THE YOUNG TELEMACHUS
Whenever the _Mare Nostrum_ returned to Barcelona, Esteban Ferragut had
always felt as dazzled as though a gorgeous stained glass window had
opened upon his obscure and monotonous life as the son of the family.
He now no longer wandered along the harbor admiring from afar the great
transatlantic liners in front of the monument of Christopher Columbus,
nor the cargo steamers that were lined up along the commercial docks.
An important boat was going to be his absolute property for some weeks,
while its captain and officers were passing the time on land with their
families. Toni, the mate, was the only one who slept aboard. Many of
the seamen had begged permission to live in the city, and so the
steamer had been entrusted to the guardianship of Uncle Caragol with
half a dozen men for the daily cleaning. The little Ferragut used to
play that he was the captain of the _Mare Nostrum_ and would pace the
bridge, pretending that a great tempest was coming up, and examine the
nautical instrument with the gravity of an expert. Sometimes he used to
race through all the habitable parts of the boat, climbing down to the
holds that, wide open, were being ventilated, waiting for their cargo;
and finally he would clamber into the ship's gig, untying it from the
landing in order to row in it for a few hours, with even more
satisfaction than in the light skiffs of the Regatta Club.
His visits always ended in the kitchen, invited there by Uncle Caragol,
who was accustomed to treat him with fraternal familiarity. If the
youthful oarsman was perspiring greatly.... "A refresquet?" And the
_chef_ would prepare his sweet mixture that made men, after one gulp,
fall into the haziness of intoxication.
Esteban esteemed highly the "refrescos" of the cook. His imagination,
excited by the frequent reading of novels of travel, had made him
conceive a type of heroic, gallant, dashing sailor--a regular
swash-buckler capable of swallowing by the pitcherful the most rousing
drinks without moving an eyelid. He wanted to be that kind; every good
sailor ought to drink.
Although on land he was not acquainted with other liquors than those
innocent and over-sweet ones kept by his mother for family fiestas,
once he trod the deck of a vessel he felt the necessity for alcoholic
liquids so as to make it evident that he was entirely a man. "There
wasn't in the whole world a drink that could do _him_ any harm...." And
after a second "refresco" from Uncle Caragol, he became submersed in a
placid nirvana, seeing everything rose-colored and considerably
enlarged,--the sea, the nearby boats, the docks, and Montjuich in the
background.
The cook, looking at him affectionately with his bleared eyes, believed
that he must have bounded back a dozen years and be still in Valencia,
talking with that other Ferragut boy who was running away from the
university in order to row in the harbor. He almost came to believe
that he had lived twice.
He always listened patiently to the lad's complaints, interrupting him
with solemn counsels. This fifteen-year-old Ferragut appeared
discontented with life. He was a man and he had to live with women--his
mother and two nieces, who were always making laces,--just as in other
times his mother had been the lace-making companion of her
mother-in-law, Doña Cristina. He wanted to be a seaman and they were
obliging him to study the uninteresting courses leading to a bachelor's
degree. It was scarcely likely, was it, that a captain would have to
know Latin?... He wanted to bring his student life to an end so as to
become a pilot and continue practicing on the bridge, beside his
father. Perhaps at thirty years of age, he might achieve the command of
the _Mare Nostrum_ or some similar boat.
Meanwhile the lure of the sea dragged him far from the classroom,
prompting him to visit Uncle Caragol at the very hour that his
professors were calling the roll and noting the students' absence.
The old man and his protégé used to betake themselves in the galley
with the uneasy conscience of the guilty. Steps and voices on deck
always changed their topic of conversation. "Hide yourself!" and
Esteban would dodge under the table or hide in the provision-closet
while the cook sallied forth with a seraphic countenance to meet the
recent arrival.
Sometimes it was Toni, and the boy would then dare to come out, relying
on his silence; for Toni liked him, too, and approved of his aversion
to books.
If it was the captain who was coming to the boat for a few moments,
Caragol would talk with him, obstructing the door with his bulk at the
same time that he was smiling maliciously.
For Esteban the two most wonderful things in all the world were the sea
and his father. All those romantic heroes that had come from the pages
of novels to take their place in his imagination had the face and ways
of Captain Ferragut.
