CHAPTER IX

THE ENCOUNTER AT MARSEILLES

Toni, who abominated railway journeys on account of his torpid

immovability, now had to abandon the _Mare Nostrum_ and suffer the

torture of remaining twelve hours crowded in with strange persons.

Ferragut was sick in a hotel in the harbor of Marseilles. They had

taken him off of a French boat coming from Naples, crushed with silent

melancholia. He wished to die. During the trip they had to keep sharp

watch so that he could not repeat his attempts at suicide. Several

times he had tried to throw himself into the water.

Toni learned of it from the captain of a Spanish vessel that had just

arrived from Marseilles exactly one day after the newspapers of

Barcelona had announced the death of Esteban Ferragut in the torpedoing

of the _Californian_. The commercial traveler was still relating

everywhere his version of the event, concluding it now with his

melodramatic meeting with the father, the latter's fatal fall on

receiving the news, and desperation upon recovering consciousness.

The first mate had hastened to present himself at his captain's home.

All the Blanes were there, surrounding Cinta and trying to console her.

"My son!... My son!..." the mother was groaning, writhing on the sofa.

And the family chorus drowned her laments, overwhelming her with a

flood of fantastic consolations and recommendations of resignation. She

ought to think of the father: she was not alone in the world as she was

affirming: besides her own family, she had her husband.

Toni entered just at that moment.

"His father!" she cried in desperation. "His father!..."

And she fastened her eyes on the mate as though trying to speak to him

with them. Toni knew better than anyone what that father was, and for

what reason he had remained in Naples. It was his fault that the boy

had undertaken the crazy journey at whose end death was awaiting

him..... The devout Cinta looked upon this misfortune as a chastisement

from God, always complicated and mysterious in His designs. Divinity,

in order to make the father expiate his crimes, had killed the son

without thinking of the mother upon whom the blow rebounded.

Toni went away. He could not endure the glances and the allusions made

by Doña Cinta. And as though this emotion were not enough, he received

the news a few hours later of his captain's wretched condition,--news

which obliged him to make the trip to Marseilles immediately.

On entering the quarters of the hotel frequented by the officials of

merchant vessels, he found Ferragut seated near a balcony from which

could be seen the entire harbor.

He was limp and flabby, with eyes sunken and faded, beard unkempt, and

a manifest disregard of his personal appearance.

"Toni!... Toni!"

He embraced his mate, moistening his neck with tears. For the first

time he began to weep and this appeared to give him a certain relief.

The presence of his faithful officer brought him back to life.

Forgotten memories of business journeys crowded in his mind. Toni

resuscitated all his past energies. It was as though the _Mare Nostrum_

had come in search of him.

He felt shame and remorse. This man knew his secret: he was the only

one to whom he had spoken of supplying the German submarines.

"My poor Esteban!... My son!"

He did not hesitate to admit the fatal relationship between the death

of his son and that illegal trip whose memory was weighing him down

like a monstrous crime. But Toni was discreet. He lamented the death of

Esteban like a misfortune in which the father had not had any part.

"I also have lost sons.... And I know that nothing is gained by giving

up to despair.... Cheer up!"

He never said a word of all that had happened before the tragic event.

Had not Ferragut known his mate so well, he might have believed that he

had entirely forgotten it. Not the slightest gesture, not a gleam in

his eyes, revealed the awakening of that malign recollection. His only

anxiety was that the captain should soon regain his health....

Reanimated by the presence and words of this prudent companion, Ulysses

recovered his strength and a few days after, abandoned the room in

which he had believed he was going to die, turning his steps toward

Barcelona.

He entered his home with a foreboding that almost made him tremble. The

sweet Cinta, considered until then with the protecting superiority of

the Orientals who do not recognize a soul in woman, now inspired him

with a certain fear. What would she say on seeing him?...

She said nothing of what he had feared. She permitted herself to be

embraced, and drooping her head, burst into desperate weeping, as

though the presence of her husband brought into higher relief the image

of her son whom she would never see again. Then she dried her tears,

and paler and sadder than ever, continued her habitual life.

Ferragut saw her as serene as a school-mistress, with her two little

nieces seated at her feet, keeping on with her eternal lace-work. She

forgot it only in order to attend to the care of her husband, occupying

herself with the very slightest details of his existence. That was her

duty. From childhood, she had known what are the obligations of the

wife of the captain of a ship when he stops at home for a few days,

like a bird of passage. But back of such attentions, Ulysses divined

the presence of an immovable obstacle. It was something enormous and

transparent that had interposed itself between the two. They saw each

other but without being able to touch each other. They were separated

by a distance, as hard and luminous as a diamond, that made every

attempt at drawing nearer together useless.

Cinta never smiled. Her eyes were dry, trying not to weep while her

husband was near her, but giving herself up freely to grief when she

was alone. Her duty was to make his existence bearable, hiding her

thoughts.

But this prudence of a good house-mistress was trampling under foot

their conjugal life of former times. One day Ferragut, with a return of

his old affection, and desiring to illuminate Cinta's twilight

existence with a pale ray of sunlight, ventured to caress her as in the

early days of their marriage. She drew herself up, modest and offended,

as though she had just received an insult. She escaped from his arms

with the energy of one who is repelling an outrage.

Ulysses looked upon a new woman, intensely pale, of an almost olive

countenance, the nose curved with wrath and a flash of madness in her

eyes. All that she was guarding in the depths of her thoughts came

forth, boiling over, expelled in a hoarse voice charged with tears.

"No, no!... We shall live together, because you are my husband and God

commands that it shall be so; but I no longer love you: I cannot love

you.... The wrong that you have done me!... I who loved you so much!...

However much you may hunt in your voyages and in your wicked

adventures, you will never find a woman that loves you as your wife has

loved you."

Her past of modest and submissive affection, of supine and tolerant

fidelity, now issued from her mouth in one interminable complaint.

"From our home my thoughts have followed you in all your voyages,

although I knew your forgetfulness and your infidelity. All the papers

found in your pockets, and photographs lost among your books, the

allusions of your comrades, your smiles of pride, the satisfied air

with which you many times returned, the series of new manners and

additional care of your person that you did not have when you left,

told me all.... I also suspected in your bold caresses the hidden

presence of other women who lived far away on the other side of the

world."

She stopped her turbulent language for a few moments, letting the blush

which her memories evoked fade away.

"I loathed it all," she continued. "I know the men of the sea; I am a

sailor's daughter. Many times I saw my mother weeping and pitied her

simplicity. There is no use weeping for what men do in distant lands.

It is always bitter enough for a woman who loves her husband, but it

has no bad consequences and must be pardoned.... But now.... _Now_!..."

The wife became irritated on recalling his recent infidelities.... Her

rivals were not the public women of the great ports, nor the tourists

who could give only a few days of love, like an alms which they tossed

without stopping their progress. Now he had become enamored with the

enthusiasm of a husky boy with an elegant and handsome dame, with a

foreign woman who had made him forget his business, abandon his ship,

and remain away, as though renouncing his family forever.... And poor

Esteban, orphaned by his father's forgetfulness, had gone in search of

him, with the adventurous impetuosity inherited from his ancestors: and

death, a horrible death, had come to meet him on the road.

Something more than the grief of the outraged wife vibrated in Cinta's

laments. It was the rivalry with that woman of Naples, whom she

believed a great lady with all the attractions of wealth and high

birth. She envied her superior weapons of seduction; she raged at her

own modesty and humility as a home-keeping woman.

"I was resolved to ignore it all," she continued. "I had one

consolation,--my son. What did it matter to me what you did?... You

were far off, and my son was living at my side.... And now I shall

never see him again!... My fate is to live eternally alone. You know

very well that I shall not be a mother again,--that I cannot give you

another son.... And it was you, you! who have robbed me of the only

thing that I had!..."

Her imagination invented the most improbable reasons for explaining to

herself this unjust loss.

"God wished to punish you for your bad life and has therefore killed

Esteban, and is slowly killing me.... When I learned of his death I

wished to throw myself off the balcony. I am still living because I am

a Christian, but what an existence awaits me! What a life for you if

you are really a father!... Think that your son might still be existing

if you had not remained in Naples."

Ferragut was a pitiful object. He hung his head without strength to

repeat the confused and lying protests with which he had received his

wife's first words.

"If she knew all the truth!" the voice of remorse kept saying in his

brain.

He was thinking with horror of what Cinta could say if she knew the

magnitude of his sin. Fortunately she was ignorant of the fact that he

had been of assistance to the assassins of their son.... And the

conviction that she never would know it made him admit her words with

silent humility,--the humility of the criminal who hears himself

accused of an offense by a judge ignorant of a still greater offense.

Cinta finished speaking in a discouraged and gloomy tone. She was

exhausted. Her wrath faded out, consumed by its own violence. Her sobs

cut short her words. Her husband would never again be the same man to

her; the body of their son was always interposing between the two.

