Tired of his excursion through the dead city, Ferragut seated himself on a stone bench among the ruins of the temple, and looked over the map spread out on his knees, enjoying the titles with which the most interesting constructions had been designated because of a mosaic or a painting,—Villa of Diomedes, the House of Meleager, of the wounded Adonis, of the Labryinth, of the Faun, of the Black Wall. The names of the streets were not less interesting: The Road of the Hot Baths, the Road of the Tombs, the Road of Abundance, the Road of the Theaters.
The sound of footsteps made the sailor raise his head. Two ladies were passing, preceded by a guide. One was tall, with a firm tread. They were wearing face-veils and still another larger veil crossing behind and coming over the arms like a shawl. Ferragut surmised a great difference in the ages of the two. The stout one was moving along with an assumed gravity. Her step was quick, but with a certain authority she planted on the ground her large feet, loosely shod and with low heels. The younger one, taller and more slender, tripping onwards with little steps like a bird that only knows how to fly, was teetering along on high heels.
The two looked uneasily at this man appearing so unexpectedly among the ruins. They had the preoccupied and timorous air of those going to a forbidden place or meditating a bad action. Their first movement was an impulse to go back, but the guide continued on his way so imperturbably that they followed on.
Ferragut smiled. He knew where they were going. The little cross street of the Lupanares was near. The guard would open a door, remaining on watch with dramatic anxiety as though he were endangering his job by this favor in exchange for a tip. And the two ladies were about to see some tarnished, clumsy paintings showing nothing new or original in the world,—nude, yellowish figures, just alike at first glance with no other novelty than an exaggerated emphasis on sex distinction.
Half an hour afterwards Ulysses abandoned his bench, for his eyes had tired of the severe monotony of the ruins. In the street of the Hot Baths (Thermae), he again visited the house of the tragic poet. Then he admired that of Pansa, the largest and most luxurious in the city. This Pansa had undoubtedly been the most pretentious citizen of Pompeii. His dwelling occupied an entire block. The xystus, or garden, adjoining the house had been laid out like a Grecian landscape with cypresses and laurels between squares of roses and violets.
Following along the exterior wall of the garden, Ferragut again met the two ladies. They were looking at the flowers across the bars of the door. The younger one was expressing in English her admiration for some roses that were flinging their royal color around the pedestal of an old faun.
Ulysses felt an irresistible desire to show off in a gallant and intrepid fashion. He wished to pay the two foreign ladies some theatrical homage. He felt that necessity of attracting attention in some gay and dashing way that characterizes Spaniards far from home.
With the agility of a mast-climber, he leaped the garden wall in one bound. The two ladies gave a cry of surprise, as though they had witnessed some impossible maneuver. This audacity appeared to upset the ideas of the older one, accustomed to life in disciplined towns that rigidly respect every established prohibition. Her first movement was of flight, so as not to be mixed up in the escapade of this stranger. But after a few steps she paused. The younger one was smiling, looking at the wall, and as the captain reappeared upon it she almost clapped with enthusiasm as though applauding a dangerous acrobatic feat.
Believing them to be English, the sailor spoke in that language when presenting to them the two roses that he carried in his hand. They were merely flowers, like all others, grown in a land like other lands, but the frame of the thousand-year-old wall, the propinquity of the alcoves and drinking shops of a house built by Pansa in the time of the first Caesars, gave them the interest of roses two thousand years old, miraculously preserved.
The largest and most luxuriant he gave to the young woman, and she accepted it smilingly as her natural right. Her companion as soon as she acknowledged the gift, appeared impatient to get away from the stranger. "Thanks!… Thanks!" And she pushed along the other one, who had not yet finished smiling,—the two going hurriedly away. A corner adorned with a fountain soon hid their steps.
When Ulysses, after a light lunch in the restaurant of Diomedes, came running to the station, the train was just about to start. He was planning to see Salerno, celebrated in the Middle Ages for its physicians and navigators, and then the ruined temples of Paestum. As he climbed into the nearest coach, he fancied that he spied the veils of the two ladies vanishing behind a little door that was just closing.
In the station of Salerno he again caught sight of them in a distant hack disappearing in a neighboring street, and during the afternoon he frequently ran across them as travelers will in a small city. They met one another in the harbor, so fatally threatened with bars of moving sand; they saw each other in the gardens bordering the sea, near the monument of Carlo Pisacana, the romantic duke of San Juan, a precursor of Garibaldi, who died in extreme youth for the liberty of Italy.