From babyhood he had seen his mother weeping occasionally in resigned
sadness. Years later, recognizing with the precocity of a
little-watched boy the relations that exist between men and women, he
suspected that all these tears must be caused by the flirtations and
infidelities of the distant sailor.
He adored his mother with the passion of an only and spoiled child, but
he admired the captain no less, excusing every fault that he might
commit. His father was the bravest and handsomest man in all the world.
And when rummaging one day through the drawers in his father's
stateroom, he chanced upon various photographs having the names of
women from foreign countries, the lad's admiration was greater still.
Everybody must have been madly in love with the captain of the _Mare
Nostrum. Ay_! No matter what he might do when he became a man, he could
never hope to equal this triumphant creature who had given him
existence....
When the boat, on its return from Naples, arrived at Barcelona without
its owner, Ferragut's son did not feel any surprise.
Toni, who was always a man of few words, was very lavish with them on
the present occasion. Captain Ferragut had remained behind because of
important business, but he would not be long in returning. His second
was looking for him at any moment. Perhaps he would make the trip by
land, in order to arrive sooner.
Esteban was astounded to see that his mother did not accept this
absence as an insignificant event. The good lady appeared greatly
troubled and her eyes filled with tears. Her feminine instinct made her
suspect something ominous in her husband's delay.
In the afternoon, when her old lover, the professor, visited her as
usual, the two talked slowly with guarded words but with eyes of
understanding and long intervals of silence.
When Don Pedro reached the height of his glorious career, the
possession of a professorship in the institute of Barcelona, he used to
visit Cinta every afternoon, passing an hour and a half in her parlor
with chronometric exactitude. Never did the slightest impure thought
agitate the professor. The past had fallen into oblivion.... But he
needed to see daily the captain's wife weaving laces with her two
little nieces, as he had seen Ferragut's widow years before.
He informed them of the most important events in Barcelona and in the
entire world; they would comment together on the future of Esteban, and
the former suitor used to listen rapturously to her sweet voice,
conceding great importance to the details of domestic economy or
descriptions of religious fiestas, solely because it was she who was
recounting them.
Many times they would remain in a long silence. Don Pedro represented
patience, even temper, and silent respect, in that tranquil and
immaculate house which lost its monastic calm only when its head
presented himself there for a few days between voyages.
Cinta had accustomed herself to the professor's visits. At half-past
three by the clock his footsteps could always be heard in the
passageway.
If any afternoon he did not come, the sweet Penelope was greatly
disappointed.
"I wonder what can be the matter with Don Pedro?" she would ask her
nieces uneasily.
She oftentimes asked this question of her son; but Esteban, without
exactly hating the visitor, appreciated him very slightly.
Don Pedro belonged to that group of gentlemen at the Institute whom the
government paid to annoy youth with their explanations and their
examinations. He still remembered the two years that he had passed in
his course, as in the torture chamber, enduring the torments of Latin.
Besides that, the professor was a timid man who was always afraid of
catching cold, and who never dared to venture into the street on cloudy
days without an umbrella. Let people talk to him about courageous men!
"I don't know," he would reply to his mother. "Perhaps he's gone to bed
with seven kerchiefs on his head."
When Don Pedro returned, the house recovered its normality of a quiet
and well-regulated clock. Doña Cinta, after many consultations, had
come to believe his collaboration indispensable. The professor mildly
supplemented the authority of the traveling husband, and took it upon
himself to represent the head of the family in all outside matters....
Many times Ferragut's wife would be awaiting him with impatience in
order to ask his mature counsel, and he would emit his opinion in a
slow voice after long reflection.
Esteban found it intolerable that this gentleman, who was no more than
a distant relative of his grandmother, should meddle in the affairs of
the house, pretending to oversee him as though he were his father. But
it irritated him still more to see him in a good humor and trying to be
funny. It made him furious to hear his mother called "Penelope" and
himself "the young Telemachus."... "Stupid, tedious old bore!"
The young Telemachus was not slow to wrath nor vengeance. From babyhood
he had interrupted his play in order to "work" in the reception room
near to the hatrack by the door. And the poor professor on his
departure would find his hat crown dented in or its nap roughened up,
or he would sally home innocently carrying spitballs on the skirts of
his overcoat.