"I shall never be able to love you.... What have you done, Ulysses?

What have you done that I should have such a horror of you?... When I

am alone I weep: my sadness is great, but I admit my sorrow with

resignation, as a thing inevitable.... As soon as I hear your

footsteps, the truth springs forth. I realize that my son has died

because of you, that he would still be living had he not gone in search

of you, trying to make you realize that you were a father and what you

owe to us.... And when I think of that I hate you, I _hate you_!... You

have murdered my son! My only consolation is in the belief that if you

have any conscience you will suffer even more than I."

Ferragut came out from this horrible scene with the conviction that he

would have to go away. That home was no longer his, neither was his

wife his. The reminder of death filled everything, intervening between

him and Cinta, pushing him away, forcing him again on the sea. His

vessel was the only refuge for the rest of his life, and he must resort

to it like the great criminals of other centuries who had taken refuge

in the isolation of monasteries.

He needed to vent his wrath on somebody, to find some responsible

person whom he might blame for his misfortunes. Cinta had revealed

herself to him as an entirely new being. He would never have suspected

such energy of character, such passionate vehemence, in his sweet,

obedient, little wife. She must have some counselor who was encouraging

her complaints and making her speak badly of her husband.

And he fixed upon Don Pedro, the professor, because there was still

deep within him a certain dislike of the man since the days of his

courtship. Besides, it offended him to see him in his home with a

certain air of a noble personage whose virtue served as foil for the

sins and shortcomings of the master of the house.

The professor evidently considered Ferragut on a level with all the

famous Don Juans,--liberal and care-free when in far-away homes,

punctilious and suspiciously correct in his own.

"That old blatherskite!" said Ulysses to himself, "is in love with

Cinta. It is a platonic passion: with him, it couldn't be anything

else. But it annoys me greatly.... I'm going to say a few things to

him."

Don Pedro, who was continuing his daily visits in order to console the

mother, speaking of poor Esteban as though he were his own son, and

casting servile smiles upon the captain, found himself intercepted by

him one afternoon, on the landing of the stairway.

The sailor aged suddenly while talking, and his features were accented

with a vigorous ugliness. At that moment he looked exactly like his

uncle, the _Triton_.

With a threatening voice, he recalled a classic passage well known to

the professor. His namesake, old Ulysses, upon returning to his palace,

had found Penelope surrounded with suitors and had ended by hanging

them on tenterhooks.

"Wasn't that the way of it, Professor?... I do not find here more than

one suitor, but this Ulysses swears to you that he will hang him in the

same way if he finds him again in his home."

Don Pedro fled. He had always found the rude heroes of the Odyssey very

interesting, but in verse and on paper. In reality they now seemed to

him most dangerous brutes, and he wrote a letter to Cinta telling her

that he would suspend his visits until her husband should have returned

to sea.

This insult increased the wife's distant bearing. She resented it as an

offense against herself. After having made her lose her son, Ulysses

was terrifying her only friend.

The captain felt obliged to go. By staying in that hostile atmosphere,

which was only sharpening his remorse, he would pile one error upon

another. Nothing but action could make him forget.

One day he announced to Toni that in a few hours he was going to weigh

anchor. He had offered his services to the allied navies in order to

carry food to the fleet in the Dardanelles. The _Mare Nostrum_ would

transport eatables, arms, munitions, aeroplanes.

Toni attempted objection. It would be easy to find trips equally

productive and much less dangerous; they might go to America....

"And my revenge?" interrupted Ferragut. "I am going to dedicate the

rest of my life to doing all the evil that I can to the assassins of my

son. The Allies need boats, I'm going to give them mine and my person."

Knowing what was troubling his mate, he added, "Besides, they pay well.

These trips are very remunerative.... They will give me whatever I

ask."

For the first time in his existence on board the _Mare Nostrum_, the

mate made a scornful gesture regarding the value of the cargo.

"I almost forgot," continued Ulysses, smiling in spite of his sadness.

"This trip flatters your ideals.... We are going to work for the

Republic."

They went to England and, taking on their cargo, set forth for the

Dardanelles. Ferragut wished to sail alone without the protection of

the destroyers that were escorting the convoys.

He knew the Mediterranean well. Besides, he was from a neutral country

and the Spanish flag was flying from the poop of his vessel. This abuse

of his flag did not produce the slightest remorse, nor did it appear as

disloyal to him. The German corsairs were coming closer to their prey,

displaying neutral flags, in order to deceive. The submarines were

remaining hidden behind pacific sailing ships in order to rise up

suddenly near defenseless vessels. The most felonious proceedings of

the ancient pirates had been resuscitated by the German fleet.

He was not afraid of the submarines. He trusted in the speed of the

_Mare Nostrum_ and in his lucky star.

"And if any of them should cross our path," he said to his second,

"just let them go before the prow!"

He wished this so that he could send his vessel upon the submersible at

full speed, daring it to come on.

The Mediterranean was no longer the same sea that it had been months

before when the captains knew all its secrets; he could no longer live

on it as confidently as in the house of a friend.

He stayed in his stateroom only to sleep. He and Toni spent long hours

on the bridge talking without seeing each other, with their eyes turned

on the sea, scanning the heaving blue surface. All the crew, excepting

those that were resting, felt the necessity of keeping the same watch.

In the daytime the slightest discovery would send the alarm from prow

to poop. All the refuse of the sea, that weeks before had splashed

unnoticed near the sides of the vessel, now provoked cries of

attention, and many arms were outstretched, pointing it out. Bits of

sticks, empty preserve cans sparkling in the sunlight, bunches of

seaweed, a sea gull with outspread wings letting itself rock on the

waves; everything made them think of the periscopes of the submarine

coming up to the water's level.

At night time the vigilance was even greater. To the danger of

submersibles must also be added that of collision. The warships and the

allied transports were traveling with few lights or completely dark.

The sentinels on the bridge were no longer scanning the surface of the

sea with its pale phosphorescence. Their gaze explored the horizon,

fearing that before the prow there might suddenly surge up an enormous,

swift, black form, vomited forth by the darkness.

If at any time the captain tarried in his stateroom, instantly that

fatal memory came to his mind.

"Esteban!... My son!..."

And his eyes were full of tears.

Remorse and wrath made him plan tremendous vengeance. He was convinced

that it would be impossible to carry it through, but it was a momentary

consolation to his meridional character predisposed to the most bloody

revenge.

One day, running over some forgotten papers in a suit-case, he came

across Freya's portrait. Upon seeing her audacious smile and her calm

eyes fixed upon him, he felt within him a shameful reversion. He

admired the beauty of this apparition, a thrill passing over his body

as their past intercourse recurred to him.... And at the same time that

other Ferragut existing within him thrilled with the murderous violence

of the Oriental who considers death as the only means of vengeance. She

was to blame for it all. "Ah!... _Tal_"

He tore up the photograph, but then he put the fragments together again

and finally placed them among his papers.

His wrath was changing its objective. Freya really was not the

principal person guilty of Esteban's death. He was thinking of that

other one, of the pretended diplomat, of that von Kramer who perhaps

had directed the torpedo which had blown his son to atoms.... Would he

not raise the devil if he could meet him sometime?... What happiness if

these two should find themselves face to face!

Finally he avoided the solitude of a stateroom that tormented him with

desires of impotent revenge. Near Toni on deck or on the bridge he felt

better.... And with a humble condescension, such as his mate had never

known before, he would talk and talk, enjoying the attention of his

simple-hearted listener, just as though he were telling marvelous

stories to a circle of children.

In the Strait of Gibraltar he explained to him the great currents sent

by the ocean into the Mediterranean, at certain times aiding the

screw-propeller in the propulsion of the vessel.

Without this Atlantic current the _mare nostrum_, which lost through

atmospheric evaporation much more water than the rains and rivers could

bring to it, would become dry in a few centuries. It had been

calculated that it might disappear in about four hundred and seventy

years, leaving as evidence of its former existence a stratum, of salt

fifty-two meters thick.

In its deep bosom were born great and numerous springs of fresh water,

on the coast of Asia Minor, in Morea, Dalmatia and southern Italy; it

received besides a considerable contribution from the Black Sea, which

on returning to the Mediterranean accumulated from the rains and the

discharge of its rivers, more water than it lost by evaporation,

sending it across the Bosporous and the Dardenelles in the form of a

superficial current. But all these tributaries, enormous as they were,

sank into insignificance when compared with the renovation of the

oceanic currents.

The waters of the Atlantic poured into the Mediterranean so riotously

that neither contrary winds nor reflex motion could stop them.

Sailboats sometimes had to wait entire months for a strong breeze that

would enable them to conquer the impetuous mouth of the strait.

"I know that very well," said Toni. "Once going to Cuba we were in

sight of Gibraltar more than fifty days, going backwards and forwards

until a favorable wind enabled us to overcome the current and go out

into the great sea."

