married and had a son. The solitary ladies stretched out

on a _chaise-longue,_ book in hand, upon seeing him would arrange the

corolla of their petticoats, hiding their legs with so much

precipitation that it always left them more uncovered; then fixing upon

him a languishing glance, they would begin a dialogue always in the

same way.

"How is it that any one so young as you has already become a

captain?..."

Ah, the misery of it!... He who had gallantly passed many years

cruising from one extreme of the Atlantic to the other with a rich,

gay, perfumed world, at times resisting feminine caprice through mere

prudence, yielding at others with the secrecy of a discreet sailor, now

found himself with no other admirers than the mediocre tribe of the

Blanes, with no other hallucinations than those which his cousin the

manufacturer might suggest, when waxing enthusiastic because the great

apostles of politics were taking a certain interest in the captain.

Every morning, on awaking, his taste now received a rude shock. The

first thing that he contemplated was a room "without personality," a

dwelling that was not characteristic of him in any way, arranged by the

maids with excessive cleanliness and a lack of logic that was

constantly changing the situation of his things.

He recalled with longing his compact and well-ordered stateroom where

there was not a piece of furniture that could escape his glance nor a

drawer whose contents he did not know down to the slightest detail. His

body was accustomed to slip without embarrassment through the spaces of

his cabin furnishings. He had adapted himself to all incoming and

outgoing angles just as the body of the mollusk adapts itself to the

winding curves of its shells. The cabin seemed formed by the secretions

of his being. It was a covering, a sheath, that went with him from one

extreme of the ocean to the other, heating itself with the high

temperature of the tropics, or becoming as cosy as an Esquimo hut on

approaching the polar seas.

His love for it was somewhat like that which the friar has for his

cell; but this cell was a secular one, and entering it after a

tempestuous night on the bridge, or a trip ashore in most curious and

foreign ports, he found it always the same, with his papers and books

untouched on the table, his clothes hanging from their hooks, his

photographs fixed on the walls. The daily spectacle of seas and lands

was always changing--the temperature, the course of the stars, and the

people that one week were bundled up in winter greatcoats, and were

clad in white the week after, hunting the heavens for the new stars of

another hemisphere.... Yet his cozy little stateroom was always the

same, as though it were the corner of a planet apart, unaffected by the

variations of this world.

Upon awaking in it, he found himself every morning enwrapped in a

greenish and bland atmosphere as though he might have been sleeping in

the bottom of an enchanted lake. The sun traced over the whiteness of

his ceiling and sheets a restless network of gold whose meshes

constantly succeeded each other. This was the reflection of the

invisible water. When his ship was immovable in the ports, there always

came in through his window the whirling noise of the cranes, the cries

of the stevedores and the voices of those who were in the neighboring

vessels. On the high sea the cool and murmuring silence of immensity

used to fill his sleeping room. A wind of infinite purity that came

perhaps from the other side of the planet--slipping past thousands of

leagues, over the salty deserts without touching a single bit of

corruption--would come stealing into Ferragut's throat like an

effervescent wine. His chest always expanded to the impulses of this

life-giving draught as his eyes roved over the sparkling, luminous blue

of the horizon.

Here in his home, the first thing that he saw through the window upon

awaking was a Catalunian edifice, rich and monstrous, like the palaces

that the hypnotist evolves in his dreams,--an amalgamation of Persian

flowers, Gothic columns, trunks of trees, with quadrupeds, reptiles and

snails among the cement foliage. The paving wafted up to him through

its drains the fetidity of sewers dry for lack of water; the balconies

shed the dust of shaken rugs; the absurd palace appropriated, with the

insolence of the new-rich, all the heaven and sun that used to belong

to Ferragut.

One night he surprised his relatives by informing them that he was

about to return to the sea. Cinta assented to this resolution in

painful silence, as though she had foreseen it long before. It was

something inevitable and fatal that she must accept. The manufacturer,

Blanes, stammered with astonishment. Return to his life of adventures,

when the great gentlemen of the district were becoming interested in

his personality!... Perhaps in the next elections they might have made

him a member of the municipal council!

Ferragut laughed at his cousin's simplicity. He wanted to command a

vessel again, but one of his own, without being obliged to consider the

restrictions of the ship owners. He could permit himself this luxury.

It would be like an enormous yacht, ready to set forth according to his

tastes and convenience, yet at the same time bringing him in untold

profits. Perhaps his son might in time become director of a maritime

company, this first ship laying the foundation of an enormous fleet in

the years to come.

He knew every port in the world, every highway of traffic, and he would

be able to find the places where, lacking transportation facilities,

they paid the highest freight rates. Until now he had been a salaried

man, brave and care-free. He was going to begin an absolutely

independent life as a speculator of the sea.

Two months afterwards he wrote from England saying that he had bought

the _Fingal_, a mail packet of three thousand tons that had made trips

twice a week between London and a port of Scotland.

Ulysses appeared highly delighted with the cheapness of his

acquisition. The _Fingal_ had been the property of a Scotch captain

who, in spite of his long illness, had never wished to give up command,

dying aboard his vessel. His heirs, inland men tired by their long

wait, were anxious to get rid of it at any price.

When the new proprietor entered the aft saloon surrounded with

staterooms,--the only habitable place in the ship,--memories of the

dead came forth to meet him. On the wall-panels were painted the heroes

of the Scotch Iliad,--the bard Ossian with his harp, Malvina with the

round arms and waving golden tresses, the undaunted warriors with their

winged helmets and protruding biceps, exchanging gashes on their

shields while awaking the echoes of the green lochs.

A deep and spongy arm chair opened its arms before a stove. There the

owner of the ship had passed his last years, sick at heart and with

swollen legs, directing from his seat a course that was repeated every

week across the foggy winter waves tossing bits of ice snatched from

the icebergs. Near the stove was a piano and upon its top an orderly

collection of musical scores yellowed by time,--_La Sonnambula, Lucia_,

Romances of Tosti, Neapolitan songs, breezy and graceful melodies that

the old chords of the instrument sent forth with the fragile and

crystalline tinkling of an old music box. The poor old captain with

sick heart and legs of stone had always turned to the sea of light for

distraction. It was music that made appear in the foggy heavens the

peaks of Sorrento covered with orange and lemon trees, and the coast of

Sicily, perfumed by its flaming flora.

Ferragut manned his boat with friendly people. His first mate was a

pilot who had begun his career in a fishing smack. He came from the

same village as Ulysses' ancestors, and he remembered the _Dotor_ with

respect and admiration. He had known this new captain when he was a

little fellow and used to go fishing with his uncle. In those days Toni

was already a sailor on a coast-trading vessel, and his superiority in

years had then justified his using the familiar thee and thou when

talking with the lad Ulysses.

Finding himself now under his orders, he wished to change his mode of

address, but the captain would not permit it. Perhaps he and Toni were

distant relatives,--all those living in that village of the _Marina_

had become related through long centuries of isolated existence and

common danger. The entire crew, from the first engineer to the lowest

seaman, showed an equal familiarity in this respect. Some were from the

same land as the captain, others had been sailing a long time under his

orders.

As shipowner, Ulysses now underwent numberless experiences whose

existence he had never before suspected. He went through the anguishing

transformation of the actor who becomes a theatrical manager, of the

author who branches out into publishing, of the engineer with a hobby

for odd inventions who becomes the proprietor of a factory. His

romantic love for the sea and its adventures was now overshadowed by

the price and consumption of coal, by the maddening competition that

lowered freight rates, and by the search for new ports with fast and

remunerative freight.

The _Fingal_ which had been rebaptized by its new proprietor with the

name of _Mare Nostrum_, in memory of his uncle, turned out to be a

dubious purchase in spite of its low price. As a navigator Ulysses had

been most enthusiastic upon beholding its high and sharp prow disposed

to confront the worst seas, the slenderness of the swift craft, its

machinery, excessively powerful for a freight steamer,--all the

conditions that had made it a mail packet for so many years. It

consumed too much fuel to be a profitable investment as a transport of

merchandise. The captain during his navigation could now think only of

the ravenous appetite of the boilers. It always seemed to him that the

_Mare Nostrum_ was speeding along with excess steam.

"Half speed!" he would shout down the tube to his first engineer.

But in spite of this and many other precautions, the expense for fuel

was enormously disproportioned to the tonnage of the vessel. The boat

was eating up all the profits. Its speed was insignificant compared

with that of a transatlantic steamer, though absurd compared with that

of the merchant vessels of great hulls and little machinery that were

going around soliciting cargo at any price, from all points.

A slave of the superiority of his vessel and in continual struggle with

it, Ferragut had to make great efforts in order to continue sailing

without actual heavy loss. All the waters of the planet now saw the

_Mare Nostrum_ specializing in the rarest kind of transportation.

Thanks to this expedient, the Spanish flag waved in ports that had

never seen it before.

Under this banner, he made trips through the solitary seas of Syria and

Asia Minor, skirting coasts where the novelty of a ship with a smoke

stack made the people of the Arabian villages run together in crowds.

He disembarked in Phoenician and Greek ports choked up with sand that

had left only a few huts at the foot of mountains of ruins, and where

columns of marble were still sticking up like trunks of lopped-off palm

trees. He anchored near to the terrible breakers of the western coast

of Africa under a sun which scorched the deck, in order to take on

board india-rubber, ostrich feathers, and elephants' tusks, brought out

in long pirogues by negro oarsmen, from a river filled with crocodiles

and hippopotamuses, and bordered by groups of huts with straw cones for

roofs.

When there were no more of these extraordinary voyages, the _Mare

Nostrum_ turned its course towards South America, resigning itself to

competition in rates with the English and Scandinavians who are the

muleteers of the ocean. His tonnage and draught permitted him to sail

up the great rivers of North America, even reaching the cities of the

remote interior where rows of factory chimneys smoked on the border of

a fresh-water lake converted into a port.

He sailed up the ruddy Paraná to Rosario and Colastiné, in order to

load Argentine wheat; he anchored in the amber waters of Uruguay

opposite Paysandú and Fray Ventos, taking on board hides destined to

Europe and salt for the Antilles. From the Pacific he sailed up the

Guayas bordered with an equatorial vegetation, in search of cocoa from

Guayaquil. His prow cut the infinite sheet of the Amazon,--dislodging

gigantic tree-trunks dragged down by the inundations of the virgin

forest--in order to anchor opposite Pará or Manaos, taking on cargoes

of tobacco and coffee. He even carried from Germany implements of war

for the revolutionists of a little republic.

These trips that in other times would have awakened Ferragut's

enthusiasm now resulted disastrously. After having paid all expenses

and lived with maddening economy, there was scarcely anything left for

the owner. Each time the freight boats were more numerous and the

transportation rates cheaper. Ulysses with his elegant _Mare Nostrum_

could not compete with the southern captains, drunken and taciturn,

eager to accept freight at any price in order to fill their miserable

transports crawling across the ocean at the speed of a tortoise.

"I can do no more," he said sadly to his mate. "I shall simply ruin my

son. If anybody will buy the _Mare Nostrum,_ I'm going to sell it."