Now the boy contented himself with simply ignoring the existence of the
family friend, passing in front of him without recognizing him and only
greeting him when his mother ordered him to do so.
The day in which he brought the news of the return of the ship without
its captain, Don Pedro made a longer visit than usual. Cinto shed two
tears upon the lace, but had to stop weeping, vanquished by the good
sense of her counselor.
"Why weep and get your mind overwrought with so many suppositions
without foundation?... What you ought to do, my daughter, is to call in
this Toni who is mate of the vessel; he must know all about it....
Perhaps he may tell you the truth."
Esteban was told to hunt him up the following day, and he quickly
noticed Toni's extreme disquietude upon learning that Doña Cinta wished
to talk with him. The mate left the boat in lugubrious silence as
though he were being taken away to mortal torment: then he began to hum
loudly, an indication that he was in deep thought.
The young Telemachus was not able to be present at the interview but he
hung around the closed door and succeeded in hearing a few loud words
which slipped through the cracks. His mother was speaking with greater
frequency. Toni was reiterating in a dull voice the same excuse:--"I
don't know. The captain will come at any moment...." But when the mate
found himself outside the house, his wrath broke out against himself,
against his cursed character that did not know how to lie, against all
women bad and good. He believed he had said too much. That lady had the
skill of a judge in getting words out of him.
That night, at the supper hour, the mother scarcely opened her mouth.
Her fingers communicated a nervous trembling to the plates and forks,
and she looked at her son with tragic commiseration as though she
foresaw terrible troubles about to burst upon his head. She opposed a
desperate silence to Esteban's questions and finally exclaimed:
"Your father is deserting us!... Your father has forgotten us!..."
And she left the dining-room to hide her overflowing tears.
The boy slept rather restlessly, but he slept. The admiration which he
always felt for his father and a certain solidarity with the strong
examples of his sex made him take little account of these complaints.
Matters for women! His mother just didn't know how to be the wife of an
extraordinary man like Captain Ferragut. He who was really a man, in
spite of his few years, was going to intervene in this affair in order
to show up the truth.
When Toni, from the deck of the vessel, saw the lad coming along the
wharf the following morning, he was greatly tempted to hide himself....
"If Doña Cinta should call me again in order to question me!..." But he
calmed himself with the thought that the boy was probably coming of his
own free will to pass a few hours on the _Mare Nostrum_. Even so, he
wished to avoid his presence as though he feared some slip in talking
with him, and so pretended that he had work in the hold. Then he left
the boat going to visit a friend on a steamer some distance off.
Esteban entered the galley, calling gayly to Uncle Caragol. He wasn't
the same, either. His humid and reddish eyes were looking at the child
with an extraordinary tenderness. Suddenly he stopped his talk with an
expression of uneasiness on his face. He looked uncertainly around him,
as though fearing that a precipice might open at his feet.
Never forgetful of the respect due to every visitor in his dominion, he
prepared two "refrescos." He was going to treat Esteban for the first
time on this return trip. On former days, incredible as it may seem, he
had not thought of making even one of his delicious beverages. The
return from Naples to Barcelona had been a sad one: the vessel had a
funereal air without its master.
For all these reasons, Caragol's hand lavishly measured out the rum
until the liquid took on a tobacco tone.
They drank.... The young Telemachus began to talk about his father when
the glasses were only half empty, and the cook waved both hands in the
air, giving a grunt which signified that he had no wish to bother about
the captain's absence.
"Your father will return, Esteban," he added. "He will return but I
don't know when. Certainly later than Toni says."
And not wishing to say more, he gulped down the rest of the glass,
devoting himself hastily to the confection of the second "refresco" in
order to make up for lost time.
Little by little he slipped away from the prudent barrier that was
hedging in his verbosity and spoke with his old time abandon; but his
flow of words did not exactly convey news.
Caragol preached morality to Ferragut's son,--morality from his
standpoint, interrupted by frequent caresses of the glass.
"Esteban, my son, respect your father greatly. Imitate him as a seaman.
Be good and just toward the men that you command.... But avoid the
females!"
The women!... There was no better theme for his piously drunken
eloquence. The world inspired his pity. It was all governed by the
infernal attraction exercised by the female of the species. The men
were working, struggling, and trying to grow rich and celebrated, all
in order to possess one of these creatures.