"Just such a current," added Ferragut, "was one of the causes that

hastened the decadence of the Mediterranean navies in the sixteenth

century. They had to go to the recently discovered Indies, and the

Catalan or the Genoese ships would remain here in the strait weeks and

weeks, struggling with the wind and the contrary current while the

Galicians, the Basques, the French and the English who had left their

ports at the same time were already nearing America.... Fortunately,

navigation by steam has now equalized all that."

Toni was silently admiring his captain. What he must have learned in

those books that filled the stateroom!...

It was in the Mediterranean that men had first entrusted themselves to

the waves. Civilization emanated from India, but the Asiatic peoples

were not able to master the art of navigation in their few seas whose

coasts were very far apart and where the monsoons of the Indian Ocean

blew six months together in one direction and six months in another.

Not until he reached the Mediterranean by overland emigration did the

white man wish to become a sailor. This sea that, compared with others,

is a simple lake sown with archipelagoes, offered a good school. To

whatever wind he might set his sails, he would be sure to reach some

hospitable shore. The fresh and irregular breezes revolved with the sun

at certain times of the year. The hurricane whirled across its bowl,

but never stopped. There were no tides. Its harbors and water-ways were

never dry. Its coasts and islands were often so close together that you

could see from one to the other; its lands, beloved of heaven, were

recipients of the sun's sweetest smiles.

Ferragut recalled the men who had plowed this sea in centuries so

remote that history makes no mention of them. The only traces of their

existence now extant were the _nuraghs_ of Sardinia and the _talayots_

of the Balearic Islands,--gigantic tables formed with blocks, barbaric

altars of enormous rocks which recalled the Celtic obelisks and

sepulchral monuments of the Breton coast. These obscure people had

passed from isle to isle, from the extreme of the Mediterranean to the

strait which is its door.

The captain could imagine their rude craft made from trunks of trees

roughly planed, propelled by one oar, or rather by the stroke of a

stick, with no other aid than a single rudimentary sail spread to the

fresh breeze. The navy of the first Europeans had been like that of the

savages of the oceanic islands whose flotillas of tree trunks are still

actually going from archipelago to archipelago.

Thus they had dared to sally forth from the coast, to lose sight of

land, to venture forth into the blue desert, advised of the existence

of islands by the vaporous knobs of the mountains which were outlined

on the horizon at sunset. Every advance of this hesitating marine over

the Mediterranean had represented greater expenditure of audacity and

energy than the discovery of America or the first voyage around the

world.... These primitive sailors did not go forth alone to their

adventures on the sea; they were nations _en masse_, they carried with

them families and animals. Once installed on an island, the tribes sent

forth fragments of their own life, going to colonize other nearby lands

across the waves.

Ulysses and his mate thought much about the great catastrophes ignored

by history--the tempest surprising the sailing exodus, entire fleets of

rough rafts swallowed up by the abyss in a few moments, families dying

clinging to their domestic animals,--whenever they attempted a new

advance of their rudimentary civilization.

In order to form some idea of what these little embarkations were,

Ferragut would recall the fleets of Homeric form, created many

centuries afterwards. The winds used to impose a religious terror on

those warriors of the sea, reunited in order to fall upon Troy. Their

ships remained chained an entire year in the harbor of Aulis and,

through fear of the hostility of the wind and in order to placate the

divinity of the Mediterranean, they sacrificed the life of a virgin.

All was danger and mystery in the kingdom of the waves. The abysses

roared, the rocks moaned; on the ledges were singing sirens who, with

their music, attracted ships in order to dash them to pieces. There was

not an island without its particular god, without its monster and

cyclops, or its magician contriving artifices.

Before domesticating the elements, mankind had attributed to them their

most superstitious fears.

A material factor had powerfully influenced the dangers of

Mediterranean life. The sand, moved by the caprice of the current, was

constantly ruining the villages or raising them to peaks of unexpected

prosperity. Cities celebrated in history were to-day no more than

streets of ruins at the foot of a hillock crowned with the remains of a

Phoenician, Roman, Byzantine or Saracen castle, or with a fortress

contemporary with the Crusades. In other centuries these had been

famous ports; before their walls had taken place naval battles; now

from their ruined acropolis one could scarcely see the Mediterranean

except as a light blue belt at the end of a low and marshy plain. The

accumulating sand had driven the sea back miles.... On the other hand,

inland cities had come to be places of embarkation because of the

continual perforation of the waves that were forcing their way in.

The wickedness of mankind had imitated the destructive work of nature.

When a maritime republic conquered a rival republic, the first thing

that it thought of was to obstruct its harbor with sand and stones in

order to divert the course of its waters so as to convert it into an

inland city, thereby ruining its fleets and its traffic. The Genoese,

triumphant over Pisa, stopped up its harbor with the sands of the Arno;

and the city of the first conquerors of Mallorca, of the navigators to

the Holy Land, of the Knights of St. Stephen, guardians of the

Mediterranean, came to be Pisa the Dead,--a settlement that knew the

sea only by hearsay.

"Sand," continued Ferragut, "has changed the commercial routes and

historic destinies of the Mediterranean."

Of the many deeds which had stretched along the scenes of the _mare

nostrum_, the most famous in the captain's opinion was the unheard-of

epic of Roger de Flor which he had known from childhood through the

stories told him by the poet Labarta, by the _Triton_, and by that poor

secretary who was always dreaming of the great past of the Catalan

marine.

All the world was now talking about the blockade of the Dardanelles.

The boats that furrowed the Mediterranean, merchant vessels as well as

battleships, were furthering the great military operation that was

developing opposite Gallipoli. The name of the long, narrow maritime

pass which separates Europe and Asia was in every mouth. To-day the

eyes of mankind were converged on this point just as, in remote

centuries, they had been fixed on the war of Troy.

"We also have been there," said Ferragut with pride. "The Dardanelles

have been frequented for many years by the Catalans and the Aragonese.

Gallipoli was one of our cities governed by the Valencian, Ramon

Muntaner."

And he began the story of the Almogavars in the Orient, that romantic

Odyssey across the ancient Asiatic provinces of the Roman Empire that

ended only with the founding of the Spanish duchy of Athens and

Neopatria in the city of Pericles and Minerva. The chronicles of the

Oriental Middle Ages, the books of Byzantine chivalry, the fantastic

tales of the Arab do not contain more improbable and dramatic

adventures than the warlike enterprises of these Argonauts coming from

the valleys of the Pyrenees, from the banks of the Ebro, and from the

Moorish gardens of Valencia.

"Eighty years," said Ferragut, terminating his account of the glorious

adventures of Roger de Flor around Gallipoli, "the Spanish duchy of

Athens and Neopatria flourished. Eighty years the Catalans governed

these lands."

And he pointed out on the horizon the place where the red haze of

distant promontories and mountains outlined the Grecian land.

Such a duchy was in reality a republic. Athens and Thebes were

administered in accordance with the laws of Aragon and its code was

"The book of Usages and Customs of the City of Barcelona." The Catalan

tongue ruled as the official language in the country of Demosthenes,

and the rude Almogavars married with the highest ladies of the country.

The Parthenon was still intact as in the glorious times of ancient

Athens. The august monument of Minerva converted into a Christian

church, had not undergone any other modification than that of seeing a

new goddess on its altars, _La Virgen Santisima_.

And in this thousand-year-old temple of sovereign beauty the _Te Deum_

was sung for eighty years in honor of the Aragonese dukes, and the

clergy preached in the Catalan tongue.

The republic of adventurers did not bother with constructing nor

creating. There does not remain on the Grecian land any trace of their

dominion,--edifices, seals, nor coins. Only a few noble families,

especially in the islands, took the Catalan patronym.

"Although they yet remember us confusedly, they do remember us," said

Ferragut. "'May the vengeance of the Catalans overtake you' was for

many centuries the worst of curses in Greece."

Thus terminated the most glorious and bloody of the Mediterranean

adventures of the Middle Ages,--the clash of western crudeness, almost

savage but frank and noble, against the refined malice and decadent

civilization of the Greeks,--childish and old at the same time,--which

survived in Byzantium.

Ferragut felt a pleasure in these relations of imperial splendor,

palaces of gold, epic encounters and furious frays, while his ship was

navigating through the black night and bounding over the dark sea

accompanied by the throbbing of machinery and the noisy thrum of the

screw, at times out of the water during the furious rocking from prow

to poop.

They were in the worst place in the Mediterranean where the winds

coming from the narrow passage of the Adriatic, from the steppes of

Asia Minor, from the African deserts and from the gap of Gibraltar

tempestuously mingled their atmospheric currents. The waters boxed in

among the numerous islands of the Grecian archipelago were writhing in

opposite directions, enraged and clashing against the ledges on the

coast with a retrograding violence that converted them into a furious

surge.