On one of his fruitless expeditions, just when he was most discouraged,

some unexpected news changed the situation for him. They had just

arrived at Teneriffe with maize and bales of dry alfalfa from

Argentina.

When Toni returned aboard after having cleared the vessel, he shouted

in Valencian, the language of intimacy, "War, _Che_!"

Ulysses, who was pacing the bridge, received the news with

indifference. "War?... What war is that?..." But upon learning that

Germany and Austria had begun hostilities with France and Russia, and

that England was just intervening in behalf of Belgium, the captain

began quickly to calculate the political consequences of this

conflagration. He could see nothing else.

Toni, less disinterested, spoke of the future of the vessel.... Their

misery was at last at an end! Freightage at thirteen shillings a ton

was going to be henceforth but a disgraceful memory. They would no

longer have to plead for freight from port to port as though begging

alms. Now they were on the point of achieving importance, and were

going to find themselves solicited by consignors and disdainful

merchants. The _Mare Nostrum_ was going to be worth its weight in gold.

Such predictions, though Ferragut refused to accept them, began to be

fulfilled in a very short time. Ships on the ocean routes suddenly

became very scarce. Some of them were taking refuge in the nearest

neutral ports, fearing the enemy's cruisers. The greater part were

mobilized by their governments for the enormous transportation of

material that modern war exacts. The German corsairs, craftily taking

advantage of the situation, were increasing with their captures the

panic of the merchant marine.

The price of freight leaped from thirteen shillings a ton to fifty,

then to seventy, and a few days later to a hundred. It couldn't climb

any further, according to Captain Ferragut.

"It will climb higher yet," affirmed the first officer with cruel joy.

"We shall see tonnage at a hundred and fifty, at two hundred.... We are

going to become rich!..."

And Toni always used the plural in speaking of the future riches

without its ever occurring to him to ask his captain a penny more than

the forty-five dollars that he was receiving each month. Ferragut's

fortune and that of the ship, he invariably looked upon as his own,

considering himself lucky if he was not out of tobacco, and could send

his entire wages home to his wife and children living down there in the

_Marina_.

His ambition was that of all modest sailors--to buy a plot of land and

become an agriculturist in his old age. The Basque pilots used to dream

of prairies and apple orchards, a little cottage on a peak and many

cows. He pictured to himself a vineyard on the coast, a little white

dwelling with an arbor under whose shade he could smoke his pipe while

all his family, children and grandchildren, were spreading out the

harvest of raisins on the frame-hurdles.

A familiar admiration like that of an ancient squire for his paladin,

or of an old subaltern for a superior officer, bound him to Ferragut.

The books that filled the captain's stateroom recalled his agonies upon

being examined in Cartagena for his license as a pilot. The grave

gentlemen of the tribunal had made him turn pale and stutter like a

child before the logarithms and formulas of trigonometry. But just let

them consult _him_ on practical matters and his skill as master of a

bark habituated to all the dangers of the sea, and he would reply with

the self-possession of a sage!

In the most difficult perils,--days of storm and sinister shoals in the

neighborhood of the treacherous coasts, Ferragut could decide to rest

only when Toni replaced him on the bridge. With him, he had no fear

that, through carelessness, a wave would sweep across the deck and stop

the machinery, or that an invisible ledge would drive its stony point

into the vitals of the vessel. He held the helm to the course

indicated. Silent and immovable he stood, as though sleeping on his

feet; but at the right moment he always uttered the brief word of

command.

He was very skinny, with the dried up leanness of the bronzed

Mediterranean. The salt wind more than his years had tanned his face,

wrinkling it with deep crevices. A capricious coloring had darkened the

depths of these cracks while the part exposed to the sun appeared

washed several shades lighter. His short stiff beard extended over all

the furrows and crests of his skin. Furthermore, he had hair in his

ears, hair in the nasal passages, coarse and vibrating growths, ready

to tremble in moments of wrath or admiration.... But this ugliness

disappeared under the light of his little eyes with pupils between

green and olive color,--mild eyes with a canine expression of

resignation, when the captain made fun of his beliefs.

Toni was a "man of ideas." Ferragut only knew of his having four or

five, but they were hard, crystallized, tenacious, like the mollusks

that stick to the rocks and eventually become a part of the stony

excrescence. He had acquired them in twenty-five years of Mediterranean

coast service by reading all the periodicals of lyric radicalism that

were thrust upon him on entering the harbors. Furthermore, at the end

of every journey was Marseilles; and in one of its little side alleys

was a red room adorned with symbolic columns where sailors of all races

and tongues met together, fraternally understanding each other by means

of mysterious signs and ritual words.

Whenever Toni entered a South American port after a long absence, he

particularly admired the rapid progress of the new villages,--enormous

wharves constructed within the year, interminable streets that were not

in existence on his former voyage, shady and elegant parks, replacing

old, dried-up lakes.

"That's only natural," he would affirm roundly. "With good reason they

are republics!"

Upon entering the Spanish ports, the slightest deviation in the

docking, a discussion with the official employees, the lack of space

for a good anchorage would make him smile with bitterness. "Unfortunate

country!... Everything here is the work of the altar and the throne!"

In the Thames, and before the docks of Hamburg, Captain Ferragut would

chaff his subordinate.

"There's no republic here, Toni!... But, nevertheless this is rather

worth while."

But Toni never gave in. He would contract his hairy visage, making a

mental effort to formulate his vague ideas, clothing them with words.

In the very background of these grandeurs existed the confirmation of

the idea he was so vainly trying to express. Finally he admitted

himself checkmated, but not convinced.

"I don't know how to explain it; I haven't the words for it ... but ...

it's the _people_ who are doing all this."

Upon receiving in Teneriffe the news of war, he summed up all his

doctrines with the terseness of a victor.

"In Europe there are too many kings.... If all the nations could be

republics!... This calamity just had to come!"

And this time Ferragut did not venture to ridicule the

single-mindedness of his second.

All the people of the _Mare Nostrum_ showed great enthusiasm over the

new business aspect of things. The seamen who in former voyages were

taciturn, as though foreseeing the ruin or exhaustion of their captain,

were now working as eagerly as though they were going to participate in

the profits.

In the forward mess room many of them set themselves to work on

commercial calculations. The first trip of the war would be equal to

ten of their former ones; the second, perhaps, might bring in the

profit of twenty. And recalling their former bad business ventures,

they rejoiced for Ferragut, with the same disinterestedness as the

first officer. The engineers were no longer called to the captain's

cabin in order to contrive new economies in fuel. They had to take

advantage of the time and opportunity; and the _Mare Nostrum_ was now

going at full steam, making fourteen knots an hour, like a passenger

vessel, stopping only when its course was blocked at the entrance of

the Mediterranean by an English destroyer, sending out an officer to

make sure that they were not carrying on board enemy passengers.

Abundance reigned equally between bridge and forecastle where were the

sailors' quarters and the galley,--the space respected by every one on

the boat as the incontestable realm of Uncle Caragol.

This old man, nicknamed "Caracol" (snail), another old friend of

Ferragut's, was the ship's cook, and, although he did not dare to talk

as familiarly to the captain as in former times, the tone of his voice

made it understood that mentally he was continuing to use the old,

affectionate form. He had known Ulysses when he used to run away from

the classrooms to row in the harbor and, on account of the bad state of

his eyes, he had finally retired from the navigation of coast vessels,

descending to be a simple bargeman. His gravity and corpulence had

something almost priestly in character. He was the obese type of

Mediterranean with a little head, voluminous neck and triple chin,

seated on the stern of his fishing skiff like a Roman patrician on the

throne of his trireme.

His culinary talent suffered eclipse whenever rice did not figure as

the fundamental basis of his compositions. All that this food could

give of itself, he knew perfectly. In the tropical ports, the crews

surfeited with bananas, pineapples, and alligator-pears, would greet

with enthusiasm the apparition of a great frying pan of rice with cod

and potatoes, or a casserole of rice from the oven with its golden

crust perforated by the ruddy faces of garbanzos and points of black

sausage. At other times, under the leaden-colored sky of the northern

seas, the cook made them recall their distant native land by giving

them the monastic rice dish with beet roots, or buttery rice with

turnips and beans.

On Sundays and the fiestas of the Valencian saints who for Uncle

Caragol were the first in heaven,--_San Vicente Mártir, San Vicente

Ferrer, La Virgin de los Desamparados_ and the _Cristo del Grao_--would

appear the smoking _paella_, a vast, circular dish of rice upon whose

surface of white, swollen grains were lying bits of various fowls. The

cook loved to surprise his following by distributing rotund, raw

onions, with the whiteness of marble and an acrid surprise that brought

tears to the eyes. They were a princely gift maintained in secret. One

had only to break them with one blow and their sticky juices would gush

forth and lose themselves in the palate like crisp mouthfuls of a sweet

and spicy bread, alternating with knifefuls of rice. The boat was at

times near Brazil in sight of Fernando de Noroña,--yet even while

viewing the conical huts of the negroes installed on an island under an

equatorial sun, the crews could almost believe--thanks to Uncle

Caragol's magic--that they were eating in a cabin of the farmland of

Valencia, as they passed from hand to hand the long-spouted jug filled

with strong wine from Liria.

When they anchored in ports where fish was abundant, he achieved the

great work of cooking a rice _abanda_. The cabin boys would bring to

the captain's table the pot in which was boiled the rich sea food mixed

with lobsters, mussels, and every kind of shell-fish available, but the

_chef_ invariably reserved for himself the honor of offering the

accompanying great platter with its pyramid, of rice, every grain

golden and distinct.

Boiled apart (_abanda_) each grain was full of the succulent broth of

the stew-pot. It was a rice dish that contained within it the

concentration of all the sustenance of the sea. As though he were

performing a liturgical ceremony, the _chef_ would go around delivering

half a lemon to each one of those seated at the table. The rice should

only be eaten after moistening it with this perfumed dew which called

to mind the image of an oriental garden. Only the unfortunate beings

who lived inland were ignorant of this exquisite confection, calling

any mess of rice a Valencian rice dish.

Ulysses would humor the cook's notions, carrying the first spoonful to

his mouth with a questioning glance.... Then he would smile, giving

himself up to gastric intoxication. "Magnificent, Uncle Caragol!" His

good humor made him affirm that only the gods should be nourished with

rice _abanda_ in their abodes on Mount Olympus. He had read that in

books. And Caragol, divining great praise in all this, would gravely

reply, "That is so, my captain." Toni and the other officers by this

time would be chewing away with heads down, only interrupting their

feast to regret that the old Ganymede should have skimped them when

measuring the ambrosia.

In his estimation, oil was as precious as rice. In the time of their

money-losing navigation, when the captain was making special efforts at

economy, Caragol used to keep an especially sharp eye on the great oil

bottles in his galley, for he suspected that the cabin boys and the

young seamen appropriated it to dress their hair when they wanted to

play the dandy, using the oil as a pomade. Every head that put itself

within reach of his disturbed glance he grasped between his arms,

raising it to his nose. The slightest perfume of olive oil would arouse

his wrath. "Ah, you thief!"... And down would fall his enormous hand,

soft and heavy as a fencing gauntlet.