"Believe me, my son, and do not imitate your father in this respect."
The old man had said too much to back out now and he had to go on,
letting out the rest of it, bit by bit. Thus Esteban learned that the
captain was enamored with a lady in Naples and that he had remained
there pretending business matters, but in reality dominated by this
woman's influence.
"Is she pretty?" asked the boy eagerly.
"Very pretty," replied Caragol. "And such odors!... And such a swishing
of fine clothes!..."
Telemachus thrilled with contradictory sensations of pride and envy. He
admired his father once more, but this admiration only lasted a few
seconds. A new idea was taking possession of him while the cook
continued:
"He will not come now. I know what these elegant females are, reeking
with perfume. They are true demons that dig their nails in when they
clutch, and it is necessary to cut off their hands in order to loosen
them.... And the boat as useless now as though it were aground, while
the others are filling themselves with gold!... Believe me, my son,
this is the only truth in the world."
And he concluded by gulping in one draft all that was left in the
second glass.
Meanwhile the boy was forming in his mind an idea prompted by his
pleasant intoxication. What if he should go to Naples in order to bring
his father back!...
At this moment everything seemed possible to him. The world was
rose-colored as it always was when he looked at it, glass in hand, near
to Uncle Caragol. All obstacles would turn out to be trifling:
everything would arrange itself with wonderful facility. Men were able
to progress by bounds.
But hours afterward when his thoughts were cleared of their beatific
visions, he felt a little fearful when recollecting his absent parent.
How would he receive him upon his arrival?... What excuses could he
give his father for his presence in Naples?... He trembled, recalling
the image of his scowling brow and angry eyes.
On the following day a sudden self-confidence replaced this uneasiness.
He recalled the captain as he had seen him many times on the deck of
his vessel, telling of his escapades when rowing in the harbor of
Barcelona, or commenting to friends on his son's strength and
intelligence. The image of the paternal hero now came to his mind with
good-humored eyes and a smile passing like a fresh breeze over his
face.
He would tell him the whole truth. He would make him understand that he
had come to Naples just to take him away with him, like a good comrade
who comes to another's rescue in time of danger. Perhaps he might be
irritated and give him a blow, but he would eventually accede to his
proposition.
Ferragut's character was reborn in him with all the force of decisive
argument. And if the voyage should prove absurd and dangerous?... All
the better! So much the better! That was enough to make him undertake
it. He was a man and should know no fear.
During the next two weeks he prepared his flight. He had never taken a
long journey. Only once he had accompanied his father on a flying
business trip to Marseilles. It was high time that he should go out in
the world like the man that he was, acquainted with almost all the
cities of the earth,--through his readings.
The money question did not worry him any. Doña Cinta had it in
abundance and it was easy to find her bunch of keys. An old and
slow-going steamer, commanded by one of his father's friends, had just
entered port and the following day would weigh anchor for Italy.
This sailor accepted the son of his old comrade without any traveling
papers. He would arrange all irregularities with his friends in Genoa.
Between captains they ought to exchange such services, and Ulysses
Ferragut, who was awaiting his son in Naples (so Esteban told him),
would not wish to waste time just because of some ridiculous, red tape
formality.
Telemachus with a thousand pesetas in his pocket, extracted from a work
box which his mother used as a cash box, embarked the following day. A
little suit-case, taken from his home with deliberate and skillful
precaution, formed his entire baggage.
From Genoa he went to Rome, and from there to Naples, with the
foolhardiness of the innocent, employing Spanish and Catalan words to
reinforce his scanty Italian vocabulary acquired at the opera. The only
positive information that guided him on his quest of adventure was the
name of the _albergo_ on the shore of S. Lucia which Caragol had given
him as his father's residence.
He sought him vainly for many days and visited in Naples the consignees
who thought that the captain had returned to his country some time ago.
Not finding him, he began to be afraid. He ought to be back in
Barcelona by this time and what he had begun as an heroic voyage was
going to turn into a runaway, a boyish escapade. He thought of his
mother who was perhaps weeping hours at a time, reading and rereading
the letter that he had left for her explaining the object of his
flight. Besides, Italy's intervention in the war,--an event which every
one had been expecting but had supposed to be still a long way
off,--had suddenly become an actual fact. What was there left for him
to do in this country?... And one morning he had disappeared.