The captain, hooded like a friar and bowed before the wind that was

striving to snatch him from the bridge, kept talking and talking to his

mate, standing immovable near him and also covered with a waterproof

coat that was spouting moisture from every fold. The rain was streaking

with light, cobwebby lines the slaty darkness, of the night. The two

sailors felt as though icy nettles were falling upon face and hands

across the darkness.

Twice they anchored near the island of Tenedos, seeing the movable

archipelago of ironclads enveloped in floating veils of smoke. There

came to their ears, like incessant thunderings, the echo of the cannons

that were roaring at the entrance of the Dardanelles.

From afar off they perceived the sensation caused by the loss of some

English and French ships. The current of the Black Sea was the best

armor for the defenders of this aquatic defile against the attacks of

the fleets. They had only to throw into the strait a quantity of

floating mines and the blue river which slipped by the Dardanelles

would drag these toward the boats, destroying them with an infernal

explosion. On the coast of Tenedos the Hellenic women with their

floating hair were tossing flowers into the sea in memory of the

victims, with a theatrical grief similar to that of the heroines of

ancient Troy whose ramparts were buried in the hills opposite.

The third trip in mid-winter was a very hard one, and at the end of a

rainy night, when the faint streaks of dawn were beginning to dissipate

the sluggish shadows, the _Mare Nostrum_ arrived at the roadstead of

Salonica.

Only once had Ferragut been in this port, many years before, when it

still belonged to the Turks. At first he saw only some lowlands on

which twinkled the last gleams from the lighthouses. Then he recognized

the roadstead, a vast aquatic extension with a frame of sandy bars and

pools reflecting the uncertain life of daybreak. The recently awakened

sea-gulls were flying in groups over the immense marine bowl. At the

mouth of the Vardar the fresh-water fowls were starting up with noisy

cries, or standing on the edge of the bank immovable upon their long

legs.

Opposite the prow, a city was rising up out of the albuminous waves of

fog. In a bit of the clear, blue sky appeared various minarets, their

peaks sparkling with the fires of Aurora. As the vessel advanced, the

morning clouds vanished, and Salonica became entirely visible from the

cluster of huts at her wharves to the ancient castle topping the

heights, a fortress of ruddy towers, low and strong.

Near the water's edge, the entire length of the harbor, were the

European constructions, commercial houses with gold-lettered signs,

hotels, banks, moving-picture shows, concert halls, and a massive tower

with another smaller one upon it,--the so-called White Tower, a remnant

of the Byzantine fortifications.

In this European conglomerate were dark gaps, open passageways, the

mouths of sloping streets climbing to the hillock above, crossing the

Grecian, Mohammedan and Jewish quarters until they reached a table-land

covered with lofty edifices between dark points of cypress.

The religious diversity of the Oriental Mediterranean made Salonica

bristle with cupolas and towers. The Greek temple threw into prominence

the gilded bulbs of its roof; the Catholic church made the cross

glisten from the peak of its bell-tower; the synagogue of geometrical

forms overflowed in a succession of terraces; the Mohammedan minaret

formed a colonnade, white, sharp and slender. Modern life had added

factory chimneys and the arms of steam-cranes which gave an

anachronistic effect to this decoration of an Oriental harbor. Around

the city and its acropolis was the plain which lost itself in the

horizon,--a plain that Ferragut, on a former voyage, had seen desolate

and monotonous, with few houses and sparsely cultivated, with no other

Vegetation except that in the little oases of the Mohammedan cemetery.

This desert extended to Greece and Servia or to the borders of Bulgaria

and Turkey.

Now the brownish-gray steppes coming out from the fleecy fog of

daybreak were palpitating with new life. Thousands and thousands of men

were encamped around the city, occupying new villages made of canvas,

rectangular streets of tents, cities of wooden cabins, and

constructions as big as churches whose canvas walls were trembling

under the violent squalls of wind.

Through his glasses, Ulysses could see warlike hosts occupied with the

business of caring for strings of riderless horses that were going to

watering places, parks of artillery with their cannon upraised like the

tubes of a telescope, enormous birds with yellow wings that were trying

to skip along the earth's surface with a noisy bumping, gradually

reappearing in space with their waxy wings glistening in the first

shafts of sunlight.

All the allied army of the Orient returning from the bloody and

mistaken adventure of the Dardanelles or proceeding from Marseilles and

Gibraltar were massing themselves around Salonica.

The _Mare Nostrum_ anchored at the wharves filled with boxes and bales.

War had given a much greater activity to this port than in times of

peace. Steamers of all the allied and neutral flags were unloading

eatables and military materials.

They were coming from every continent, from every ocean, drawn thither

by the tremendous necessities of a modern army. They were unloading

harvests from entire provinces, unending herds of oxen and horses, tons

upon tons of steel, prepared for deadly work, and human crowds lacking

only a tail of women and children to be like the great martial exoduses

of history. Then taking on board the residuum of war, arms needing

repair, wounded men, they would begin their return trip.

These cargoes quietly transported through the darkness in spite of bad

times and the submarine threats, were preparing the ultimate victory.

Many of these steamers were formerly luxurious vessels, but now

commandeered by military necessity, were dirty and greasy and used as

cargo boats. Lined up, drowsing along the docks, ready to begin their

work, were new hospital ships, the more fortunate transatlantic liners

that still retained a certain trace of their former condition, quite

clean with a red cross painted on their sides and another on their

smokestacks.

Some of the transports had reached Salonica most miraculously. Their

crews would relate with the fatalistic serenity of men of the sea how

the torpedo had passed at a short distance from their hulls. A damaged

steamer lay on its side, with only the keel submerged, all its red

exterior exposed to the air; on its water-line there had opened a

breach, angular in outline. Upon looking from the deck into the depths

of its hold filled with water, there might be seen a great gash in its

side like the mouth of a luminous cavern.

Ferragut, while his boat was discharging its cargo under Toni's

supervision, passed his days ashore, visiting the city.

From the very first moment he was attracted by the narrow lanes of the

Turkish quarters--their white houses with protruding balconies covered

with latticed blinds like cages painted red; the little mosques with

their patios of cypresses and fountains of melancholy tinkling; the

tombs of Mohammedan dervishes in kiosks which block the streets under

the pale reflection of a lamp; the women veiled with their black

_firadjes_; and the old men who, silent and thoughtful under their

scarlet caps, pass along swaying to the staggering of the ass on which

they are mounted.

The great Roman way between Rome and Byzantium, the ancient road of the

blue flagstones, passed through a street of modern Salonica. Still a

part of its pavement remained and appeared gloriously obstructed by an

arch of triumph near whose weatherbeaten stone base were working

barefooted bootblacks wearing the scarlet fez.

An endless variety of uniforms filed through the streets, and this

diversity in attire as well as the ethnical difference in the men who

wore it was very noticeable. The soldiers of France and the British

Isles touched elbows with the foreign troops. The allied governments

had sent out a call to the professional combatants and volunteers of

their colonies. The black sharpshooters from the center of Africa

showed their smiling teeth of marble to the bronze giants with huge

white turbans who had come from India. The hunters from the glacial

plains of Canada were fraternizing with the volunteers from Australia

and New Zealand.

The cataclysm of the world war had dragged mankind from the antipodes

to this drowsy little corner of Greece where were again repeated the

invasions of remote centuries which had made ancient Thessalonica bow

to the conquest of Bulgarians, Byzantians, Saracens, and Turks.

The crews of the battleships in the roadstead had just added to this

medley of uniforms the monotonous note of their midnight blue, almost

like that of all the navies of the world.... And to the military

amalgamation was also added the picturesque variety of civil

dress,--the hybrid character of the neighborhood of Salonica, composed

of various races and religions that were mingled together without

confusing their individuality. Files of black tunics and hats with

brimless crowns passed through the streets, near the Catholic priests

or the rabbis with their long, loose gowns. In the outskirts might be

seen men almost naked, with no other clothing than a sheep-skin tunic,

guiding flocks of pigs, just like the shepherds in the Odyssey.

Dervishes, with their aspect of dementia, chanted motionless in a

crossway, enveloped in clouds of flies, awaiting the aid of the good

believers.

A great part of the population was composed of Israelitish descendants

of the Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal. The oldest and most

conservative were clad just like their remote ancestors with large

kaftans striped with striking colors. The women, when not imitating the

European fashions, usually wore a picturesque garment that recalled the

Spanish apparel of the Middle Ages. Here they were not mere brokers or

traders as in the rest of the world. The necessities of the city

dominated by them had made them pick up all the professions, becoming

artisans, fishermen, boatmen, porters and stevedores of the harbor.

They still kept the Castilian tongue as the language of the hearth like

an original flag whose waving reunited their scattered souls,--a

Castilian in the making, soft and without consistency like one

newly-born.

"Are you a Spaniard?" they said brokenly to Captain Ferragut. "My

ancestors were born there. It is a beautiful land."