Ulysses believed him quite capable of climbing the bridge, and

declaring that navigation could not go on because of his having

exhausted the leathern bottles of amethyst-colored liquid proceeding

from the Sierra de Espadán.

In the ports, his short-sighted eyes recognized immediately the

nationality of the boats anchored on both sides of the _Mare Nostrum_.

His nose would sniff the air sadly. "Nothing!..." They were unsavory

barks, barks from the North that prepared their dinner with lard or

butter,--Protestant barks, perhaps.

Sometimes he would sneak along the gunwale, following an intoxicating

trail until he planted himself in front of the galley of the

neighboring boat, breathing in its rich perfume. "Hello, brothers!"

Impossible to fool him, they were probably Spaniards and, if not, they

were from Genoa or Naples,--in short, were compatriots accustomed to

live and eat in all latitudes just as though they were in their own

little inland sea. Soon they would begin a speech in the Mediterranean

idiom, a mixture of Spanish, Provençal and Italian, invented by the

hybrid peoples of the African coast from Egypt to Morocco. Sometimes

they would send each other presents, like those that are exchanged

between tribes,--fruits from distant countries. At other times,

suddenly inimical, without knowing why, they would shake their fists

over the railing, yelling insults at each other in which, between every

two or three words, would appear the names of the Virgin and her holy

Son.

This was the signal for Uncle Caragol, religious soul, to return in

haughty silence to his galley. Toni, the mate, used to make fun of his

devout enthusiasm. On the other hand, the foremast hands, materialistic

and gluttonous, used to listen to him with deference, because he was

the one who doled out the wine and the choicest tid-bits. The old man

used to speak to them of the _Cristo del Grao_, whose pictures occupied

the most prominent site in the kitchen, and they would all listen as to

a new tale, to the story of the arrival by sea of the sacred image,

mounted upon a ladder in a boat that had dissolved in smoke after

discharging its miraculous cargo.

This had been when the _Grao_ was no more than a group of huts far from

the walls of Valencia and threatened by the raids of the Moorish

pirates. For many years Caragol, barefooted, had carried this sacred

ladder on his shoulder on the day of the fiesta. Now other men of the

sea were enjoying such honor and he, old and half-blind, would be

waiting among the public for the procession to pass in order that he

might throw himself upon the enormous relic, touching his clothes to

the wood.

All his outer garments were sanctified by this contact. In reality they

weren't very many, since he usually strolled about the boat very

lightly clad, with the immodesty of a man who sees poorly and considers

himself above human preoccupations.

A shirt with the tail always floating, and a pair of pantaloons of

dirty cotton or yellow flannel, according to the season, constituted

his entire outfit. The bosom of the shirt was open on all occasions,

leaving visible a thatch of white hair. The pantaloons were fastened

together with a single button. A palm leaf hat always covered his head

even when he was working among his cooking pots.

The _Mare Nostrum_ could not be shipwrecked nor suffer any harm while

it carried him aboard. In the days of tempest, when waves were sweeping

the deck from prow to poop, and the sailors were treading warily,

fearing that a heavy sea might carry them overboard, Caragol would

stick his head out through the door of the galley, scorning a danger

which he could not see.

The great water-spouts would pass over him, even putting out his fires,

but only increasing his faith. "Courage, boys! Courage, lads!" The

_Cristo del Grao_ had special charge of them and nothing bad could

happen to the ship... Some of the seamen were silent, while others said

this and that about the image without arousing the indignation of the

old devotee. God, who sends dangers to the men of the sea, knows that

their bad words lack malice.

His religiosity extended to the very deeps. He did not wish to say

anything about the ocean fish, for they inspired him with the same

indifference as those cold and unperfumed boats that were ignorant of

olive oil, and all that was cooked with "pomade." They must be

heretics.

He was better acquainted with the fish of the Mediterranean and even

came to believe that they must be good Catholics, since in their own

way they proclaimed the glory of God. Standing near the taffrail on

torrid evenings in the tropics, he would recount, in honor of the

inhabitants of his distant sea, the portentous miracle which had taken

place in the glen of Alboraya.

A priest was one day fording on horseback the mouth of a river in order

to carry the eucharist to a dying person, when his beast stumbled and

the ciborium, falling open, the Hosts fell out and were carried off by

the current. From that time on, mysterious lights glowed every night on

the water, and at sunrise a swarm of little fishes would come to range

themselves opposite the glen, their heads emerging from the water, in

order to show the Host which each one of them was carrying in his

mouth. In vain the fishermen wished to take them away from them. They

fled to the inland sea with their treasures. Only when the clergy, with

cross erect and with the same priest, fell on their knees in the glen

did they decide to approach; and one after the other deposited his Host

in the ciborium, retiring then from wave to wave, gracefully waggling

their little tails.

In spite of the vague hope for a jug of choice wine that was animating

most of his hearers, a murmur of incredulity always arose at the end of

this tale. The devout Caragol then became as wrathful and foul-mouthed

as a prophet of old when he considered his faith in danger. "Who was

that son of a flea?... Who _was_ that son of a flea daring to doubt

what I myself have seen?..." And what he had seen was the fiesta of the

_Peixet_ that was celebrated every year, simply listening to most

learned men discoursing about the miracle in a commemorative chapel

built on the banks of the glen.

This prodigy of the little fishes was almost always followed with what

he called the miracle of the _Peixot_, endeavoring with the weight of

such a marvelous fish tale to crush the doubts of the impious.

The galley of Alphonso V of Aragon (the only sailor king of Spain),

upon coming out of the Gulf of Naples, once struck a hidden rock near

the island of Capri which took away a side of the ship without making

it leak; and the vessel continued on with all sails spread, carrying

the king, the ladies of his court, and the retinue of mail-clad barons.

Twenty days afterward they arrived at Valencia safe and sound like all

sailors who in moments of danger ask aid of the _Virgen del Puig_. Upon

inspecting the hull of the galley, the master calkers beheld a

monstrous fish detach itself from its bottom with the tranquility of an

upright person who has fulfilled his duty. It was a dolphin sent by the

most holy Señora in order that his side might stop up the open breach.

And thus, like a plug, it had sailed from Naples to Valencia without

allowing a drop of water to pass in.

The _chef_ would not admit any criticisms nor protests. This miracle

was undeniable. He had seen it with his own eyes, and they were good.

He had seen it in an ancient picture in the monastery of Puig,

everything appearing on the tablet with the realism of truth,--the

galley, the king, the _peixòt_ and the Virgin above giving the order.

At this juncture the breeze would flap the narrator's shirt tail,

disclosing his abdomen divided into hemispheres by the tyranny of its

only pantaloon button.

"Uncle Caragol, look out!" warned a teasing voice.

The holy man would smile with the seraphic calm of one who sees beyond

the pomps and vanities of existence, and would begin the relation of a

new miracle.

Ferragut used to attribute his cook's periods of exaltation to the

lightness of his clothing in all weathers. Within him was burning a

fire incessantly renewed. On foggy days he would climb to the bridge

with some glasses of a smoking drink that he used to call _calentets_.

Nothing better for men that had to pass long hours in the inclement

weather in motionless vigilance! It was coffee mixed with rum, but in

unequal proportions, having more alcohol than black liquid. Toni would

drink rapidly all the glasses offered. The captain would refuse them,

asking for clear coffee.

His sobriety was that of the ancient sailor,--the sobriety of Father

Ulysses who used to mix wine with water in all his libations. The

divinities of the old sea did not love alcoholic drinks. The white

_Amphitrite_ and the Nereids only accepted on their altars the fruits

of the earth, sacrifices of doves, libations of milk. Perhaps because

of this the seafaring men of the Mediterranean, following an hereditary

tendency, looked upon intoxication as the vilest of degradations. Even

those who were not temperate avoided getting frankly drunk like the

sailors of other seas, dissimulating the strength of their alcoholic

beverage with coffee and sugar.

Caragol was the understudy charged with drinking all which the captain

refused, together with certain others which he dedicated to himself in

the mystery of the galley. On warm days he manufactured _refresquets_,

and these refreshments were enormous glasses, half of water and half of

rum upon a great bed of sugar,--a mixture that made one pass like a

lightning flash, without any gradations, from vulgar serenity to most

angelic intoxication.

The captain would scold him upon seeing his inflamed and reddened eyes.

He was going to make himself blind.... But the guilty one was not moved

by this threat. He had to celebrate the prosperity of the vessel in his

own way. And of this prosperity the most interesting thing for him was

his ability to use oil and brandy lavishly without any fear of

recriminations when the accounts were settled. _Cristo del Grao_!...

would that the war would last forever!...

The _Mare Nostrum's_ third voyage from South America to Europe came

suddenly to an end in Naples, where they were unloading wheat and

hides. A collision at the entrance of the port, with an English

hospital ship that was going to the Dardanelles, injured her stern,

carrying away a part of the screw.

Toni roared with impatience upon learning that they would have to

remain nearly a month in enforced idleness. Italy had not yet

intervened in the war, but her defensive precautions were monopolizing

all naval industries. It was not possible to make the repairs sooner,

although Ferragut well knew what this loss of time would represent in

his business. Valuable freight was waiting for him in Marseilles and

Barcelona, but, wishing to tranquillize himself and to pacify his mate,

he would say repeatedly:

"England will indemnify us.... The English are just."

And in order to soothe his impatience he went ashore.

Compared with other celebrated Italian cities, Naples did not appear to

him of much importance. Its true beauty was its immense gulf between

hills of orange trees and pines, with a second frame of mountains one

of which outlined upon the azure heavens its eternal crest of volcanic

vapors.

The town did not abound in famous edifices. The monarchs of Naples had

generally been foreigners who had resided far away and had governed

through their delegates. The best streets, the palaces, the monumental

fountain, had come from the Spanish viceroys. A sovereign of mixed

origin, Charles the III, Castilian by birth and Neapolitan at heart,

had done the most for the city. His building enthusiasm had embellished

the ancient districts with works similar to those that he erected years

afterward, upon occupying the throne of Spain.

After admiring the Grecian statuary in the museum, and the excavated

objects that revealed the intimate life of the ancients, Ulysses

threaded the tortuous and often gloomy arteries of the popular

districts.

There were streets clinging to the slopes forming landings flanked with

narrow and very high houses. Every vacant space had its balconies, and

from every railing to its opposite were extended lines spread with

clothes of different colors, hung out to dry. Neapolitan fertility made

these little alleys seethe with people. Around the open-air kitchens

there crowded patrons, eating, while standing, their boiled macaroni or

bits of meat.

The hucksters were hawking their goods with melodious, song-like cries,

and cords to which little baskets were fastened were lowered down to

them from balconies. The bargaining and purchases reached from the

depth of the street gutters to the top of the seventh floor, but the

flocks of goats climbed the winding steps with their customary agility

in order to be milked at the various stair landings.