The young woman smiled whenever she met him. Her companion passed on with a casual glance, trying to ignore his presence.
At night they saw more of each other, as they were stopping at the same hotel, a lodging house like all those in the small ports with excellent meals and dirty rooms. They had adjoining tables, and after a coldly acknowledged greeting, Ferragut had a good look at the two ladies who were speaking very little and in a low tone, fearing to be overheard by their neighbor.
Upon looking at the older one without her veils, he found his original impression confirmed. In other times, perhaps, she might have destroyed the peace of male admirers, but she could now continue her hostile and distant attitude with impunity. The captain was not at all affected by it.
She must have been over forty. Her excessive flesh still had a certain freshness, the result of hygienic care and gymnastic exercise. On the other hand, her white complexion showed underneath it a yellowish subcutaneous, granular condition that looked as though made up of particles of bran. Upon her ancient switch, reddish in tone, were piled artificial curls hiding bald spots and gray hairs. Her green pupils, when freed from their near-sighted glasses, had the tranquil opacity of ox-eyes; but the minute these gold-mounted crystals were placed between her and the outer world, the two glaucous drops took on a sharpness which fairly perforated persons and objects. At other times they appeared a glacial and haughty void, like the circle that a sword traces.
The young woman was less intractable. She appeared to be smiling out of the corners of her eyes, while her back was half turned to Ferragut, acknowledging his mute and scrutinizing admiration. She had her hair loosely arranged like a woman who is not afraid of naturalness in her coiffure, and lets her waving locks peep out under her hat in all their original willfulness.
She was a dainty ash-blonde with a high color in striking contrast to her general delicacy of tone. Her great, almond-shaped, black eyes appeared like those of an Oriental dancer, and were yet further prolonged by skillful retouching of shadows that augmented the seductive contrast with her dull gold hair.
The whiteness of her skin became very evident when her arm showed outside her sleeve and at the opening of her low-necked dress. But this whiteness was now temporarily effaced by a ruddy mask. Her vigorous beauty had been fearlessly exposed to the sun and the breath of the sea, and a scarlet triangle emphasized the sweet curve of her bosom, accentuating the low cut of her gown. Upon her sunburned throat a necklace of pearls hung in moonlight drops. Further up, in a face tanned by the inclemency of the weather, the mouth parted its two scarlet, bow-shaped lips with an audacious and serene smile, showing the reflection of her strong and handsome teeth.
Ferragut reviewed his past without finding a single woman that could be exactly compared with her. The distant perfume of her person and her genteel elegance reminded him of certain dubious ladies who were always traveling alone when he was captain of the transatlantic liners. But these acquaintances had been so rapid and were so far away!… Never in his history as a world-rover had he had the good luck to chance upon a woman just like this one.
Again exchanging glances with her, he felt that throb in the heart and flash in the brain which accompany a lightning-like and unexpected discovery… He had known that woman: he could not recall where he had seen her, but he was sure that he must have known her.
Her face told his memory nothing, but those eyes had exchanged glances with his on other occasions. In vain he reflected, concentrating his thoughts…. And the queer thing about it all was that, by some mysterious perception, he became absolutely certain that she was doing the same thing at the very same moment. She also had recognized him, and was evidently making great effort to give him a name and place in her memory. He had only to notice the frequency with which she turned her eyes toward him and her new smile, more confident and spontaneous, such as she would give to an old friend.
Had her dragon not been present, they would have talked together enthusiastically, instinctively, like two restless, curious beings wishing to clear up the mystery; but the gold-rimmed glasses were always gleaming authoritatively and inimically, coming between the two. Several times the fat lady spoke in a language that reached Ferragut confusedly and which was not English, and their dinner was hardly finished before they disappeared just as they had done in the streets of Pompeii,—the older one evidently influencing the other with her iron will.
The following morning they all met again in a first-class coach in the station of Salerno. Undoubtedly they had the same destination. As Ferragut began to greet them, the hostile dame deigned to return his salutation, looking then at her companion with a questioning expression. The sailor guessed that during the night they had been discussing him while he, under the same roof, had been struggling uselessly, before falling asleep, to concentrate his recollections.
He never knew with certainty just how the conversation began. He found himself suddenly talking in English with the younger one, just as on the preceding morning. She, with the audacity that quickly makes the best of a dubious situation, asked him if he was a sailor. And upon receiving an affirmative response, she then asked if he was Spanish.