But they did not wish to return to it. The country of their grandsires

inspired a certain amount of terror in them, and they feared that upon

seeing them return, the present-day Spaniards would banish the

bullfights and reëstablish the Inquisition, organizing an _auto de fé_

every Sunday.

Hearing them speak his language, the captain recalled a certain

date--1492. In the very year that Christopher Columbus had made his

first voyage, discovering the Indies, the Jews were expelled from the

Spanish peninsula, and Nebrija brought out the first Castilian grammar.

These Spaniards had left their native land months before their idiom

had been codified for the first time.

A sailor of Genoa, an old friend of Ulysses, took him to one of the

harbor cafés, where the merchant captains used to gather together.

These were the only ones wearing civilian clothes among the crowds of

land and sea officers who crowded the divans, obstructed the tables,

and grouped themselves before the doorway.

These Mediterranean vagabonds who oftentimes could not converse

together because of the diversity of their native idiom, instinctively

sought each other out, keeping near together in a fraternal silence.

Their passive heroism was in many instances more admirable than that of

the men of war, who were able to return blow for blow. All the officers

of the different fleets, seated near them, had at their disposition

cannon, ram, torpedo, great speed and aerial telegraphy. These valorous

muleteers of the sea defied the enemy in defenseless boats without

wireless and without cannons. Sometimes when searching all the men of

the crew, not a single revolver would be found among them, and yet

these brave fellows were daring the greatest adventures with

professional fatalism, and trusting to luck.

In the social groups of the cafe the captains would sometimes relate

their encounters on the sea, the unexpected appearance of a submarine,

the torpedo missing aim a few yards away, the flight at full speed

while being shelled by their pursuers. They would flame up for an

instant upon recalling their danger, and then relapse into indifference

and fatalism.

"If I've got to die by drowning," they would always conclude, "it would

be useless for me to try to avoid it."

And they would hasten their departure in order to return a month later

transporting a regular fortune in their vessel, completely alone,

preferring free and wary navigation to the journey in convoy, slipping

along from island to island and from coast to coast in order to outwit

the submersibles.

They were far more concerned about the state of their ships, that for

more than a year had not been cleaned, than about the dangers of

navigation. The captains of the great liners lamented their luxurious

staterooms converted into dormitories for the troops, their polished

decks that had been turned into stables, their dining-room where they

used to sit among people in dress suits and low-neck gowns, which had

now to be sprayed with every class of disinfectant in order to repel

the invasion of vermin, and the animal odors of so many men and beasts

crowded together.

The decline of the ships appeared to be reflected in the bearing of

their captains, more careless than before, worse dressed, with the

military slovenliness of the trench-fighter, and with calloused hands

as badly cared for as those of a stevedore.

Among the naval men also there were some who had completely neglected

their appearance. These were the commanders of "chaluteros," little

ocean fishing steamers armed with a quickfirer, which had come into the

Mediterranean to pursue the submersible. They wore oilskins and

tarpaulins, just like the North Sea fishermen, smacking of fuel and

tempestuous water. They would pass weeks and weeks on the sea whatever

the weather, sleeping in the bottom of the hold that smelled

offensively of rancid fish, keeping on patrol no matter how the tempest

might roar, bounding from wave to wave like a cork from a bottle, in

order to repeat the exploits of the ancient corsairs.

Ferragut had a relative in the army which was assembling at Salonica

making ready for the inland march. As he did not wish to go away

without seeing the lad he passed several mornings making investigations

in the offices of the general staff.

This relative was his nephew, a son of Blanes, the manufacturer of knit

goods, who had fled from Barcelona at the outbreak of the war with

other boys devoted to singing _Los Segadores_ and perturbing the

tranquillity of the "Consul of Spain" sent by Madrid. The son of the

pacific Catalan citizen had enlisted in the battalion of the Foreign

Legion made up to a great extent of Spaniards and Spanish-Americans.

Blanes had asked the captain to see his son. He was sad yet at the same

time proud of this romantic adventure blossoming out so unexpectedly in

the utilitarian and monotonous existence of the family. A boy that had

such a great future in his father's factory!... And then he had related

to Ulysses with shaking voice and moist eyes the achievements of his

son,--wounded in Champagne, two citations and the _Croix de Guerre_.

Who would ever have imagined that he could be such a hero!... Now his

battalion was in Salonica after having fought in the Dardanelles.

"See if you can't bring him back with you," repeated Blanes. "Tell him

that his mother is going to die of grief.... You can do so much!"

But all that Captain Ferragut could do was to obtain a permit and an

old automobile with which to visit the encampment of the legionaries.

The arid plain around Salonica was crossed by numerous roads. The

trains of artillery, the rosaries of automobiles, were rolling over

recently opened roads that the rain had converted into mire. The mud

was the worst calamity that could befall this plain, so extremely dusty

in dry weather.

Ferragut passed two long hours, going from encampment to encampment,

before reaching his destination. His vehicle frequently had to stop in

order to make way for interminable files of trucks. At other times

machine-guns, big guns dragged by tractors, and provision cars with

pyramids of sacks and boxes, blocked their road.

On all sides were thousands and thousands of soldiers of different

colors and races. The captain recalled the great invasions of

history--Xerxes, Alexander, Genghis-Khan, all the leaders of men who

had made their advance carrying villages _en masse_ behind their

horses, transforming the servants of the earth into fighters. There

lacked only the soldierly women, the swarms of children, to complete

exactly the resemblance to the martial exoduses of the past.

In half an hour more he was able to embrace his nephew, who was with

two other volunteers, an Andulasian and a South American,--the three

united by brotherhood of birth and by their continual familiarity with

death.

Ferragut took them to the canteen of a trader established near the

cantonment. The customers were seated under a sail-cloth awning before

boxes that had contained munitions and were converted into office

tables. This discomfort was surpassed by the prices. In no Palace Hotel

would drink have cost such an extraordinary sum.

In a few moments the sailor felt a fraternal affection for these three

youths to whom he gave the nickname of the "Three Musketeers," He

wished to treat them to the very best which the canteen afforded, so

the proprietor produced a bottle of champagne or rather ptisan from

Rheims, presenting it as though it were an elixir fabricated of gold.

The amber liquid, bubbling in the glasses, seemed to bring the three

youths back to their former existence. Boiled by the sun and the

inclemency of the weather, habituated to the hard life of war, they had

almost forgotten the softness and luxuriant conveniences of former

years.

Ulysses examined them attentively. In the course of the campaign they

had grown with youth's last rapid growth. Their arms were sticking out

to an ungainly degree from the sleeves of their coats, already too

short for them. The rude gymnastic exercise of the marches, with the

management of the shovel, had broadened their wrists and calloused

their hands.

The memory of his own son surged up in his memory. If only he could see

him thus, made into a soldier like his cousin! See him enduring all the

hardships of military existence ... but living!

In order not to be too greatly moved, he drank and paid close attention

to what the three youths were saying. Blanes, the legionary, as

romantic as the son of a merchant bent upon adventure should be, was

talking of the daring deeds of the troops of the Orient with all the

enthusiasm of his twenty-two years. There wasn't time to throw

themselves upon the Bulgarians with bayonets and arrive at

Adrianopolis. As a Catalan, this war in Macedonia was touching him very

close.

"We are going to avenge Roger de Flor," he said gravely.

And his uncle wanted to weep and to laugh before this simple faith

comparable only to the retrospective memory of the poet Labarta and

that village secretary who was always lamenting the remote defeat of

Ponza.

Blanes explained like a knight-errant the impulse that had called him

to the war. He wanted to fight for the liberty of all oppressed

nations, for the resurrection of all forgotten nationalities,--Poles,

Czechs, Jugo-Slavs.... And very simply, as though he were saying

something indisputable, he included Catalunia among the people who were

weeping tears of blood under the lashes of the tyrant. Thereupon his

companion, the Andalusian, burst forth indignantly. They passed their

time arguing furiously, exchanging insults and continually seeking each

other's company as though they couldn't live apart.

The Andalusian was not battling for the liberty of this or that people.

He had a longer range of vision. He was not near-sighted and egoistic

like his friend, "the Catalan." He was giving his blood in order that

the whole world might be free and that all monarchies should disappear.

"I am battling for France because it is the country of the great

Revolution. Its former history makes no difference to me, for we still

have kings of our own, but dating from the 14th of July, whatever

France is, I consider mine and the property of all mankind."

He stopped a few seconds, searching for a more concrete affirmation.

"I am fighting, Captain, because of Danton and Hoche."

Ferragut in his imagination saw the white, disheveled hair of Michelet

and the romantic foretop of Lamartine upon a double pedestal of volumes

which used to contain the story-poem of the Revolution.

"And I am also fighting for France," concluded the lad triumphantly,

"because it is the country of Victor Hugo."