The wharves of the Marinela attracted the captain because of the local

color of this Mediterranean port. Italian unity had torn down and

reconstructed much of it, but there still remained standing various

rows of little low-roofed houses with white or pink facades, green

doors, and lower floors further forward than the upper ones, serving as

props for galleries with wooden balustrades. Everything there that was

not of brick was of clumsy carpentry resembling the work of ship

calkers. Iron did not exist in these terrestrial constructions

suggestive of the sailboat whose rooms were as dark as staterooms.

Through the windows could be seen great conch-shells upon the chests of

drawers, harsh and childish oil paintings representing frigates, and

multi-colored shells from distant seas.

These dwellings repeated themselves in all the ports of the

Mediterranean just as though they were the work of the same hand. As a

child, Ferragut had seen them in the _Grao_ of Valencia and continually

ran across them in Barcelona, in the suburbs of Marseilles, in old

Nice, in the ports of the western islands, and in the sections of the

African coast occupied by Maltese and Sicilians.

Over the town, lined up along the Marinela, the churches of Naples

reared their domes and towers with glazed roofs, green and yellow,

which appeared more like pinnacles of Oriental baths than the roofs of

Christian temples.

The barefooted _lazzarone_ with his red cap no longer existed, but the

crowd,--clad like the workmen of all ports--still gathered around the

daubed poster that represented a crime, a miracle or a prodigious

specific, listening in silence to the harangue of the narrator or

charlatan. The old popular comedians were declaiming with heroic

gesticulations the epic octavos of Tasso, and harps and violins were

sounding accompaniments to the latest melody that Naples had made

fashionable throughout the entire world. The stands of the oyster-men

constantly sent forth an organic perfume from the spent wave, and all

around them empty shells scattered their disks of pearly lime over the

mud.

Near to the ancient Captaincy of the port, the palace of Charles

III,--blue and white, with an image of the immaculate conception,--were

assembled the unloading trucks, whose teams still preserved their

ancient hybrid originality. In some instances the shafts were occupied

by a white ox, sleek with enormous and widely branching horns, an

animal similar to those that used to figure in the religious ceremonies

of the ancients. At his right would be hooked a horse, at his left, a

great raw-boned mule, and this triple and discordant team appeared in

all the carts, standing immovable before the ships the length of the

docks, or dragging their heavy wheels up the slopes leading to the

upper city.

In a few days the captain grew tired of Naples and its bustle. In the

cafés of the Street of Toledo and the Gallery of Humbert I, he had to

defend himself from some noisy youths with low-cut vests, butterfly

neckties and little felt hats perched upon their manes, who, in low

voices, proposed to him unheard-of spectacles organized for the

diversion of foreigners.

He had also seen enough of the paintings and domestic objects excavated

from the ancient cities. The lewdness of the secret cabinets finally

irritated him. It appeared to him the reverse of recreation to

contemplate so many childish fantasies of sculpture and painting having

the antique symbol of masculinity as its principal motif.

One morning he boarded a train and, after skirting the smoking mountain

of Vesuvius, passing between rose-colored villages surrounded with

vineyards, he stopped at the station of Pompeii.

From the funereal solitudes of hotels and restaurants, the guides came

forth like a suddenly awakened swarm of wasps, lamenting that the war

had cut off the tourist trade. Perhaps he would be the only one who

would come that day. "_Signor_, at your service, at any price

whatever!..." But the sailor continued on alone. Always, in recalling

Pompeii, he had wished to see it again alone, absolutely alone, so as

to get a more direct impression of the ancient life.

His first view of it had been seventeen years ago when, as a mate of a

Catalan sailing vessel anchored in the port of Naples, he had taken

advantage of the cheapness of Sunday rates and had seen everything as

one of a crowd that was pushing and treading on everybody's feet so as

to listen to the nearest guide.

At the head of the expedition had been a priest, young and elegant, a

Roman _Monsignor_, clad in silk, and with him two showy foreign women,

who were always climbing up in the highest places, raising their skirts

rather high for fear of the star lizards that were writhing in and out

of the ruins. Ferragut, in humble admiration, always remained below,

glimpsing the country from behind their legs. "Ay! Twenty-two

years!..." Afterwards when he heard Pompeii spoken of, it always evoked

in his memory several strata of images. "Very beautiful! Very

interesting!" And in his mind's eye he saw again the palaces and

temples, but as a secondary consideration, like a shrouded background,

while in the forefront were four magnificent legs standing forth,--a

human colonnade of slender shafts swathed in transparent black silk.

The solitude so long desired for his second visit was now aggressively

in evidence. In this deserted, dead city there were to-day no other

sounds than the whirring of insect wings over the plants beginning to

clothe themselves with springtime verdure, and the invisible scampering

of reptiles under the layers of ivy.

At the gate of Herculaneum, the guardian of the little museum left

Ferragut to examine in peace the excavations of the various corpses,

petrified Pompeiians of plaster still in the attitudes of terror in

which death had surprised them. He did not abandon his post in order to

trouble the captain with his explanations; he scarcely raised his eyes

from the newspaper that he had before him. The news from Rome,--the

intrigues of the German diplomats, the possibility that Italy might

enter the war,--were absorbing his entire attention.

Afterwards on the solitary streets the sailor found everywhere the same

preoccupation. His footsteps resounded in the sunlight as though

treading the depths of the hollow tombs. The moment he stopped, silence

again enveloped him,--"A silence of two thousand years," thought

Ferragut to himself, and in the midst of this primeval silence sounded

far-away voices in the violence of a sharp discussion. They were the

guardians and the employees of the excavations who, lacking work, were

gesticulating and insulting each other in these strongholds twenty

centuries old so profoundly isolated from patriotic enthusiasm or fear

of the horrors of war.

Ferragut, map in hand, passed among these groups without annoyance from

insistent guides. For two hours he fancied himself an inhabitant of

ancient Pompeii who had remained alone in the city on a holiday devoted

to the rural divinities. His glance could reach to the very end of the

straight streets without encountering persons or things recalling

modern times.

Pompeii appeared to him smaller than ever in this solitude,--an

intersection of narrow roads with high sidewalks paved with polygonal

blocks of blue lava. In its interstices Spring was forming green grass

plots dotted with flowers. Carriages,--of whose owners not even the

dust was left,--had with their deep wheels opened up ridges in the

pavement more than a thousand years ago. In every crossway was a public

fountain with a grotesque mask which had spouted water through its

mouth.

Certain red letters on the walls were announcements of elections to be

held in the beginning of that era,--candidates for aedile or duumvir

who were recommended to the Pompeiian voters. Some doors showed above,

the _phallus_ for conjuring the evil eyes; others, a pair of serpents

intertwined, emblem of family life. In the corners of the alleyways, a

Latin verse engraved on the walls asked the passerby to observe the

laws of sanitation, and there still could be seen on the stuccoed walls

caricatures and scribbling, handiwork of the little street gamins of

Caesar's day.

The houses were lightly constructed upon floors cracked by minor

earthquakes before the arrival of the final catastrophe. The lower

floors were of bricks or concrete and the others, of wood, had been

devoured by the volcanic fire, only the stairways remaining.

In this gracious city of amiable and easy-going life, more Greek than

Roman, all the lower floors of the plebeian houses had been occupied by

petty traders. They were shops with doors the same size as the

establishment, four-sided caves like the Arabian _zocos_ whose

furthermost corners were visible to the buyer stopping in the street.

Many still had their stone counters and their large earthen jars for

the sale of wine and oil. The private dwellings had no facades, and

their outer walls were smooth and unapproachable, but with an interior

court providing the surrounding chambers with light as in the palaces

of the Orient. The doors were merely half-doors of escape, parts of

larger ones. All life was concentrated around the interior, the central

patio, rich and magnificent, adorned with fish ponds, statues and

flower-bordered beds.

Marble was rare. The columns constructed of bricks were covered with a

stucco that offered a fine surface for painting. Pompeii had been a

polychrome city. All the columns, red or yellow, had capitals of divers

colors. The center of the walls was generally occupied with a little

picture, usually erotic, painted on black varnished walls varied with

red and amber hues. On the friezes were processions of cupids and

tritons, between rustic and maritime emblems.

Tired of his excursion through the dead city, Ferragut seated himself

on a stone bench among the ruins of the temple, and looked over the map

spread out on his knees, enjoying the titles with which the most

interesting constructions had been designated because of a mosaic or a

painting,--Villa of Diomedes, the House of Meleager, of the wounded

Adonis, of the Labryinth, of the Faun, of the Black Wall. The names of

the streets were not less interesting: The Road of the Hot Baths, the

Road of the Tombs, the Road of Abundance, the Road of the Theaters.

The sound of footsteps made the sailor raise his head. Two ladies were

passing, preceded by a guide. One was tall, with a firm tread. They

were wearing face-veils and still another larger veil crossing behind

and coming over the arms like a shawl. Ferragut surmised a great

difference in the ages of the two. The stout one was moving along with

an assumed gravity. Her step was quick, but with a certain authority

she planted on the ground her large feet, loosely shod and with low

heels. The younger one, taller and more slender, tripping onwards with

little steps like a bird that only knows how to fly, was teetering

along on high heels.

The two looked uneasily at this man appearing so unexpectedly among the

ruins. They had the preoccupied and timorous air of those going to a

forbidden place or meditating a bad action. Their first movement was an

impulse to go back, but the guide continued on his way so imperturbably

that they followed on.

Ferragut smiled. He knew where they were going. The little cross street

of the _Lupanares_ was near. The guard would open a door, remaining on

watch with dramatic anxiety as though he were endangering his job by

this favor in exchange for a tip. And the two ladies were about to see

some tarnished, clumsy paintings showing nothing new or original in the

world,--nude, yellowish figures, just alike at first glance with no

other novelty than an exaggerated emphasis on sex distinction.

Half an hour afterwards Ulysses abandoned his bench, for his eyes had

tired of the severe monotony of the ruins. In the street of the Hot

Baths (_Thermae_), he again visited the house of the tragic poet. Then

he admired that of Pansa, the largest and most luxurious in the city.

This Pansa had undoubtedly been the most pretentious citizen of

Pompeii. His dwelling occupied an entire block. The _xystus_, or

garden, adjoining the house had been laid out like a Grecian landscape

with cypresses and laurels between squares of roses and violets.

Following along the exterior wall of the garden, Ferragut again met the

two ladies. They were looking at the flowers across the bars of the

door. The younger one was expressing in English her admiration for some

roses that were flinging their royal color around the pedestal of an

old faun.

Ulysses felt an irresistible desire to show off in a gallant and

intrepid fashion. He wished to pay the two foreign ladies some

theatrical homage. He felt that necessity of attracting attention in

some gay and dashing way that characterizes Spaniards far from home.

With the agility of a mast-climber, he leaped the garden wall in one

bound. The two ladies gave a cry of surprise, as though they had

witnessed some impossible maneuver. This audacity appeared to upset the

ideas of the older one, accustomed to life in disciplined towns that

rigidly respect every established prohibition. Her first movement was

of flight, so as not to be mixed up in the escapade of this stranger.