Since the hotel porter could not tell him anything more, the father,
after his first impression of surprise had passed, thought it would be
a good plan to visit the firm of consignees. Perhaps there they might
give him some news.
The war was the only thing of interest in that office. But Ferragut,
owner of a ship and a former client, was guided by the director to the
employees who had received Esteban.
They did not know much about it. They recalled vaguely a young Spaniard
who said that he was the captain's son and was making inquiries about
him. His last visit had been two days before. He was then hesitating
between returning to his country by rail or embarking in one of the
three steamers that were in port ready to sail for Marseilles.
"I believe that he has gone by railroad," said one of the clerks.
Another of the office force supported his companion's supposition with
a positive affirmation in order to attract the attention of his chief.
He was sure of his departure by land. He himself had helped him to
calculate what the trip to Barcelona would cost him.
Ferragut did not wish to know more. He must get away as soon as
possible. This inexplicable voyage of his son filled him with remorse
and immeasurable alarm. He wondered what could have occurred in his
home....
The director of the offices pointed out to him a French steamer from
Suez that was sailing that very afternoon to Marseilles, and took upon
himself all the arrangements concerning his passage and recommendation
to the captain. There only remained four hours before the boat's
departure, and Ulysses, after collecting his valises and sending them
aboard, took a last stroll through all the places where he had lived
with Freya. Adieu, gardens of the _Villa Nazionale_ and white
Aquarium!... Farewell, _albergo_!...
His son's mysterious presence in Naples had intensified his disgust at
the German girl's flight. He thought sadly of lost love, but at the
same time he thought with dolorous suspense of what might greet him
when reentering his home.
A little before sunset the French steamer weighed anchor. It had been
many years since Ulysses had sailed as a simple passenger. Entirely out
of his element, he wandered over the decks and among the crowds of
tourists. Force of habit drew him to the bridge, talking with the
captain and the officers, who from his very first words recognized his
professional genius.
Realizing that he was no more than an intruder in this place, and
annoyed at finding himself on a bridge from which he could not give a
single order, he descended to the lower decks, examining the groups of
passengers. They were mostly French, coming from Indo-China. On prow
and poop there were quartered four companies of Asiatic
sharpshooters,--little, yellowish, with oblique eyes and voices like
the miauling of cats. They were going to the war. Their officers lived
in the staterooms in the center of the ship, taking with them their
families who had aquired a foreign aspect during their long residence
in the colonies.
Ulysses saw ladies clad in white stretched out on their steamer chairs,
having themselves fanned by their little Chinese pages; he saw bronzed
and weather-beaten soldiers who appeared disgusted yet galvanized by
the war that was snatching them from their Asiatic siesta, and
children,--many children--delighted to go to France, the country of
their dreams, forgetting in their happiness that their fathers were
probably going to their death.
The passage could not have been smoother. The Mediterranean was like a
silver plain in the moonlight. From the invisible coast came warm puffs
of garden perfumes. The groups on deck reminded one another, with
selfish satisfaction, of the great dangers that threatened the people
embarking in the North Sea, harassed by German submarines. Fortunately
the Mediterranean was free from such calamity. The English had so well
guarded the port of Gibraltar that it was all a tranquil lake dominated
by the Allies.
Before going to bed, the captain entered a room on the upper deck where
was installed the wireless telegraph outfit. The hissing as of frying
oil that the apparatus was sending out attracted him. The operator, a
young Englishman, took off his nickel band with two earphones. Greatly
bored by his isolation, he was trying to distract himself by conversing
with the operators on the other vessels that came within the radius of
his apparatus. They kept in constant communication like a group of
comrades making the same trip and conversing placidly together.
From time to time the operator, advised by the sparking of his
induction coils, would put on the diadem with ear pieces in order to
listen to his far-away comrades.
"It is the man on the _Californian_ bidding me goodnight," he said
after one of these calls. "He is going to bed. There's no news."
And the young man eulogized Mediterranean navigation. At the outbreak
of the war, he had been on another vessel going from London to New York
and he recalled the unquiet nights, the days of anxious vigilance,
searching the sea and the atmosphere, fearing from one moment to
another the appearance of a periscope upon the waters, or the electric
warning of a steamer torpedoed by the submarine. On this sea, one could
live as tranquilly as in times of peace.