Ulysses suspected that this twenty-year-old Republican was probably

hiding in his knapsack a blank book full of original verses written in

lead pencil.

The South American, accustomed to the disputes of his two companions,

looked at his black fingernails with the melancholy desperation of a

prophet contemplating his country in ruins. Blanes, the son of a

middle-class citizen, used to admire him for his more distinguished

family. The day of the mobilization he had gone to Paris in an

automobile of fifty horse-power to enroll as a volunteer; he and his

chauffeur had enlisted together. Then he had donated his luxurious

vehicle to the cause.

He had wished to be a soldier because all the young fellows in his club

were leaving for the war. Furthermore, he felt greatly flattered that

his latest sweetheart, seeing him in uniform, should devote a few tears

of admiration and astonishment to him. He had felt the necessity of

producing a touching effect upon all the ladies that had danced the

tango with him up to the week before. Besides that, the millions of his

grandfather, "the Galician," held rather tight by his father, the

Creole, were slipping through his hands.

"This experience is lasting too long, Captain."

In the beginning he had believed in a six months' war. The shells

didn't trouble him much; for him the terrible things were the vermin,

the impossibility of changing his clothing, and being deprived of his

daily bath. If he could ever have supposed!...

And he summed up his enthusiasm with this affirmation:

"I am fighting for France because it is a _chic_ country. Only in Paris

do the women know how to dress. Those Germans, no matter how much they

try, will always be very ordinary."

It was not necessary to add anything to this. All had been said.

The three recalled the hellish months suffered recently in the

Dardanelles, in a space of three miles conquered by the bayonet. A rain

of projectiles had fallen incessantly upon them. They had had to live

underground like moles and, even so, the explosion of the great shells

sometimes reached them.

In this tongue of land opposite Troy through which had slipped the

remote history of humanity, their shovels, on opening the trenches, had

stumbled upon the rarest finds. One day Blanes and his companions had

excavated pitchers, statuettes, and plates centuries old. At other

times, when opening trenches that had served as cemeteries for Turks,

they had hacked into repulsive bits of pulp exhaling an insufferable

odor. Self-defense had obliged the legionaries to live with their faces

on a level with the corpses that were piled up in the vertical yard of

removed earth.

"The dead are like the truffles in a pie," said the South American. "An

entire day I had to remain with my nose touching the intestines of a

Turk who had died two weeks before.... No, war is not _chic_, Captain,

no matter how much they talk of heroism and sublime things in the

newspapers and books."

Ulysses wished to see the three musketeers again before leaving

Salonica, but the battalion had broken camp and was now situated

several kilometers further inland, opposite the first Bulgarian lines.

The enthusiastic Blanes had already fired his gun against the assassins

of Roger de Flor.

In the middle of November the _Mare Nostrum_ arrived at Marseilles. Its

captain always felt a certain admiration upon doubling Cape Croisette,

and noting the vast maritime curves opening out before the prow. In the

center of it was an abrupt and bare hill, jutting into the sea,

sustaining on its peak the basilica and square-sided tower of

_Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde._

Marseilles was the metropolis of the Mediterranean, the terminal for

all the navigators of the _mare nostrum_. In its bay with choppy waves

were various yellowish islands fringed with foam and upon one of these

the strong towers of the romantic _Château d'If_.

All the crew, from Ferragut down to the lowest seaman, used to look

upon this city somewhat as their own when they saw, appearing in the

background of the bay, its forests of masts and its conglomeration of

gray edifices upon which sparkled the Byzantian domes of the new

cathedral. Around Marseilles there opened out a semi-circle of dry and

barren heights brightly colored by the sun of Provence and spotted by

white cottages and hamlets, and the pleasure villas of the merchants of

the city. On beyond this semi-circle the horizon was bounded by an

amphitheater of rugged and gloomy mountains.

On former trips the sight of the gigantic gilded Virgin which glistened

like a shaft of fire on the top of _Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde_ shed an

atmosphere of joy over the bridge of the vessel.

"Marseilles, Toni," the captain used to say gayly. "I invite you to a

_bouillabaisse_ at Pascal's."

And Toni's hairy countenance would break into a greedy smile, seeing in

anticipation the famous restaurant of the port, its twilight shadows

smelling of shell-fish and spicy sauces, and upon the table the deep

dish of fish with its succulent broth tinged with saffron.

But now Ulysses had lost his vigorous joy in living. He looked at the

city with kindly but sad eyes. He could see himself disembarking there

that last time, sick, without will-power, overwhelmed by the tragic

disappearance of his son.

The _Mare Nostrum_ approached the mouth of the old harbor having at its

right the batteries of the _Phare_. This old port was the most

interesting souvenir of ancient Marseilles, penetrating like an aquatic

knife into the heart of its clustered homes. The city extended along

the wharves. It was an enormous stretch of water into which all the

streets flowed; but its area was now so insufficient for the maritime

traffic that eight new harbors were gradually covering the north shore

of the bay.

An interminable jetty, a breakwater longer than the city itself, was

parallel to the coast, and in the space between the shore and this

obstacle which made the waves foam and roar were eight roomy

communicating harbors stretching from Joliette at the entrance to the

one which, farthest away, is connected inland by the great subterranean

canal, putting the city in communication with the Rhone.

Ferragut had seen anchored in this succession of harbors the navies of

every land and even of every epoch. Near to the enormous transatlantic

liners were some very ancient tartans and some Greek boats, heavy and

of archaic form, which recalled the fleets described in the Iliad.

On the wharves swarmed all kinds of Mediterranean men,--Greeks from the

continent and from the islands, Levantines from the coast of Asia,

Spaniards, Italians, Algerians, Moroccans, Egyptians. Many had kept

their original costume and to this varied picturesque garb was united a

diversity of tongues, some of them mysterious and well-nigh extinct. As

though infected by the oral confusion, the French themselves began to

forget their native language, speaking the dialect of Marseilles, which

preserves indelible traces of its Greek origin.

The _Mare Nostrum_ crossed the outer port, the inner harbor of

Joliette, and slipped slowly along past groups of pedestrians and carts

that were waiting the closing of the steel drawbridge now opening

before their prow. Then they cast anchor in the basin of Arenc near the

docks.

When Ferragut could go ashore he noticed the great transformation which

this port had undergone in war times.

The traffic of the times of peace with its infinite variety of wares no

longer existed. On the wharves there were piled up only the monotonous

and uniform loads of provisions and war material.

The legions of longshoremen had also disappeared. They were all in the

trenches. The sidewalks were now swept by women, and squads of

Senegalese sharpshooters were unloading the cargoes,--shivering with

cold in the sunny winter days, and bent double as though dying under

the rain or the breeze of the Mistral. They were working with red caps

pulled down over their ears, and at the slightest suspension of their

labor would hasten to put their hands in the pockets of their coats.

Sometimes when formed in vociferating groups around a case that four

men could have moved in ordinary times, the passing of a woman or a

vehicle would make them neglect their work, their diabolical faces

filled with childish curiosity.

The unloaded cargoes piled up the same articles on the principal

docks,--wheat, much wheat, sulphur and saltpeter for the composition of

explosive material. On other piers were lined up, by the thousands,

pairs of gray wheels, the support of cannons and trucks; boxes as big

as dwellings that contained aeroplanes; huge pieces of steel that

served as scaffolding for heavy artillery; great boxes of guns and

cartridges; huge cases of preserved food and sanitary supplies,--all

the provisioning of the army struggling in the extreme end of the

Mediterranean.

Various squads of men, preceded and followed by bayonets, were marching

with rhythmic tread from one port to another. They were German

prisoners,--rosy and happy, in spite of their captivity, still wearing

their uniforms of green cabbage color, with round caps on their shaved

heads. They were going to work on the vessels, loading and unloading

the material that was to serve for the extermination of their

compatriots and friends.

The ships at the docks seemed to be increasing in size, for on arrival

they had extended only a few yards above the wharf; but now that their

cargo was piled up on land, they appeared like towering fortresses.

Two-thirds of the hull, usually hidden in the water, were now in

evidence, showing the bright red of their curved shell. Only the keel

kept itself in the water. The upper third, that which remained visible

above the line of flotation in ordinary times, was now a simple black

cornice that capped the long purple walls. The masts and smokestacks

diminished by this transformation appeared to belong to other smaller

boats.

Each of these merchant and peaceful steamers carried a quickfirer at

the stern in order to protect itself from the submarine corsairs.

England and France had mobilized their tramp ships and were beginning

to supply them with means of defense. Some of them had not been able to

mount their cannon upon a fixed gun carriage, and so carried a field

gun with its mouth sticking out between the wheels bolted to the deck.

The captain in all his strolls invariably felt attracted by the famous

Cannebiere, that engulfing roadway which sucks in the entire activity

of Marseilles.