But after a few steps she paused. The younger one was smiling, looking

at the wall, and as the captain reappeared upon it she almost clapped

with enthusiasm as though applauding a dangerous acrobatic feat.

Believing them to be English, the sailor spoke in that language when

presenting to them the two roses that he carried in his hand. They were

merely flowers, like all others, grown in a land like other lands, but

the frame of the thousand-year-old wall, the propinquity of the alcoves

and drinking shops of a house built by Pansa in the time of the first

Caesars, gave them the interest of roses two thousand years old,

miraculously preserved.

The largest and most luxuriant he gave to the young woman, and she

accepted it smilingly as her natural right. Her companion as soon as

she acknowledged the gift, appeared impatient to get away from the

stranger. "Thanks!... Thanks!" And she pushed along the other one, who

had not yet finished smiling,--the two going hurriedly away. A corner

adorned with a fountain soon hid their steps.

When Ulysses, after a light lunch in the restaurant of Diomedes, came

running to the station, the train was just about to start. He was

planning to see Salerno, celebrated in the Middle Ages for its

physicians and navigators, and then the ruined temples of Paestum. As

he climbed into the nearest coach, he fancied that he spied the veils

of the two ladies vanishing behind a little door that was just closing.

In the station of Salerno he again caught sight of them in a distant

hack disappearing in a neighboring street, and during the afternoon he

frequently ran across them as travelers will in a small city. They met

one another in the harbor, so fatally threatened with bars of moving

sand; they saw each other in the gardens bordering the sea, near the

monument of Carlo Pisacana, the romantic duke of San Juan, a precursor

of Garibaldi, who died in extreme youth for the liberty of Italy.

The young woman smiled whenever she met him. Her companion passed on

with a casual glance, trying to ignore his presence.

At night they saw more of each other, as they were stopping at the same

hotel, a lodging house like all those in the small ports with excellent

meals and dirty rooms. They had adjoining tables, and after a coldly

acknowledged greeting, Ferragut had a good look at the two ladies who

were speaking very little and in a low tone, fearing to be overheard by

their neighbor.

Upon looking at the older one without her veils, he found his original

impression confirmed. In other times, perhaps, she might have destroyed

the peace of male admirers, but she could now continue her hostile and

distant attitude with impunity. The captain was not at all affected by

it.

She must have been over forty. Her excessive flesh still had a certain

freshness, the result of hygienic care and gymnastic exercise. On the

other hand, her white complexion showed underneath it a yellowish

subcutaneous, granular condition that looked as though made up of

particles of bran. Upon her ancient switch, reddish in tone, were piled

artificial curls hiding bald spots and gray hairs. Her green pupils,

when freed from their near-sighted glasses, had the tranquil opacity of

ox-eyes; but the minute these gold-mounted crystals were placed between

her and the outer world, the two glaucous drops took on a sharpness

which fairly perforated persons and objects. At other times they

appeared a glacial and haughty void, like the circle that a sword

traces.

The young woman was less intractable. She appeared to be smiling out of

the corners of her eyes, while her back was half turned to Ferragut,

acknowledging his mute and scrutinizing admiration. She had her hair

loosely arranged like a woman who is not afraid of naturalness in her

coiffure, and lets her waving locks peep out under her hat in all their

original willfulness.

She was a dainty ash-blonde with a high color in striking contrast to

her general delicacy of tone. Her great, almond-shaped, black eyes

appeared like those of an Oriental dancer, and were yet further

prolonged by skillful retouching of shadows that augmented the

seductive contrast with her dull gold hair.

The whiteness of her skin became very evident when her arm showed

outside her sleeve and at the opening of her low-necked dress. But this

whiteness was now temporarily effaced by a ruddy mask. Her vigorous

beauty had been fearlessly exposed to the sun and the breath of the

sea, and a scarlet triangle emphasized the sweet curve of her bosom,

accentuating the low cut of her gown. Upon her sunburned throat a

necklace of pearls hung in moonlight drops. Further up, in a face

tanned by the inclemency of the weather, the mouth parted its two

scarlet, bow-shaped lips with an audacious and serene smile, showing

the reflection of her strong and handsome teeth.

Ferragut reviewed his past without finding a single woman that could be

exactly compared with her. The distant perfume of her person and her

genteel elegance reminded him of certain dubious ladies who were always

traveling alone when he was captain of the transatlantic liners. But

these acquaintances had been so rapid and were so far away!... Never in

his history as a world-rover had he had the good luck to chance upon a

woman just like this one.

Again exchanging glances with her, he felt that throb in the heart and

flash in the brain which accompany a lightning-like and unexpected

discovery... He had known that woman: he could not recall where he had

seen her, but he was sure that he must have known her.

Her face told his memory nothing, but those eyes had exchanged glances

with his on other occasions. In vain he reflected, concentrating his

thoughts.... And the queer thing about it all was that, by some

mysterious perception, he became absolutely certain that she was doing

the same thing at the very same moment. She also had recognized him,

and was evidently making great effort to give him a name and place in

her memory. He had only to notice the frequency with which she turned

her eyes toward him and her new smile, more confident and spontaneous,

such as she would give to an old friend.

Had her dragon not been present, they would have talked together

enthusiastically, instinctively, like two restless, curious beings

wishing to clear up the mystery; but the gold-rimmed glasses were

always gleaming authoritatively and inimically, coming between the two.

Several times the fat lady spoke in a language that reached Ferragut

confusedly and which was not English, and their dinner was hardly

finished before they disappeared just as they had done in the streets

of Pompeii,--the older one evidently influencing the other with her

iron will.

The following morning they all met again in a first-class coach in the

station of Salerno. Undoubtedly they had the same destination. As

Ferragut began to greet them, the hostile dame deigned to return his

salutation, looking then at her companion with a questioning

expression. The sailor guessed that during the night they had been

discussing him while he, under the same roof, had been struggling

uselessly, before falling asleep, to concentrate his recollections.

He never knew with certainty just how the conversation began. He found

himself suddenly talking in English with the younger one, just as on

the preceding morning. She, with the audacity that quickly makes the

best of a dubious situation, asked him if he was a sailor. And upon

receiving an affirmative response, she then asked if he was Spanish.

"Yes, Spanish."

Ferragut's answer was followed by a triumphant glance toward the

chaperone, who seemed to relax a little and lose her hostile attitude.

And for the first time she smiled upon the captain with her mouth of

bluish-rose color, her white skin sprinkled with yellow, and her

glasses of phosphorescent splendor.

Meanwhile, the young woman was talking on and on, verifying her

extraordinary powers of memory.

She had traveled all over the world without forgetting a single one of

the places which she had seen. She was able to repeat the titles of the

eighty great hotels in which those who make the world's circuit may

stay. Upon meeting with an old traveling companion, she always

recognized his face immediately, no matter how short a time she had

seen him, and oftentimes she could even recall his name. This last was

what she had been puzzling over, wrinkling her brows with the mental

effort.

"You are a captain?... Your name is?..."

And she smiled suddenly as her doubts came to an end.

"Your name is," she said positively, "Captain Ulysses Ferragut."

In long and agreeable silence she relished the sailor's astonishment.

Then, as though she pitied his stupefaction, she made further

explanations. She had made a trip from Buenos Ayres to Barcelona in a

steamship which he had commanded.

"That was six years ago," she added. "No; seven years ago."

Ferragut, who had been the first to suspect a former acquaintance,

could not recall this woman's name and place among the innumerable

passengers that filled his memory. He thought, nevertheless, that he

must lie for gallantry's sake, insisting that he remembered her well.

"No, Captain; you do not remember me. I was accompanied by my husband

and you never looked at me.... All your attentions on that trip were

devoted to a very handsome widow from Brazil."

She said this in Spanish, a smooth, sing-song Spanish learned in South

America, to which her foreign accent contributed a certain childish

charm. Then she added coquettishly:

"I know you, Captain. Always the same!... That affair of the rose at

Pompeii was very well done.... It was just like you."

The grave lady of the glasses, finding herself forgotten, and unable to

understand a word of the new language employed in the conversation, now

spoke aloud, rolling her eyes in her enthusiasm.

"Oh, Spain!..." she said in English. "The land of knightly

gentlemen.... Cervantes ... Lope!... The Cid!..."

She stopped hunting for more celebrities. Suddenly she seized the

sailor's arm, exclaiming as energetically as though she had just made a

discovery through the little door of the coach. "Calderon de la Barca!"

Ferragut saluted her. "Yes, Señora." After that the younger woman

thought that it was necessary to present her companion.

"Doctor Fedelmann.... A very wise woman distinguished in philology and

literature."

After clasping the doctor's hand, Ferragut indiscreetly set himself to

work to gather information.

"The Señora is German?" he said in Spanish to the younger one.

The gold-rimmed spectacles appeared to guess the question and shot a

restless gleam at her companion.

"No," she replied. "My friend is a Russian, or rather a Pole."

"And you, are you Polish, too?" continued the sailor.

"No, I am Italian."

In spite of the assurance with which she said this, Ferragut felt

tempted to exclaim, "You little liar!" Then, as he gazed upon the full,

black, audacious eyes fixed upon him, he began to doubt.... Perhaps she

was telling the truth.

Again he found himself interrupted by the wordiness of the doctor. She

was now speaking in French, repeating her eulogies on Ferragut's

country. She could read Castilian in the classic works, but she would

not venture to speak it. "Ah, Spain! Country of noble traditions...."

And then, seeking to relieve these eulogies by some strong contrast,

she twisted her face into a wrathful expression.

The train was running along the coast, having on one side the blue

desert of the Gulf of Salerno, and on the other the red and green

mountains dotted with white villages and hamlets. The doctor took it

all in with her gleaming glasses.

"A country of bandits," she said, clenching her fists. "Country of

mandolin-twangers, without honor and without gratitude!..."

The girl laughed at this outburst with that hilarity of

light-heartedness in which no impressions are durable, considering as

of no importance anything which does not bear directly upon its own

egoism.

From a few words that the two ladies let fall, Ulysses inferred that

they had been living in Rome and had only been in Naples a short time,

perhaps against their will. The younger one was well acquainted with

the country, and her companion was taking advantage of this enforced

journey in order to see what she had so many times admired in books.

The three alighted in the station of Battipaglia in order to take the

train for Paestum. It was a rather long wait, and the sailor invited

them to go into the restaurant, a little wooden shanty impregnated with

the double odor of resin and wine.

This shack reminded both Ferragut and the young woman of the houses

improvised on the South American deserts; and again they began to speak

of their oceanic voyage. She finally consented to satisfy the captain's

curiosity.

"My husband was a professor, a scholar like the doctor.... We were a

year in Patagonia, making scientific explorations."