Ferragut suspected that the poor operator was very anxious to enjoy the
delights of such tranquillity. His companion in service was snoring in
a nearby cabin and he was anxious to imitate him, putting his head down
on the table of the apparatus.... "Until to-morrow!"
The captain also fell asleep as soon as he had stretched himself out on
the narrow ledge in his stateroom. His sleep was all in one piece,
gloomy and complete, without sudden surprises or visions. Just as he
was feeling that only a few moments had passed by, he was violently
awakened as though some one had given him a shove. In the dim light he
could make out only the round glass of the port hole, tenuously blue
and veiled by the humidity of the maritime dew, like a tearful eye.
Day was breaking and something extraordinary had just occurred on the
boat. Ferragut was accustomed to sleep with the lightness of a captain
who needs to awaken opportunely. A mysterious perception of danger had
cut short his repose. He distinguished over his head the patter of
quick runnings the whole length of the deck; he heard voices. While
dressing as quickly as possible he realized that the rudder was working
violently, and that the vessel was changing its course.
Coming up on deck, one glance was sufficient to convince him that the
ship was not running any danger. Everything about it presented a normal
aspect. The sea, still dark, was gently lapping the sides of the vessel
which continued going forward with regular motion. The decks were
cleared of passengers. They were all sleeping in their staterooms. Only
on the bridge he saw a group of persons:--the captain and all the
officers, some of them dressed very lightly as though they had been
roused from slumber.
Passing by the wireless office, he obtained an explanation of the
matter. The youth of the night before was near the door and his
companion was now wearing the head phone and tapping the keys of the
apparatus, listening and replying to invisible boats.
An half hour before, just as the English operator was going off guard
and giving place to his just awakened companion, a signal had kept him
in his seat. The _Californian_ was sending out by wireless the danger
call, the S.O.S., that is only employed when a ship needs help. Then in
the space of a few seconds a mysterious voice had spread its tragic
story over hundreds of miles. A submersible had just appeared a short
distance from the _Californian_ and had fired several shells at it. The
English boat was trying to escape, relying on its superior speed. Then
the submarine had fired a torpedo....
All this had occurred in twenty minutes. Suddenly the echoes of the
distant tragedy were extinguished as the communication was cut off. A
prolonged, intense, sibilant buzzing in the apparatus, and--nothing!...
Absolute silence.
The operator now on duty responded with negative movements to his
companion's inquiring glances. He could hear nothing but the dialogue
between the boats that had received the same warning. They too were
alarmed by the sudden silence, and were changing their course going,
like the French steamer, toward the place where the _Californian_ had
met the submersible.
"Can it be that they are already in the Mediterranean!" the operator
exclaimed with astonishment on finishing his report. "How could the
submarines possibly get 'way down here?..."
Ferragut did not dare to go up on the bridge. He was afraid that the
glances of those men of the sea might fasten themselves accusingly upon
him. He believed that they could read his thoughts.
A passenger ship had just been sunk at a relatively short distance from
the boat on which he was traveling. Perhaps von Kramer was the author
of the crime. With good reason he had charged Ulysses to tell his
compatriots that they would soon hear of his exploits. And Ferragut had
aided in the preparation of this maritime barbarity!...
"What have you done? What have you done?" wrathfully demanded his
mental voice of good counsel.
An hour afterward he felt ashamed to remain on deck. In spite of the
captain's orders, the news had got out and was circulating among the
staterooms. Entire families were rushing up on deck, frightened out of
the calmness usually reigning on the boat, arranging their clothes with
precipitation, and struggling to adjust to their bodies the
life-preservers which they were trying on for the first time. The
children were howling, terrified by the alarm of their parents. Some
nervous women were shedding tears without any apparent cause. The boat
was going toward the place where the other one had been torpedoed, and
that was enough to make the alarmists imagine that the enemy would
remain absolutely motionless in the same place, awaiting their arrival
in order to repeat their attack.
Hundreds of eyes were fixed on the sea, scrutinizing the surface of the
waves, believing every object which they saw,--bits of wood, seaweed or
crates floating on the surface of the water,--to be the top of a
periscope.