"Yes, Spanish."
Ferragut's answer was followed by a triumphant glance toward the chaperone, who seemed to relax a little and lose her hostile attitude. And for the first time she smiled upon the captain with her mouth of bluish-rose color, her white skin sprinkled with yellow, and her glasses of phosphorescent splendor.
Meanwhile, the young woman was talking on and on, verifying her extraordinary powers of memory.
She had traveled all over the world without forgetting a single one of the places which she had seen. She was able to repeat the titles of the eighty great hotels in which those who make the world's circuit may stay. Upon meeting with an old traveling companion, she always recognized his face immediately, no matter how short a time she had seen him, and oftentimes she could even recall his name. This last was what she had been puzzling over, wrinkling her brows with the mental effort.
"You are a captain?… Your name is?…"
And she smiled suddenly as her doubts came to an end.
"Your name is," she said positively, "Captain Ulysses Ferragut."
In long and agreeable silence she relished the sailor's astonishment. Then, as though she pitied his stupefaction, she made further explanations. She had made a trip from Buenos Ayres to Barcelona in a steamship which he had commanded.
"That was six years ago," she added. "No; seven years ago."
Ferragut, who had been the first to suspect a former acquaintance, could not recall this woman's name and place among the innumerable passengers that filled his memory. He thought, nevertheless, that he must lie for gallantry's sake, insisting that he remembered her well.
"No, Captain; you do not remember me. I was accompanied by my husband and you never looked at me…. All your attentions on that trip were devoted to a very handsome widow from Brazil."
She said this in Spanish, a smooth, sing-song Spanish learned in South America, to which her foreign accent contributed a certain childish charm. Then she added coquettishly:
"I know you, Captain. Always the same!… That affair of the rose at
Pompeii was very well done…. It was just like you."
The grave lady of the glasses, finding herself forgotten, and unable to understand a word of the new language employed in the conversation, now spoke aloud, rolling her eyes in her enthusiasm.
"Oh, Spain!…" she said in English. "The land of knightly gentlemen…. Cervantes … Lope!… The Cid!…"
She stopped hunting for more celebrities. Suddenly she seized the sailor's arm, exclaiming as energetically as though she had just made a discovery through the little door of the coach. "Calderon de la Barca!" Ferragut saluted her. "Yes, Señora." After that the younger woman thought that it was necessary to present her companion.
"Doctor Fedelmann…. A very wise woman distinguished in philology and literature."
After clasping the doctor's hand, Ferragut indiscreetly set himself to work to gather information.
"The Señora is German?" he said in Spanish to the younger one.
The gold-rimmed spectacles appeared to guess the question and shot a restless gleam at her companion.
"No," she replied. "My friend is a Russian, or rather a Pole."
"And you, are you Polish, too?" continued the sailor.
"No, I am Italian."
In spite of the assurance with which she said this, Ferragut felt tempted to exclaim, "You little liar!" Then, as he gazed upon the full, black, audacious eyes fixed upon him, he began to doubt…. Perhaps she was telling the truth.
Again he found himself interrupted by the wordiness of the doctor. She was now speaking in French, repeating her eulogies on Ferragut's country. She could read Castilian in the classic works, but she would not venture to speak it. "Ah, Spain! Country of noble traditions…." And then, seeking to relieve these eulogies by some strong contrast, she twisted her face into a wrathful expression.
The train was running along the coast, having on one side the blue desert of the Gulf of Salerno, and on the other the red and green mountains dotted with white villages and hamlets. The doctor took it all in with her gleaming glasses.
"A country of bandits," she said, clenching her fists. "Country of mandolin-twangers, without honor and without gratitude!…"
The girl laughed at this outburst with that hilarity of light-heartedness in which no impressions are durable, considering as of no importance anything which does not bear directly upon its own egoism.
From a few words that the two ladies let fall, Ulysses inferred that they had been living in Rome and had only been in Naples a short time, perhaps against their will. The younger one was well acquainted with the country, and her companion was taking advantage of this enforced journey in order to see what she had so many times admired in books.
The three alighted in the station of Battipaglia in order to take the train for Paestum. It was a rather long wait, and the sailor invited them to go into the restaurant, a little wooden shanty impregnated with the double odor of resin and wine.
This shack reminded both Ferragut and the young woman of the houses improvised on the South American deserts; and again they began to speak of their oceanic voyage. She finally consented to satisfy the captain's curiosity.