She had made the dangerous journey through an ocean of desert plains

that had spread themselves out before them as the expedition advanced;

she had slept in ranch houses whose roofs shed bloodthirsty insects;

she had traveled on horseback through whirlwinds of sand that had

shaken her from the saddle; she had suffered the tortures of hunger and

thirst when losing the way, and she had passed nights in intemperate

weather with no other bed than her poncho and the trappings of the

horses. Thus they had explored those lakes of the Andes between

Argentina and Chile that guard in their pure and untouched desert

solitude the mystery of the earliest days of creation.

Rovers over these virgin lands, shepherds and bandits, used to talk of

glimpses of gigantic animals at nightfall on the shores of the lakes

devouring entire meadows with one gulp; and the doctor, like many other

sages, had believed in the possibility of finding a surviving

prehistoric animal, a beast of the monstrous herds anterior to the

coming of man, still dwelling in this unexplored section of the planet.

They saw skeletons dozens of yards long in the foot-hills of the

Cordilleras so frequently agitated by volcanic cataclysms. In the

neighborhood of the lakes the guides pointed out to them the hides of

devoured herds, and enormous mountains of dried material that appeared

to have been deposited by some monster. But no matter how far they

penetrated into the solitude, they were always unable to find any

living descendant of prehistoric fauna.

The sailor listened absent-mindedly, thinking of something else that

was quickening his curiosity.

"And you, what is your name?" he said suddenly.

The two women laughed at this question, amusing because so unexpected.

"Call me Freya. It is a Wagnerian name. It means the earth, and at the

same time liberty.... Do you like Wagner?"

And before he could reply she added in Spanish, with a Creole accent

and flashing eyes:

"Call me, if you wish, 'the merry widow.' The poor doctor died as soon

as we returned to Europe."

The three had to run to catch the train ready to start for Paestum. The

landscape was changing on both sides of the way, as now they were

crossing over marshy portions of land. On the soft meadows flocks of

buffaloes, rude animals that appeared carved out in hatchet strokes,

were wading and grazing.

The doctor spoke of Paestum, the ancient Poseidonia, the city of

Neptune, founded by the Greeks of Sybaris six centuries before Christ.

Commercial prosperity once dominated the entire coast. The gulf of

Salerno was called by the Romans the Gulf of Paestum. And this city

with mountains like those of Athens had suddenly become extinguished

without being swallowed up by the sea, and with no volcano to cover it

with ashes.

Fever, the miasma of the fens, had been the deadly lava for this

Pompeii. The poisonous air had caused the inhabitants to flee, and the

few who insisted upon living within the shadow of the ancient temples

had had to escape from the Saracen invasions, founding in the

neighboring mountains a new country--the humble town of Capaccio

Vecchio. Then the Norman kings, forerunners of Frederick II (the father

of Doña Constanza, the empress beloved by Ferragut), had plundered the

entire deserted city, carrying off with them its columns and sculpture.

All the medieval constructions of the kingdom of Naples were the spoils

of Paestum. The doctor recalled the cathedral of Salerno, seen the

afternoon before, where Hildebrand, the most tenacious and ambitious of

the popes, was buried. Its columns, its sarcophagi, its bas-reliefs had

come from this Grecian city, forgotten for centuries and centuries

and only in modern times--thanks to the antiquarians and

artists--recovering its fame.

In the station of Paestum, the wife of the only employee looked

curiously at this group arriving after the war had blocked off the

trail of tourists.

Freya spoke to her, interested in her malarial and resigned aspect.

They were yet in good time. The spring sun was warming up these

lowlands just as in midsummer, but she was still able to resist it.

Later, during the summer, the guards of the ruins and the workmen in

the excavations would have to flee to their homes in the mountains,

handing the country over to the reptiles and insects of the marshy

fields.

The lodging keeper and his wife in the little station were the only

evidences of humankind still able to exist in this solitude, trembling

with fever, trying to endure the corrupt air, the poisonous sting of

the mosquito, and the solar fire that was sucking from the mud the

vapors of death. Every two years this humble stopping place through

which passed the lucky ones of the earth,--the millionaires of two

hemispheres, beautiful and curious dames, rulers of nations, and great

artists,--was obliged to change its station-master.

The three tourists passed near the remains of an aqueduct and an

antique pavement. Then they went through the _Porta della Sirena_, an

entrance arch into a forgotten quarter of the city, and continued along

a road bordered on one side by marshy lands of exuberant vegetation and

on the other by the long mud wall of a grange, through whose mortar

were sticking out fragments of stones or columns. On turning the last

corner, the imposing spectacle of the dead city, still surviving in the

magnificent proportions of its temples, presented itself to view.

There were three of these temples, and their colonnades stood forth

like mast heads of ships becalmed in a sea of verdure. The doctor,

guide-book in hand, was pointing them out with masterly authority--that

was Neptune's, that Ceres', and that was called the Basilica without

any special reason.

Their grandeur, their solidity, their elegance made the edifices of

Rome sink into insignificance. Athens alone could compare the monuments

of her Acropolis with these temples of the most severe Doric style.

That of Neptune had well preserved its lofty and massive columns,--as

close together as the trees of a nursery,--enormous trunks of stone

that still sustained the high entablature, the jutting cornice and the

two triangular walls of its façades. The stone had taken on the mellow

color of the cloudless countries where the sun toasts readily and the

rain does not deposit a grimy coating.

The doctor recalled the departed beauties and the old covering of these

colossal skeletons,--the fine and compact coating of stucco which had

closed the pores of the stone, giving it a superficial smoothness like

marble,--the vivid colors of its flutings and walls making the antique

city a mass of polychrome monuments. This gay decoration had become

volatilized through the centuries and its colors, borne away by the

wind, had fallen like a rain of dust upon a land in ruins.

Following an old guard, they climbed the blue, tiled steps of the

temple of Neptune. Above, within four rows of columns, was the real

sanctuary, the _cella_. Their footsteps on the tiled flags, separated

by deep cracks filled with grass, awoke all the animal world that was

drowsing there in the sun.

These actual inhabitants of the city,--enormous lizards with green

backs covered with black warts,--ran in all directions. In their flight

they scurried blindly over the feet of the visitors. The doctor raised

her skirts in order to avoid them, at the same time breaking into

nervous laughter to hide her terror.

Suddenly Freya gave a cry, pointing to the base of the ancient altar.

An ebony-hued snake, his sides dotted with red spots, was slowly and

solemnly uncoiling his circles upon the stones. The sailor raised his

cane, but before he could strike he felt his arm grasped by two nervous

hands. Freya was throwing herself upon him with a pallid face and eyes

dilated with fear and entreaty.

"No, Captain!... Leave it alone!"

Ulysses thrilled upon feeling the contact of her firm, curving bosom

and noting her respiration, her warm breath charged with distant

perfume. It would have suited him if she had remained in this position

a long time, but Freya freed herself in order to advance toward the

reptile, coaxing it and holding out her hands to it as though she were

trying to caress a domestic animal. The black tail of the serpent was

just slipping away and disappearing between two square tiles. The

doctor who had fled down the steps at this apparition, by her repeated

calls, obliged Freya also to descend.

The captain's aggressive attitude awoke in his companion a nervous

animosity. She believed she knew this reptile. It was undoubtedly the

divinity of the dead temple that had changed its form in order to live

among the ruins. This serpent must be twenty centuries old. If it had

not been for Ferragut she would have been able to have taken it up in

her hands.... She would have spoken to it.... She was accustomed to

converse with others....

Ulysses was about to express his doubts rudely as to the mental

equilibrium of the exasperated widow when the doctor interrupted them.

She was contemplating the swampy plains of acanthus and ferns trembling

under the shrill chirping of the cicadas, and this spectacle of green

desolation made her recall the roses of Paestum of which the poets of

ancient Rome had sung. She even recited some Latin verses, translating

them to her hearers so as to make them understand that the rose bushes

of this land used to bloom twice a year. Freya smoothed out her brow

and began to smile again. She forgot her recent ill humor and expressed

a great longing for one of the marvelous rose bushes: and at this

caprice of childish vehemence, Ferragut spoke to the custodian with

authority. He had to have at once a rose bush from Paestum, cost what

it might.

The old fellow made a bored gesture. Everybody asked the same thing,

and he who belonged to that country had never seen a rose of

Paestum.... Sometimes, just in order to satisfy the whim of tourists,

he would bring rose bushes from Capaccio Vecchio and other mountain

villages,--rose bushes just like others with no difference except in

price.... But he didn't wish to take advantage of anybody. He was sad

and greatly troubled over the possibility of war.

"I have eight sons," he said to the doctor, because she seemed to be

the most suitable one to receive his confidences. "If they mobilize the

army, six of them will leave me."

And he added with resignation:

"That's the way it ought to be if we would end forever, in one blow,

our eternal enmity with the Goth. My sons will battle against them,

just as my father fought."

The doctor stalked haughtily away, and then said in a low voice to her

companions that the old guard was an imbecile.

They wandered for two hours through the ancient district of the

city,--exploring the network of its streets, the ruins of the

amphitheater and the _Porta Aurea_ which opened upon a road flanked

with tombs. By the _Porta di Mare_ they climbed to the walls, ramparts

of great limestone blocks, extending a distance of five kilometers. The

sea, which from the lowlands had looked like a narrow blue band, now

appeared immense and luminous,--a solitary sea with a feather-like

crest of smoke, without a sail, given completely over to the sea-gulls.

The doctor walked stiffly ahead of them, still ill-humored about the

guide's remark and consulting the pages of her guide book. Behind her

Ulysses came close up to Freya, recalling their former contact.

He thought that it would be an easy matter now to get possession of

this capricious and free-mannered woman. "Sure thing, Captain!" The

rapid triumphs that he had always had in his journeys assured him that

there was not the slightest doubt of success. It was enough for him to

see the widow's smile, her passionate eyes, and the little tricks of

malicious coquetry with which she responded to his gallant advances.

"Forward, sea-wolf!"... He took her hand while she was speaking of the

beauty of the solitary sea, and the hand yielded without protest to his

caressing fingers. The doctor was far away and, sighing hypocritically,

he encircled Freya's waist with his other arm while he inclined his

head upon her open throat as though he were going to kiss her pearls.

In spite of his strength, he found himself energetically repulsed and

saw Freya freed from his arms, two steps away, looking upon him with

hostile eyes that he had not noticed before.

"None of your child's play, Captain!... It is useless with me.... You

are just wasting time."

And she said no more. Her stiffness and her silence during the rest of

the walk made the sailor understand the enormity of his mistake. In

vain he tried to keep beside the widow. She always maneuvered that the

doctor should come between the two.

Upon returning to the station they took refuge from the heat in a

little waiting room with dusty velvet divans. In order to beguile the

time while waiting for the train, Freya took from her handbag a gold

cigarette-case and the light smoke of Egyptian tobacco charged with

opium whirled among the shafts of sunlight from the partly-opened

windows.

Ferragut, who had gone out in order to ascertain the exact hour of the

arrival of the train, on returning stopped near the door, amazed at the

animation with which the two ladies were speaking in a new language.

Recollections of Hamburg and Bremen came surging up in his memory. His

companions were talking German with the ease of a familiar idiom. At

sight of the sailor, they instantly continued their conversation in

English.