Some days a fresh and violent wind would eddy through, littering it

with dust and papers, and the waiters of the cafes would have to furl

the great awnings as though they were the sails of a vessel. The

Mistral was approaching and every owner of an establishment was

ordering this maneuver in order to withstand the icy hurricane that

overturns tables, snatches away chairs, and carries off everything

which is not secured with marine cables.

To Ferragut this famous avenue of Marseilles was a reminder of the

antechamber of Salonica. The same types from the army of the East

crowded its sidewalks,--English dressed in khaki, Canadians and

Australians in hats with up-turned brims, tall, slender Hindoos with

coppery complexion and thick fan-shaped beards, Senegalese

sharpshooters of a glistening black, and Anammite marksmen with round

yellow countenance and eyes forming a triangle. There was a continual

procession of dark trucks driven by soldiers, automobiles full of

officers, droves of mules coming from Spain that were going to be

shipped to the Orient, leaving behind their quick-trotting hoofs a

pungent and penetrating smell of the stable.

The old harbor attracted Ferragut because of its antiquity which was

almost as remote as that of the first Mediterranean navigations. On

passing before the Palace of the Bourse he shot a glance at the statue

of the two great Marseillaise navigators,--Eutymenes and Pytas,--the

most remote ancestors of Mediterranean navigators. One had explored the

coast of Senegambia, the other had gone further up to Ireland and the

Orkney Islands.

The ancient Greek colony had been, during long centuries, supplanted by

others,--Venice, Genoa and Barcelona having held it in humble

subjection. But when those had fallen and its hour of prosperity

returned, that prosperity was accompanied by all the advantages of the

present day. Steam machinery had been invented and boats were easily

able to overcome the obstacles of the Strait of Cadiz without being

obliged to wait weeks until the violence of the current sent by the

Atlantic should abate. Industrialism was born and inland factories sent

forward, over the recently-installed railroads, a downpour of products

that the fleets were transporting to all the Mediterranean towns.

Finally, upon the opening of the Isthmus of Suez, the city unfolded in

a prodigious way, becoming a world port, putting itself in touch with

the entire earth, multiplying its harbors, which became gigantic marine

sheepfolds where vessels of every flag were gathered together in herds.

The old port, boxed in the city, changed its aspect according to the

time and state of the atmosphere. On calm mornings it was a yellowish

green and smelled slightly of stale water,--organic water, animal

water. The oyster stands established on its wharfs appeared sprinkled

with this water impregnated by shell fish.

On the days of a strong wind the waters turned a terrible dark green,

forming choppy and continuous waves with a light yellowish foam. The

boats would begin to dance, creaking and tugging at their hawsers.

Between their hulls and the vertical surface of the wharfs would be

formed mountains of restless rubbish eaten underneath by the fish and

pecked above by the sea-gulls.

Ferragut saw the swift torpedo destroyers dancing at the slightest

undulation upon their cables of twisted steel, and examined the

improvised submarine-chasers, robust and short little steamers,

constructed for fishing, that carried quickfirers on their prows. All

these vessels were painted a metallic gray to make them

indistinguishable from the color of the water, and were going in and

out of the harbor like sentinels changing watch.

They mounted guard out on the high sea beyond the rocky and desert

islands that closed the bay of Marseilles, accosting the incoming ships

in order to recognize their nationality or running at full speed, with

their wisps of horizontal smoke toward the point where they expected to

surprise the periscope of the enemy hidden between two waters. There

was no weather bad enough to terrify them or make them drowsy. In the

wildest storms they kept the coast in view, leaping from wave to wave,

and only when others came to relieve them would they return to the old

port to rest a few hours at the entrance of the Cannebière.

The narrow passageways of the right bank attracted Ferragut. This was

ancient Marseilles in which may still be seen some ruined palaces of

the merchants and privateers of other centuries. On these narrow and

filthy slopes lived the bedizened and dismal prostitutes of the entire

maritime city.

In this district were huddled together the warriors of the

French-African colonies, impelled by their ardor of race and by their

desire to free themselves gluttonously from the restrictions of their

Mahommedan country where the women live in jealous seclusion. On every

corner were groups of Moroccan infantry, recently disembarked or

convalescing from wounds, young soldiers with red caps and long cloaks

of mustard yellow. The Zouaves of Algiers conversed with them in a

Spanish spattered with Arabian and French. Negro youths who worked as

stokers in the vessels, came up the steep, narrow streets with eyes

sparkling restlessly as though contemplating wholesale rapine. Under

the doorways disappeared grave Moorish horsemen, trailing long garments

fastened at the head in a ball of whiteness, or garbed in purplish

mantles, with sharp pointed hoods that gave them the aspect of bearded,

crimson-clad monks.

The captain went through the upper end of these streets, stopping

appreciatively to note the rude contrast which they made with their

terminal vista. Almost all descended to the old harbor with a ditch of

dirty water in the middle of the gutter that dribbled from stone to

stone. They were dark as the tubes of a telescope, and at the end of

these evil smelling ditches occupied by abandoned womanhood, there

opened out a great space of light and blue color where could be seen

little white sailboats, anchored at the foot of the hill, a sheet of

sparkling water and the houses of the opposite wharf diminished

by the distance. Through other gaps appeared the mountain of

_Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde_ with its sharp pointed Basilica topped by its

gleaming statue, like an immovable, twisted tongue of flame. Sometimes

a torpedo destroyer entering the old harbor could be seen slipping by

the mouth of one of these passageways as shadowy as though passing

before the glass of a telescope.

Feeling fatigued by the bad smells and vicious misery of the old

district, the sailor returned to the center of the city, strolling

among the trees and flower stands of the avenues....

One evening while awaiting with others a street car in the Cannebiere,

he turned his head with a presentiment that some one was looking at his

back.

Sure enough! He saw behind him on the edge of the sidewalk an

elegantly-dressed, clean-shaven gentleman whose aspect was that of an

Englishman careful of his personal appearance. The dapper man had

stopped in surprise as though he might have just recognized Ferragut.

The two exchanged glances without awakening the slightest echo in the

captain's memory.... He could not recall this man. He was almost sure

of never having seen him before. His shaven face, his eyes of a

metallic gray, his elegant pomposity did not enlighten the Spaniard's

memory. Perhaps the unknown had made a mistake.

This must have been the case, judging by the rapidity with which he

withdrew his glance from Ferragut and went hastily away.

The captain attached no importance to this encounter. He had already

forgotten it when, taking the car but a few minutes later, it recurred

to him in a new light. The face of the Englishman presented itself to

his imagination with the distinct relief of reality. He could see it

more clearly than in the dying splendor of the Cannebière.... He passed

with indifference over his features; in reality he had seen them for

the first time. But the eyes!... He knew those eyes perfectly. They had

often exchanged glances with him. Where?... When?...

The memory of this man accompanied him as an obsession even to his ship

without giving the slightest answer to his questioning. Then, finding

himself on board with Toni and the third officer, he again forgot it.

Upon going ashore on the following days, his memory invariably

experienced the same phenomena. The captain would be going through the

city without any thought of that individual, but on entering the

Cannebière the same remembrance, followed by an inexplicable anxiety,

would again surge up in his mind.

"I wonder where my Englishman is now," he would think. "Where have I

seen him before?... Because there is no doubt that we are acquainted

with each other."

From that time on, he would look curiously at all the passersby and

sometimes would hasten his step in order to examine more closely some

one whose back resembled the haunting unknown. One afternoon he felt

sure that he recognized him in a hired carriage whose horse was going

at a lively trot through one of the avenues, but when he tried to

follow it the vehicle had disappeared into a nearby street.

Some days passed by and the captain completely forgot the meeting.

Other affairs more real and immediate were demanding his attention. His

boat was ready; they were going to send it to England in order to load

it with munitions destined for the army of the Orient.

The morning of its departure he went ashore without any thought of

going to the center of the city.

In one of the wharf streets there was a barber shop frequented by

Spanish captains. The picturesque chatter of the barber, born in

Cartagena, the gay, brilliant chromos on the walls representing

bullfights, the newspapers from Madrid, forgotten on the divans, and a

guitar in one corner made this shop a little bit of Spain for the

rovers of the Mediterranean.

Before sailing, Ferragut wished to have his beard clipped by this

verbose master. When, an hour later, he left the barber-shop, tearing

himself away from the interminable farewells of the proprietor, he

passed down a broad street, lonely and silent, between two rows of

docks.

The steel-barred gates were closed and locked. The warehouses, empty

and resounding as the naves of a cathedral, still exhaled the strong

odors of the wares which they had kept in times of peace,--vanilla,

cinnamon, rolls of leather, nitrates and phosphates for chemical

fertilizers.

In all the long street he saw only one man, coming toward him with his

back to the inner harbor. Between the two long walls of brick appeared

in the background the wharf with its mountains of merchandise, its

squadrons of black stevedores, wagons and carts. On beyond were the

hulls of the ships sustaining their grove of masts and smokestacks and,

at the extreme end, the yellow breakwater and the sky recently washed

by the rain, with flocks of little clouds as white and placid as silky

sheep.