"My husband was a professor, a scholar like the doctor…. We were a year in Patagonia, making scientific explorations."
She had made the dangerous journey through an ocean of desert plains that had spread themselves out before them as the expedition advanced; she had slept in ranch houses whose roofs shed bloodthirsty insects; she had traveled on horseback through whirlwinds of sand that had shaken her from the saddle; she had suffered the tortures of hunger and thirst when losing the way, and she had passed nights in intemperate weather with no other bed than her poncho and the trappings of the horses. Thus they had explored those lakes of the Andes between Argentina and Chile that guard in their pure and untouched desert solitude the mystery of the earliest days of creation.
Rovers over these virgin lands, shepherds and bandits, used to talk of glimpses of gigantic animals at nightfall on the shores of the lakes devouring entire meadows with one gulp; and the doctor, like many other sages, had believed in the possibility of finding a surviving prehistoric animal, a beast of the monstrous herds anterior to the coming of man, still dwelling in this unexplored section of the planet.
They saw skeletons dozens of yards long in the foot-hills of the Cordilleras so frequently agitated by volcanic cataclysms. In the neighborhood of the lakes the guides pointed out to them the hides of devoured herds, and enormous mountains of dried material that appeared to have been deposited by some monster. But no matter how far they penetrated into the solitude, they were always unable to find any living descendant of prehistoric fauna.
The sailor listened absent-mindedly, thinking of something else that was quickening his curiosity.
"And you, what is your name?" he said suddenly.
The two women laughed at this question, amusing because so unexpected.
"Call me Freya. It is a Wagnerian name. It means the earth, and at the same time liberty…. Do you like Wagner?"
And before he could reply she added in Spanish, with a Creole accent and flashing eyes:
"Call me, if you wish, 'the merry widow.' The poor doctor died as soon as we returned to Europe."
The three had to run to catch the train ready to start for Paestum. The landscape was changing on both sides of the way, as now they were crossing over marshy portions of land. On the soft meadows flocks of buffaloes, rude animals that appeared carved out in hatchet strokes, were wading and grazing.
The doctor spoke of Paestum, the ancient Poseidonia, the city of
Neptune, founded by the Greeks of Sybaris six centuries before Christ.
Commercial prosperity once dominated the entire coast. The gulf of Salerno was called by the Romans the Gulf of Paestum. And this city with mountains like those of Athens had suddenly become extinguished without being swallowed up by the sea, and with no volcano to cover it with ashes.
Fever, the miasma of the fens, had been the deadly lava for this Pompeii. The poisonous air had caused the inhabitants to flee, and the few who insisted upon living within the shadow of the ancient temples had had to escape from the Saracen invasions, founding in the neighboring mountains a new country—the humble town of Capaccio Vecchio. Then the Norman kings, forerunners of Frederick II (the father of Doña Constanza, the empress beloved by Ferragut), had plundered the entire deserted city, carrying off with them its columns and sculpture.
All the medieval constructions of the kingdom of Naples were the spoils of Paestum. The doctor recalled the cathedral of Salerno, seen the afternoon before, where Hildebrand, the most tenacious and ambitious of the popes, was buried. Its columns, its sarcophagi, its bas-reliefs had come from this Grecian city, forgotten for centuries and centuries and only in modern times—thanks to the antiquarians and artists—recovering its fame.
In the station of Paestum, the wife of the only employee looked curiously at this group arriving after the war had blocked off the trail of tourists.
Freya spoke to her, interested in her malarial and resigned aspect. They were yet in good time. The spring sun was warming up these lowlands just as in midsummer, but she was still able to resist it. Later, during the summer, the guards of the ruins and the workmen in the excavations would have to flee to their homes in the mountains, handing the country over to the reptiles and insects of the marshy fields.
The lodging keeper and his wife in the little station were the only evidences of humankind still able to exist in this solitude, trembling with fever, trying to endure the corrupt air, the poisonous sting of the mosquito, and the solar fire that was sucking from the mud the vapors of death. Every two years this humble stopping place through which passed the lucky ones of the earth,—the millionaires of two hemispheres, beautiful and curious dames, rulers of nations, and great artists,—was obliged to change its station-master.