The officials of the battalion of snipers had gone to prow and poop in
order to maintain discipline among their men. But the Asiatics,
scornful of death, had not abandoned their serene apathy. Some merely
looked out over the sea with a childish curiosity, anxious to become
acquainted with this new diabolical toy, invented by the superior
races. On the decks reserved for first class passengers astonishment
was as great as the uneasiness.
"Submarines in the Mediterranean!... But is it possible?..."
Those last to awake appeared very incredulous and could only be
convinced of what had occurred when they heard the news from the boat's
crew.
Ferragut wandered around like a soul in torment. Remorse made him hide
himself in his stateroom. These people with their complaints and their
comments were causing him great annoyance. Soon he found that he could
not remain in this isolation. He needed to see and to know,--like a
criminal who returns to the place where he has committed his crime.
At midday they began to see on the horizon various little clouds. They
were the ships hastening from all sides, attracted by this unexpected
attack.
The French boat that was sailing ahead of them suddenly moderated its
speed. They had come into the zone of the shipwreck. In the lookouts
were sailors exploring the sea and shouting the orders that guided the
steamer's course. During these evolutions, there began to slip past the
vessel's sides the remains of the tragic event.
The two rows of heads lined up on the different decks saw life
preservers floating by empty, a boat with its keel in the air, and bits
of wood belonging to a raft evidently constructed in great haste and
never finished.
Suddenly a howl from a thousand voices, followed by a funereal
silence.... The body of a woman lying on some planks passed by. One of
her legs was thrust into a gray silk stocking, her head was hanging on
the opposite side, spreading its blonde locks over the water like a
bunch of gilded seaweed.
Her firm and juvenile bust was visible through the opening of a
drenched nightgown which was outlining her body with unavoidable
immodesty. She had been surprised by the shipwreck at the very moment
that she had been trying to dress; perhaps terror had made her throw
herself into the sea. Death had twisted her face with a horrible
contraction, exposing the teeth. One side of her face was swollen from
some blow.
Looking over the shoulders of two ladies who were trembling and leaning
against the deck-railing, Ferragut caught a glimpse of this corpse. In
his turn the vigorous sailor trembled like a woman, and his eyes filmed
with mistiness. He simply could not look at it!... And again he went
down into his stateroom to hide himself.
An Italian torpedo-destroyer was maneuvering among the remains of the
shipwreck, as though seeking the footprints of the author of the crime.
The steamers stopped their circular course of exploration to lower the
lifeboats into the water and collect the corpses and bodies of the
living near to death.
The captain in his desperate imprisonment heard new shrieks announcing
an extraordinary event. Again the cruel necessity of knowing what it
could be dragged him from his stateroom!
A boat full of people had been found by the steamer. The other ships
were also meeting little by little the rest of the life boats occupied
by the survivors of the catastrophe. The general rescue was going to be
a very short piece of work.
The most agile of the shipwrecked people, on reaching the deck, found
themselves surrounded by sympathetic groups lamenting their misfortune
and at the same time offering them hot drinks. Others, after staggering
a few steps as though intoxicated, collapsed on the benches. Some had
to be hoisted from the bottom of the boat and carried in a chair to the
ship's hospital.
Various British soldiers, serene and phlegmatic, upon climbing on deck
asked for a pipe and began to smoke vigorously. Other shipwrecked
people, lightly clad, simply rolled themselves up in shawls, beginning
the account of the catastrophe as minutely and serenely as though they
were in a parlor. A period of ten hours in the crowded narrowness of
the boat, drifting at random in the hope of aid, had not broken down
their energy.
The women showed greater desperation. Ferragut saw in the center of a
group of ladies a young English girl, blond, slender, elegant, who was
sobbing and stammering explanations. She had found herself in a launch,
separated from her parents, without knowing how. Perhaps they were dead
by this time. Her slight hope was that they might have sought refuge in
some other boat and been picked up by any one of the steamers that had
happened to see them.
A desperate grief, noisy, meridional, silenced with its meanings the
noise of conversation. There had just climbed aboard a poor Italian
woman carrying a baby in her arms.
"_Figlia mia_!... _Mia figlia_!..." she was wailing with disheveled
hair and eyes swollen by weeping.