The man who was returning from the dock and walking along with his eyes

fixed on Ferragut suddenly stopped and, turning upon his tracks,

returned again to the quay.... This movement awakened the captain's

curiosity, sharpening his senses. Suddenly he had a presentiment that

this pedestrian was his Englishman, though dressed differently and with

less elegance. He could only see his rapidly disappearing back, but his

instinct in this moment was superior to his eyes.... He did not need to

look further.... It was the Englishman.

And without knowing why, he hastened his steps in order to catch up

with him. Then he broke into a run, finding that he was alone in the

street, and that the other one had disappeared around the corner.

When Ferragut reached the harbor he could see him hastening away with

an elastic step which amounted almost to flight. Before him was a ridge

of bundles piled up in uneven rows. He was going to lose sight of him;

a minute later it would be impossible to find him.

The captain hesitated. "What motive have I for pursuing this unknown

person?..." And just as he was formulating this question, the other one

slowed down a little in order to turn his head and see if he were still

being followed.

Suddenly a rapid phenomenal transformation took place in Ferragut. He

had not recognized this man's glance when he had almost run into him on

the sidewalk of the Cannebiere, and now that there was between the two

a distance of some fifty yards, now that the other was fleeing and

showing only a fugitive profile, the captain identified him despite the

fact that he could not distinguish him clearly at such a distance.

With a sharp click a curtain of his memory seemed to be dashed aside,

letting in torrents of light.... It was the counterfeit Russian count,

he was sure of that,--shaven and disguised, who undoubtedly was

"operating" in Marseilles, directing new services, months after having

prepared the entrance of the submersibles into the Mediterranean.

Surprise held Ferragut spellbound. With the same imaginative rapidity

with which a drowning person giddily recalls all the scenes of his

former life, the captain now beheld his infamous existence in Naples,

his expedition in the schooner carrying supplies to the submarines and

then the torpedo which had opened a breach in the _Californian_.... And

this man, perhaps, was the one who had made his poor son fly through

the air in countless pieces!...

He also saw his uncle, the _Triton_, just as when a little chap he used

to listen to him in the harbor of Valencia. He recalled his story of a

certain night of Egyptian orgy in a low café in Alexandria where he had

had to "sting" a man with his dagger in order to force his way.

Instinct made him carry his hand to his belt. Nothing!... He cursed

modern life and its uncertain securities, which permit men to go from

one side of the world to the other confident, disarmed, without means

of attack. In other ports he would have come ashore with a revolver in

the pocket of his trousers.... But in Marseilles! He was not even

carrying a penknife; he had only his fists.... At that moment he would

have given his entire vessel, his life even, for an instrument that

would enable him to kill ... kill with one blow!...

The bloodthirsty vehemence of the Mediterranean was overwhelming him.

To kill!... He did not know how he was going to do it, but he must

kill.

The first thing was to prevent the escape of his enemy. He was going to

fall upon him with his fists, with his teeth, staging a prehistoric

struggle,--the animal fight before mankind had invented the club.

Perhaps that other man was hiding firearms and might kill him; but he,

in his superb vengeance, could see only the death of the enemy,

repelling all fear.

In order that his victim might not get out of his sight, he ran toward

him without any dissimulation whatever, as though he might have been in

the desert, at full speed. The instinct of attack made him stoop, grasp

a piece of wood lying on the ground,--a kind of rustic handspike,--and

armed in this primitive fashion he continued his race.

All this had lasted but a few seconds. The other one, perceiving the

hostile pursuit, was also running frankly, disappearing among the hills

of packages.

The captain saw confusedly that some shadows were leaping around him,

preventing his progress. His eyes that were seeing everything red

finally managed to distinguish a few black faces and some white

ones.... They were the soldiers and civilian stevedores, alarmed by the

aspect of this man who was running like a lunatic.

He uttered a curse upon finding himself stopped. With the instinct of

the multitude, these people were only concerned with the aggressor,

letting the one who was fleeing go free. Ferragut could not keep his

wrath bottled up on that account. He had to reveal his secret.

"He is a spy!... A _Boche_ spy!..."

He said this in a dull, disjointed voice and never did his word of

command obtain such a noisy echo.

"A spy!..."

The cry made men rise up as though vomited forth by the earth; from

mouth to mouth it leaped, repeating itself incessantly, penetrating

through the docks and the boats, vibrating even beyond the reach of the

eye, permeating everywhere with the confusion and rapidity of sound

waves. "A spy!..." Men came running with redoubled agility; the

stevedores were abandoning their loads in order to join the pursuit;

people were leaping from the steamers in order to unite in the human

hunt.

The author of the noisy alarm, he who had given the cry, saw himself

outdistanced and ignored by the pursuing streams of people which he had

just called forth. Ferragut, always running, remained behind the negro

sharpshooters, the stevedores, the harbor guard, the seamen that were

hastening from all sides crowding in the alleyways between the boxes

and bundles.... They were like the greyhounds that follow the windings

of the forest, making the stag come out in the open field, like the

ferrets that slip along through the subterranean valleys, obliging the

hare to return to the light of day. The fugitive, surrounded in a

labyrinth of passageways, colliding with enemies at every turn, came

running out through the opposite end and continued his race the whole

length of the wharf. The chase lasted but a few instants after coming

out on ground free of obstacles. "A spy!..." The voice, more rapid than

the legs, out distanced him. The cries of the pursuers warned the

people who were working afar off, without understanding the alarm.

Suddenly the fugitive was within a concave semi-circle of men who were

awaiting him firmly, and a convex semi-circle following his footsteps

in irregular pursuit. The two multitudes, closing their extremes,

united and the spy was a prisoner.

Ferragut saw that he was intensely pale, panting, casting his eyes

around him with the expression of an animal at bay, but still thinking

of the possibility of defending himself.

His right hand was feeling around one of his pockets. Perhaps he was

going to draw out a revolver in order to die, defending himself. A

negro nearby raised a beam of wood which he was grasping as a club. The

spy's hand, displaying a bit of paper between the fingers, was hastily

raised toward his mouth; but the negro's blow, suspended in the air,

fell upon his arm, making it hang inert. The spy bit his lips in order

to keep back a roar of pain.

The paper had rolled upon the ground and several hands at once tried to

pick it up. A petty officer smoothed it out before examining it. It was

a piece of thin paper sketched with the outline of the Mediterranean.

The entire sea was laid out in squares like a chess board and in the

center of each of these squares there was a number. These squares were

charted sections whose numbers made the submarines know, by wireless,

where they were to lie in wait for the allied vessels and torpedo them.

Another officer explained rapidly to the people crowding close, the

importance of the discovery. "Indeed he was a spy!" This affirmation

awakened the joy of capture and that impulsive desire for vengeance

that at certain times crazes a crowd.

The men from the boats were the most furious, for the very reason that

they were constantly encountering the treacherous submarine traps. "Ah,

the bandit!..." Many cudgelings fell upon him, making him stagger under

their blows.

When the prisoner was protected by the breasts of various sub-officers,

Ferragut could see him close by, with one temple spotted with blood and

a cold and haughty expression in his eye. Then he realized that the

prisoner had dyed his hair.

He had fled in order to save himself; he had shown himself humble and

timorous upon being approached, believing that it would still be

possible to lie out of it. But the paper that he had tried to hide in

his mouth was now in the hands of the enemy.... It was useless to

pretend longer!...

And he drew himself up proudly like every army man who considers his

death certain. The officer of the military caste reappeared, looking

haughtily at his unknown pursuers, imploring protection only from the

kepis with its band of gold.

Upon discovering Ferragut, he surveyed him fixedly with a glacial and

disdainful insolence. His lips also curled with an expression of

contempt.

They said nothing, but the captain surmised his soundless words. They

were insults. It was the insult of the man of the superior hierarchy to

his faithless servant; the pride of the noble official who accuses

himself for having trusted in the loyalty of a simple merchant marine.

"Traitor!... Traitor!" his insolent eyes and murmuring, voiceless lips

seemed to be saying.

Ulysses became furious before this haughtiness, but his wrath was cold

and self-contained on seeing the enemy deprived of defense.

He advanced toward the prisoner, like one of the many who were

insulting him, shaking his fist at him. His glance sustained that of

the German and he spoke to him in Spanish with a dull voice.

"My son.... My only son was blown to a thousand atoms by the torpedoing

of the _Californian_!"

These words made the spy change expression. His lips separated,

emitting a slight exclamation of surprise.

"Ah!..."

The arrogant light in his pupils faded away. Then he lowered his eyes

and soon after hung his head. The vociferating crowd was shoving and

carrying him along without taking into consideration the man who had

given the alarm and begun the chase.

That very afternoon the _Mare Nostrum_ sailed from Marseilles.