The three tourists passed near the remains of an aqueduct and an antique pavement. Then they went through the Porta della Sirena, an entrance arch into a forgotten quarter of the city, and continued along a road bordered on one side by marshy lands of exuberant vegetation and on the other by the long mud wall of a grange, through whose mortar were sticking out fragments of stones or columns. On turning the last corner, the imposing spectacle of the dead city, still surviving in the magnificent proportions of its temples, presented itself to view.
There were three of these temples, and their colonnades stood forth like mast heads of ships becalmed in a sea of verdure. The doctor, guide-book in hand, was pointing them out with masterly authority—that was Neptune's, that Ceres', and that was called the Basilica without any special reason.
Their grandeur, their solidity, their elegance made the edifices of Rome sink into insignificance. Athens alone could compare the monuments of her Acropolis with these temples of the most severe Doric style. That of Neptune had well preserved its lofty and massive columns,—as close together as the trees of a nursery,—enormous trunks of stone that still sustained the high entablature, the jutting cornice and the two triangular walls of its façades. The stone had taken on the mellow color of the cloudless countries where the sun toasts readily and the rain does not deposit a grimy coating.
The doctor recalled the departed beauties and the old covering of these colossal skeletons,—the fine and compact coating of stucco which had closed the pores of the stone, giving it a superficial smoothness like marble,—the vivid colors of its flutings and walls making the antique city a mass of polychrome monuments. This gay decoration had become volatilized through the centuries and its colors, borne away by the wind, had fallen like a rain of dust upon a land in ruins.
Following an old guard, they climbed the blue, tiled steps of the temple of Neptune. Above, within four rows of columns, was the real sanctuary, the cella. Their footsteps on the tiled flags, separated by deep cracks filled with grass, awoke all the animal world that was drowsing there in the sun.
These actual inhabitants of the city,—enormous lizards with green backs covered with black warts,—ran in all directions. In their flight they scurried blindly over the feet of the visitors. The doctor raised her skirts in order to avoid them, at the same time breaking into nervous laughter to hide her terror.
Suddenly Freya gave a cry, pointing to the base of the ancient altar. An ebony-hued snake, his sides dotted with red spots, was slowly and solemnly uncoiling his circles upon the stones. The sailor raised his cane, but before he could strike he felt his arm grasped by two nervous hands. Freya was throwing herself upon him with a pallid face and eyes dilated with fear and entreaty.
"No, Captain!… Leave it alone!"
Ulysses thrilled upon feeling the contact of her firm, curving bosom and noting her respiration, her warm breath charged with distant perfume. It would have suited him if she had remained in this position a long time, but Freya freed herself in order to advance toward the reptile, coaxing it and holding out her hands to it as though she were trying to caress a domestic animal. The black tail of the serpent was just slipping away and disappearing between two square tiles. The doctor who had fled down the steps at this apparition, by her repeated calls, obliged Freya also to descend.
The captain's aggressive attitude awoke in his companion a nervous animosity. She believed she knew this reptile. It was undoubtedly the divinity of the dead temple that had changed its form in order to live among the ruins. This serpent must be twenty centuries old. If it had not been for Ferragut she would have been able to have taken it up in her hands…. She would have spoken to it…. She was accustomed to converse with others….
Ulysses was about to express his doubts rudely as to the mental equilibrium of the exasperated widow when the doctor interrupted them. She was contemplating the swampy plains of acanthus and ferns trembling under the shrill chirping of the cicadas, and this spectacle of green desolation made her recall the roses of Paestum of which the poets of ancient Rome had sung. She even recited some Latin verses, translating them to her hearers so as to make them understand that the rose bushes of this land used to bloom twice a year. Freya smoothed out her brow and began to smile again. She forgot her recent ill humor and expressed a great longing for one of the marvelous rose bushes: and at this caprice of childish vehemence, Ferragut spoke to the custodian with authority. He had to have at once a rose bush from Paestum, cost what it might.
The old fellow made a bored gesture. Everybody asked the same thing, and he who belonged to that country had never seen a rose of Paestum…. Sometimes, just in order to satisfy the whim of tourists, he would bring rose bushes from Capaccio Vecchio and other mountain villages,—rose bushes just like others with no difference except in price…. But he didn't wish to take advantage of anybody. He was sad and greatly troubled over the possibility of war.
"I have eight sons," he said to the doctor, because she seemed to be the most suitable one to receive his confidences. "If they mobilize the army, six of them will leave me."
And he added with resignation:
"That's the way it ought to be if we would end forever, in one blow, our eternal enmity with the Goth. My sons will battle against them, just as my father fought."