In the moment of the shipwreck she had lost a little girl, eight years
old, and upon finding herself in the French steamer, she went
instinctively toward the prow in search of the same spot which she had
occupied on the other ship, as though expecting to find her daughter
there. Her agonized voice penetrated down the stairway: "_Figlia
mia_!... _Mia figlia!_"
Ulysses could not stand it. That voice hurt him, as though its piercing
cry were clawing at his brain.
He approached a group in the center of which was a young barefooted lad
in trousers and shirt open at the breast who was talking and talking,
wrapping himself from time to time in a shawl that some one had placed
upon his shoulders.
He was describing in a mixture of French and Italian the loss of the
_Californian_.
He had been awakened by hearing the first shot fired by the submersible
against his steamer. The chase had lasted half an hour.
The most audacious and curious were on the decks and believed their
salvation already sure as they saw their ship leaving its enemy behind.
Suddenly a black line had cut the sea, something like a long thorn with
splinters of foam which was advancing at a dizzying speed, in bold
relief against the water.... Then came a blow on the hull of the vessel
which had made it shudder from stem to stern, not a single plate nor
screw escaping tremendous dislocation.... Then a volcanic explosion, a
gigantic hatchet of smoke and flames, a yellowish cloud in which were
flying dark objects:--fragments of metal and of wood, human bodies
blown to bits.... The eyes of the narrator gleamed with an insane light
as he recalled the tragic sight.
"A friend of mine, a boy from my own country," he continued, sighing,
"had just left me in order to see the submersible better and he put
himself exactly in the path of the explosion.... He disappeared as
suddenly as if he had been blotted out. I saw him and I did not see
him.... He exploded in a thousand bits, as though he had had a bomb
within his body."
And the shipwrecked man, obsessed by this recollection, could hardly
attach any importance to the scenes following,--the struggle of the
crowds to gain the boats, the efforts of the officers to maintain
order, the death of many that, crazy with desperation, had thrown
themselves into the sea, the tragic waiting huddled in barks that were
with great difficulty lowered to the water, fearing a second shipwreck
as soon as they touched the waves.
The steamer had disappeared in a few moments,--its prow sinking in the
waters and then its smokestacks taking on a vertical position almost
like the leaning tower of Pisa, and its rudders turning crazily as the
shuddering ship went down.
The narrator began to be left alone. Other shipwrecked folk, telling
their doleful tales at the same time, were now attracting the curious.
Ferragut looked at this young man. His physical type and his accent
made him surmise that he was a compatriot.
"You are Spanish?"
The shipwrecked man replied affirmatively.
"A Catalan?" continued Ulysses in the Catalan idiom.
A fresh oratorical vehemence galvanized the shipwrecked boy. "The
gentleman is a Catalan also?"... And smiling upon Ferragut as though he
were a celestial apparition, he again began the story of his
misfortunes.
He was a commercial traveler from Barcelona, and in Naples he had taken
the sea route because it had seemed to him the more rapid one, avoiding
the railroads congested by Italian mobilization.
"Were there other Spaniards traveling on your boat?" Ulysses continued
inquiring.
"Only one: my friend, that boy of whom I was just speaking. The
explosion of the torpedo blew him into bits. I saw him...."
The captain felt his remorse constantly increasing. A compatriot, a
poor young fellow, had perished through his fault!...
The salesman also seemed to be suffering a twinge of conscience. He was
holding himself responsible for his companion's death. He had only met
him in Naples a few days before, but they were united by the close
brotherhood of young compatriots who had run across each other far from
their country.
They had both been born in Barcelona. The poor lad, almost a child, had
wanted to return by land and he had carried him off with him at the
last hour, urging upon him the advantages of a trip by sea. Whoever
would have imagined that the German submarines were in the
Mediterranean! The traveling man persisted in his remorse. He could not
forget that half-grown lad who, in order to make the voyage in his
company, had gone to meet his death.
"I met him in Naples, hunting everywhere for his father."
"Ah!..."
Ulysses uttered this exclamation with his neck violently outstretched,
as though he were trying to loosen his skull from the rest of his body.
His eyes were protruding from their sockets.
"The father," continued the youth, "commands a ship.... He is Captain
Ulysses Ferragut."
An outcry.... The people ran.... A man had just fallen heavily, his
body rebounding on the deck.