Wishing to take part in the dialogue, he asked Freya how many languages

she spoke.

"Very few,--no more than eight. The doctor, perhaps, knows twenty. She

knows the languages of people who passed away many centuries ago."

And the young woman said this with gravity, without looking at him, as

though she had lost forever that smile of a light woman which had so

deceived Ferragut.

In the train she became more like a human being, even losing her

offended manner. They were soon going to separate. The doctor grew less

and less approachable as the cars rolled towards Salerno. It was the

chilliness that appears among companions of a day, when the hour of

separation approaches and each one draws into himself, not to be seen

any more.

Words fell flat, like bits of ice, without finding any echo in their

fall. At each turn of the wheel, the imposing lady became more reserved

and silent. Everything had been said. They, too, were going to remain

in Salerno in order to take a carriage-trip along the gulf. They were

going to Amalfi and would pass the night on the Alpine peak of Ravello,

a medieval city where Wagner had passed the last months of his life,

before dying in Venice. Then, passing over to the Gulf of Naples, they

would rest in Sorrento and perhaps might go to the island of Capri.

Ulysses wished to say that his line of march was exactly the same, but

he was afraid of the doctor. Furthermore, their trip was to be in a

vehicle which they had already rented and they would not offer him a

seat.

Freya appeared to surmise his sadness and wished to console him.

"It is a short trip. No more than three days.... Soon we shall be in

Naples."

The farewell in Salerno was brief. The doctor was careful not to

mention their stopping-place. For her, the friendship was ending then

and there.

"It is probable that we shall run across each other again," she said

laconically. "It is only the mountains that never meet."

Her young companion was more explicit, mentioning the hotel on the

shores of S. Lucia in which she lodged.

Standing by the step of the carriage, he saw them take their departure,

just as he had seen them appear in a street of Pompeii. The doctor was

lost behind a screen of glass, talking with the coachman who had come

to meet them. Freya, before disappearing, turned to give him a faint

smile and then raised her gloved hand with a stiff forefinger,

threatening him just as though he were a mischievous and bold child.

Finding himself alone in the compartment that was carrying toward

Naples the traces and perfumes of the absent one, Ulysses felt as

downcast as though he were returning from a burial, as if he had just

lost one of the props of his life.

His appearance on board the _Mare Nostrum_ was regarded as a calamity.

He was capricious and intractable, complaining of Toni and the other

two officials because they were not hastening repairs on the vessel. In

the same breath he said it would be better not to hurry things too

much, so that the job would be better done. Even Caragol was the victim

of his bad humor which flamed forth in the form of cruel sermons

against those addicted to the poison of alcohol.

"When men need to be cheered up, they have to have something better

than wine. That which brings greater ecstasy than drink ... is woman,

Uncle Caragol. Don't forget this counsel!"

Through mere force of habit the cook replied, "That is so, my

captain...." But down in his heart he was pitying the ignorance of

those men who concentrate all their happiness on the whims and grimaces

of this most frivolous of toys.

Two days afterwards those on board drew a long breath when they saw the

captain taken ashore. The ship was moored in a very uncomfortable

place,--near some that were discharging coal,--with the stern shored up

so that the screw of the steamer might be repaired. The workmen were

replacing the damaged and broken plates with ceaseless hammering. Since

they would undoubtedly have to wait nearly a month, it would be much

more convenient for the owner to go to a hotel; so he sent his baggage

to the _Albergo Partenope_, on the ancient shore of S. Lucia,--the very

one that Freya had mentioned.

Upon installing himself in an upper room, with a view of the blue

circle of the gulf framed by the outlines of the balcony, Ferragut's

first move was to change a bill for five liras into coppers,

preparatory to asking various questions. The jaundiced and mustached

steward listened to him attentively with the complacency of a

go-between, and at last was able to formulate a complete personality

with all its data. The lady for whom he was inquiring was the _Signora_

Talberg. She was at present away on an excursion, but she might return

at any moment.

Ulysses passed an entire day with the tranquillity of one who awaits at

a sure place, gazing at the gulf from the balcony. Below him was the

_Castello dell' Ovo_ connected with the land by a bridge.

The _bersaglieri_ were occupying their ancient castle, work of the

viceroy, Pedro of Toledo. Many turrets of dark rose color were crowded

together upon this narrow, egg-shaped island, where, in other days, the

pusillanimous Spanish garrison was locked in the fortress for the

purpose of aiming bombards and culverins at the Neapolitans when they

no longer wished to pay taxes and imposts. Its walls had been raised

upon the ruins of another castle in which Frederick II had guarded his

treasures, and whose chapel Giotto had painted. And the medieval castle

of which only the memory now remained had, in its turn, been erected

upon the remnants of the Palace of Lucullus, who had located the center

of his celebrated gardens in this little island, then called _Megaris_.

The cornets of the _bersaglieri_ rejoiced the captain like the

announcement of a triumphal entry. "She's going to come! She's going to

come at any moment!..." And he would look across the double mountain of

the island of Capri, black in the distance, closing the gulf like a

promontory, and the coast of Sorrento as rectilinear as a wall. "There

she is...." Then he would lovingly follow the course of the little

steamboats plowing across the immense blue surface, opening a triangle

of foam. In some of these Freya must be coming.

The first day was golden and full of hope. The sun was sparkling in a

cloudless sky, and the gulf was foaming with bubbles of light under an

atmosphere so calm that not the slightest zephyr was rippling its

surface. The smoke plume of Vesuvius was upright and slender, expanding

upon the horizon like a pine tree of white vapor. At the foot of the

balcony the strolling musicians kept succeeding each other from time to

time, singing voluptuous barcarolles and love serenades.... And--she

did not come!

The second day was silvery and desperate. There was fog on the gulf;

the sun was no more than a reddish disk such as one sees in the

northern countries; the mountains were clothed with lead; the clouds

were hiding the cone of the volcano; the sea appeared to be made of

tin, and a chilly wind was distending sails, skirts, and overcoats,

making the people scurry along the promenade and the shore. The

musicians continued their singing but with melancholy sighs in the

shelter of a corner, to keep out of the furious blasts from the sea.

"To die.... To die for thee!" a baritone voice groaned between the

harps and violins. And--she came!

Upon learning from the waiter that the _signora_ Talberg was in her

room on the floor below, Ulysses thrilled with restlessness. What would

she say upon finding him installed in her hotel?...

The luncheon hour was at hand, and he impatiently awaited the usual

signals before going down to the dining room. First an explosion would

be heard behind the _albergo_ making the walls and roofs tremble,

swelling out into the immensity of the gulf. That was the midday

cannonade from the high castle of S. Elmo. Then cornets from the

_Castello dell' Ovo_ would respond with their joyous call to the

smoking _olio_, and up the stairway of the hotel would come the beating

of the Chinese gong, announcing that luncheon was served.

Ulysses went down to take his place at table, looking in vain at the

other guests who had preceded him. Freya perhaps was going to come in

with the delay of a traveler who has just arrived and has been occupied

in freshening her toilet.

He lunched badly, looking continually at a great glass doorway

decorated with pictures of boats, fishes, and sea gulls, and every time

its polychromatic leaves parted, his food seemed to stick in his

throat. Finally came the end of the lunch, and he slowly sipped his

coffee. She did not appear.

On returning to his room, he sent the whiskered steward in search of

news.... The _signora_ had not lunched in the hotel; the _signora_ had

gone out while he was in the dining-room. Surely she would show herself

in the evening.

At dinner time he had the same unpleasant experience, believing that

Freya was going to appear every time that an unknown hand or a vague

silhouette of a woman pushed the door open from the other side of the

opaque glass.

He strolled up and down the vestibule a long time, chewing rabidly on a

cigar, and finally decided to accost the porter, an astute brunette

whose blue lapels embroidered with keys of gold were peeping over the

edge of his writing desk, taking in everything, informing himself of

everything, while he appeared to be asleep.

The approach of Ulysses made him spring up as though he heard the

rustling of paper money. His information was very precise. The

_signora_ Talberg very seldom ate at the hotel. She had some friends

who were occupying a furnished flat in the district of Chiaja, with

whom she usually passed almost the entire day. Sometimes she did not

even return to sleep.... And he again sat down, his hand closing

tightly upon the bill which his imagination had foreseen.

After a bad night Ulysses arose, resolved to await the widow at the

entrance to the hotel. He took his breakfast at a little table in the

vestibule, read the newspaper, had to go to the door in order to avoid

the morning cleaning, pursued by the dust of brooms and shaken rugs.

And once there, he pretended to take great interest in the wandering

musicians, who dedicated their love songs and serenades to him, rolling

up the whites of their eyes upon presenting their hats for coins.

Some one came to keep him company. It was the porter who now appeared

very familiar and confidential, as though since the preceding night a

firm friendship, based upon their secret, had sprung up between the

two.

He spoke of the beauties of the country, counseling the Spaniard to

take divers excursions.... A smile, an encouraging word from Ferragut,

and he would have immediately proposed other recreations whose

announcement appeared to be fluttering around his lips. But the sailor

repelled all such amiability, glowering with displeasure. This vulgar

fellow was going to spoil with his presence the longed-for meeting.

Perhaps he was hanging around just to see and to know.... And taking

advantage of one of his brief absences, Ulysses went off down the long

_Via Partenope_, following the parapet that extends along the coast,

pretending to be interested in everything that he met, but without

losing sight of the door of the hotel.

He stopped before the oystermen's stands, examining the valves of

pearly shells piled up on the shelves, the baskets of oysters from

Fusaro and the enormous conch-shells in whose hollow throats, according

to the peddlers, the distant roll of the sea was echoing like a

haunting memory. One by one he looked at all the motor launches, the

little regatta skiffs, the fishing barks, and the coast schooners

anchored in the quiet harbor of the island _dell' Ova_. He stood a long

time quietly watching the gentle waves that were combing their foam on

the rocks of the dikes under the horizontal fishing rods of various

fishermen.

Suddenly he saw Freya following the avenue beside the houses. She

recognized him at once and this discovery made her stop near a

street-opening, hesitating whether to continue on or to flee toward the

interior of Naples. Then she came over to the seaside pavement,

approaching Ferragut with a placid smile, greeting him afar off, like a

friend whose presence is only to be expected.

Such assurance rather disconcerted the captain. They shook hands and

she asked him calmly what he was doing there looking at the waves, and

if the repairs of his boat were progressing satisfactorily.

"But admit that my presence has surprised you!" said Ulysses, rather

irritated by this tranquillity. "Confess that you were not expecting to

find me here."

Freya repeated her smiles with an expression of sweet compassion.

"It is natural that I should find you here. You are in your district,

within sight of a hotel.... We are neighbors."

In order more thoroughly to amuse herself with the captain's

astonishment, she made a long pause. Then she added:

"I saw your name on the list of arrivals yesterday, on my return to the

hotel. I always look them over. It pleases me to know who my neighbors

are."

"And for that reason you did not come down to the dining-room?..."

Ulysses asked this question hoping that she would respond negatively.

She could not answer it in any other way, if only for good manners'

sake.

"Yes, for that reason," Freya replied simply. "I guessed that you were

waiting to meet me and I did not wish to go into the dining-room.... I

give you fair warning that I shall always do the same."

Ulysses uttered an "Ah!" of amazement.... No woman had ever spoken to

him with such frankness.

"Neither has your presence here surprised me," she continued. "I was

expecting it. I know the innocent wiles of you men. 'Since he did not

find me in the hotel, he will wait for me to-day in the street,' I said

to myself, upon arising this morning.... Before coming out, I was

following your footsteps from the window of my room...."

Ferragut looked at her in surprise and dismay. What a woman!...

"I might have escaped through any cross street while your back was

turned. I saw you before you saw me.... But these false situations

stretching along indefinitely are distasteful to me. It is better to

speak the entire truth face to face.... And therefore I have come to

meet you...."

Instinct made him turn his head toward the hotel. The porter was

standing at the entrance looking out over the sea, but with his eyes

undoubtedly turned toward them.

"Let us go on," said Freya. "Accompany me a little ways. We shall talk

together and then you can leave me.... Perhaps we shall separate

greater friends than ever."

They strolled in silence all the length of the _Via Partenope_ until

they reached the gardens along the beach of Chiaja, losing sight of the

hotel. Ferragut wished to renew the conversation, but could not begin

it. He feared to appear ridiculous. This woman was making him timid.

Looking at her with admiring eyes, he noted the great changes that had

been made in the adornment of her person. She was no longer clad in the

dark tailor-made in which he had first seen her. She was wearing a blue

and white silk gown with a handsome fur over her shoulders and a

cluster of purple heron feathers on top of her wide hat.

The black hand-bag that had always accompanied her on her journeys had

been replaced by a gold-meshed one of showy richness,--Australian gold

of a greenish tone like an overlay of Florentine bronze. In her ears

were two great, thick emeralds, and on her fingers a half dozen

diamonds whose facets twinkled in the sunlight. The pearl necklace was

still on her neck peeping out through the V-shaped opening of her gown.

It was the magnificent toilet of a rich actress who puts everything on

herself,--of one so enamored with jewels that she is not able to live

without their contact, adorning herself with them the minute she is out

of bed, regardless of the hour and the rules of good taste.

But Ferragut did not take into consideration the unsuitableness of all

this luxury. Everything about her appeared to him admirable.

Without knowing just how, he began to talk. He was astonished at

hearing his own voice, saying always the same thing in different words.

His thoughts were incoherent, but they were all clustered around an

incessantly repeated statement,--his love, his immense love for Freya.

And Freya continued marching on in silence with a compassionate

expression in her eyes and in the corners of her mouth. It pleased her

pride as a woman to contemplate this strong man stuttering in childish

confusion. At the same time she grew impatient at the monotony of his

words.

"Don't say any more, Captain," she finally interrupted. "I can guess

all that you are going to say, and I've heard many times what you have

said,--You do not sleep--you do not eat--you do not live because of me.

Your existence is impossible if I do not love you. A little more

conversation and you will threaten me with shooting yourself, if I am

not yours.... Same old song! They all say the same thing. There are no

creatures with less originality than you men when you wish

something...."

They were in one of the avenues of the promenade. Through the palm

trees and glossy magnolias the luminous gulf could be seen on one side,

and on the other the handsome edifices of the beach of Chiaja. Some

ragged urchins kept running around them and following them, until they

took refuge in an ornamental little white temple at the end of the

avenue.

"Very well, then, enamored sea-wolf," continued Freya; "you need not

sleep, you need not eat, you may kill yourself if the fancy strikes

you; but I am not able to love you; I shall never love you. You may

give up all hope; life is not mere diversion and I have other more

serious occupations that absorb all my time."

In spite of the playful smile with which she accompanied these words,

Ferragut surmised a very firm will.

"Then," he said in despair, "it will all be useless?... Even though I

make the greatest sacrifices?... Even though I give proofs of love

greater than you have ever known?..."

"All useless," she replied roundly, without a sign of a smile.

They paused before the ornamental little temple-shaped building, with

its dome supported by white columns and a railing around it. The bust

of Virgil adorned the center,--an enormous head of somewhat feminine

beauty.

The poet had died in Naples in "Sweet Parthenope," on his return from

Greece and his body, turned to dust, was perhaps mingled with the soil

of this garden. The Neapolitan people of the Middle Ages had attributed

to him all kinds of wonderful things, even transforming the poet into a

powerful magician. The wizard Virgil in one night had constructed the

_Castello dell' Ovo_, placing it with his own hands upon a great egg

(_Ovo_) that was floating in the sea. He also had opened with his magic

blasts the tunnel of Posilipo near which are a vineyard and a tomb

visited for centuries as the last resting place of the poet. Little

scamps, playing around the railing, used to hurl papers and stones

inside the temple. The white head of the powerful sorcerer attracted

them and at the same time filled them with admiration and fear.

"Thus far and no further," ordered Freya. "You will continue on your

way. I am going to the high part of Chiaja.... But before separating as

good friends, you are going to give me your word not to follow me, not

to importune me with your amorous attentions, not to mix yourself in my

life."

Ulysses did not reply, hanging his head in genuine dismay. To his

disillusion was added the sting of wounded pride. He who had imagined

such very different things when they should see each other again

together, alone!...

Freya pitied his sadness.

"Don't be a Baby!... This will soon pass. Think of your business

affairs, and of your family waiting for you over there in Spain....

Besides, the world is full of women; I'm not the only one."

But Ferragut interrupted her. "Yes, she was the only one!... The only

one!..." And he said it with a conviction that awakened another one of

her compassionate smiles.

This man's tenacity was beginning to irritate her.

"Captain, I know your type very well. You are an egoist, like all other

men. Your boat is tied up in the harbor because of an accident; you've

got to remain ashore a month; you meet on one of your trips a woman who

is idiot enough to admit that she remembers meeting you at other times,

and you say to yourself, Magnificent occasion to while away agreeably a

tedious period of waiting!...' If I should yield to your desire, within

a few weeks, as soon as your boat was ready, the hero of my love, the

knight of my dreams, would betake himself to the sea, saying as a

parting salute: 'Adieu, simpleton!'"

Ulysses protested with energy. No: he wished that his boat might never

be repaired. He was computing with agony the days that remained. If it

were necessary, he would abandon it, remaining forever in Naples.

"And what have I to do in Naples?" interrupted Freya. "I am a mere bird

of passage here, just as you are. We knew each other on the seas of

another hemisphere, and we have just happened to run across each other

here in Italy. Next time, if we ever meet again, it will be in Japan or

Canada or the Cape.... Go on your way, you enamored old shark, and let

me go mine. Imagine to yourself that we are two boats that have met

when becalmed, have signaled each other, have exchanged greetings, have

wished each other good luck, and afterwards have continued on our way,

perhaps never to see each other again."

Ferragut shook his head negatively. Such a thing could not be, he could

not resign himself to losing sight of her forever.

"These men!" she continued, each time a little more irritated. "You all

imagine that things must be arranged entirely according to your

caprices. 'Because I desire thee, thou must be mine....' And what if I

don't want to?... And if I don't feel any necessity of being loved?...

If I wish only to live in liberty, with no other love than that which I

feel for myself?..."

She considered it a great misfortune to be a woman. She always envied

men for their independence. They could hold themselves aloof,

abstaining from the passions that waste life, without anybody's coming

to importune them in their retreat. They were at liberty to go wherever

they wanted to, to travel the wide world over, without leaving behind

their footsteps a wake of solicitors.

"You appear to me, Captain, a very charming man. The other day I was

delighted to meet you; it was an apparition from the past; I saw in you

the joy of my youth that is beginning to fade away, and the melancholy

of certain recollections.... And nevertheless, I am going to end by

hating you. Do you hear me, you tedious old Argonaut?... I shall loathe

you because you will not be a mere friend; because you know only how to

talk everlastingly about the same thing; because you are a person out

of a novel, a Latin, very interesting, perhaps, to other women,--but

insufferable to me."

Her face contracted with a gesture of scorn and pity. "Ah, those

Latins!..."

"They're all the same,--Spaniards, Italians, Frenchmen.... They were

born for the same thing. They hardly meet an attractive woman but they

believe that they are evading their obligations if they do not beg for

her love and what comes afterward.... Cannot a man and woman simply be

friends? Couldn't you be just a good comrade and treat me as a

companion?"

Ferragut protested energetically. No; no, he couldn't. He loved her

and, after being repelled with such cruelty, his love would simply go

on increasing. He was sure of that.

A nervous tremor made Freya's voice sharp and cutting, and her eyes

took on a dangerous gleam. She looked at her companion as though he

were an enemy whose death she longed for.

"Very well, then, if you must know it. I abominate all men; I abominate

them, because I know them so well. I would like the death of all of

them, of every one!... The evil that they have wrought in my life!... I

would like to be immensely beautiful, the handsomest woman on earth,

and to possess the intellect of all the sages concentrated in my brain,

to be rich and to be a queen, in order that all the men of the world,

crazy with desire, would come to prostrate themselves before me.... And

I would lift up my feet with their iron heels, and I would go trampling

over them, crushing their heads ... so ... and so ... and so!..."

She struck the sands of the garden with the soles of her little shoes.

An hysterical sneer distorted her mouth.

"Perhaps I might make an exception of you.... You who, with all your

braggart arrogance, are, after all, outright and simple-hearted. I

believe you capable of assuring a woman of all kinds of love-lies ...

believing them yourself most of all. But the others!... _Ay, the

others!_... How I hate them!..."

She looked over toward the palace of the Aquarium, glistening white

between the colonnade of trees.

"I would like to be," she continued pensively, "one of those animals of

the sea that can cut with their claws, that have arms like scissors,

saws, pincers ... that devour their own kind, and absorb everything

around them."

Then she looked at the branch of a tree from which were hanging several

silver threads, sustaining insects with active tentacles.

"I would like to be a spider, an enormous spider, that all men might be

drawn to my web as irresistibly as flies. With what satisfaction would

I crunch them between my claws! How I would fasten my mouth against

their hearts!... And I would suck them.... I would suck them until

there wasn't a drop of blood left, tossing away then their empty

carcasses!..."

Ulysses began to wonder if he had fallen in love with a crazy woman.

His disquietude, his surprise and questioning eyes gradually restored

Freya's serenity.

She passed one hand across her forehead, as though awakening from a

nightmare and wishing to banish remembrance with this gesture. Her

glance became calmer.

"Good-by, Ferragut; do not make me talk any more. You will soon doubt

my reason.... You are doing so already. We shall be friends, just

friends and nothing more. It is useless to think of anything else....

Do not follow me.... We shall see each other.... I shall hunt you

up.... Good-by!... Good-by!"

And although Ferragut felt tempted to follow her, he remained

motionless, seeing her hurry rapidly away, as though fleeing from the

words that she had just let fall before the little temple of the poet.