The doctor stalked haughtily away, and then said in a low voice to her companions that the old guard was an imbecile.
They wandered for two hours through the ancient district of the city,—exploring the network of its streets, the ruins of the amphitheater and the Porta Aurea which opened upon a road flanked with tombs. By the Porta di Mare they climbed to the walls, ramparts of great limestone blocks, extending a distance of five kilometers. The sea, which from the lowlands had looked like a narrow blue band, now appeared immense and luminous,—a solitary sea with a feather-like crest of smoke, without a sail, given completely over to the sea-gulls.
The doctor walked stiffly ahead of them, still ill-humored about the guide's remark and consulting the pages of her guide book. Behind her Ulysses came close up to Freya, recalling their former contact.
He thought that it would be an easy matter now to get possession of this capricious and free-mannered woman. "Sure thing, Captain!" The rapid triumphs that he had always had in his journeys assured him that there was not the slightest doubt of success. It was enough for him to see the widow's smile, her passionate eyes, and the little tricks of malicious coquetry with which she responded to his gallant advances. "Forward, sea-wolf!"… He took her hand while she was speaking of the beauty of the solitary sea, and the hand yielded without protest to his caressing fingers. The doctor was far away and, sighing hypocritically, he encircled Freya's waist with his other arm while he inclined his head upon her open throat as though he were going to kiss her pearls.
In spite of his strength, he found himself energetically repulsed and saw Freya freed from his arms, two steps away, looking upon him with hostile eyes that he had not noticed before.
"None of your child's play, Captain!… It is useless with me…. You are just wasting time."
And she said no more. Her stiffness and her silence during the rest of the walk made the sailor understand the enormity of his mistake. In vain he tried to keep beside the widow. She always maneuvered that the doctor should come between the two.
Upon returning to the station they took refuge from the heat in a little waiting room with dusty velvet divans. In order to beguile the time while waiting for the train, Freya took from her handbag a gold cigarette-case and the light smoke of Egyptian tobacco charged with opium whirled among the shafts of sunlight from the partly-opened windows.
Ferragut, who had gone out in order to ascertain the exact hour of the arrival of the train, on returning stopped near the door, amazed at the animation with which the two ladies were speaking in a new language. Recollections of Hamburg and Bremen came surging up in his memory. His companions were talking German with the ease of a familiar idiom. At sight of the sailor, they instantly continued their conversation in English.
Wishing to take part in the dialogue, he asked Freya how many languages she spoke.
"Very few,—no more than eight. The doctor, perhaps, knows twenty. She knows the languages of people who passed away many centuries ago."
And the young woman said this with gravity, without looking at him, as though she had lost forever that smile of a light woman which had so deceived Ferragut.
In the train she became more like a human being, even losing her offended manner. They were soon going to separate. The doctor grew less and less approachable as the cars rolled towards Salerno. It was the chilliness that appears among companions of a day, when the hour of separation approaches and each one draws into himself, not to be seen any more.
Words fell flat, like bits of ice, without finding any echo in their fall. At each turn of the wheel, the imposing lady became more reserved and silent. Everything had been said. They, too, were going to remain in Salerno in order to take a carriage-trip along the gulf. They were going to Amalfi and would pass the night on the Alpine peak of Ravello, a medieval city where Wagner had passed the last months of his life, before dying in Venice. Then, passing over to the Gulf of Naples, they would rest in Sorrento and perhaps might go to the island of Capri.
Ulysses wished to say that his line of march was exactly the same, but he was afraid of the doctor. Furthermore, their trip was to be in a vehicle which they had already rented and they would not offer him a seat.
Freya appeared to surmise his sadness and wished to console him.
"It is a short trip. No more than three days…. Soon we shall be in
Naples."
The farewell in Salerno was brief. The doctor was careful not to mention their stopping-place. For her, the friendship was ending then and there.
"It is probable that we shall run across each other again," she said laconically. "It is only the mountains that never meet."
Her young companion was more explicit, mentioning the hotel on the shores of S. Lucia in which she lodged.
Standing by the step of the carriage, he saw them take their departure, just as he had seen them appear in a street of Pompeii. The doctor was lost behind a screen of glass, talking with the coachman who had come to meet them. Freya, before disappearing, turned to give him a faint smile and then raised her gloved hand with a stiff forefinger, threatening him just as though he were a mischievous and bold child.
Finding himself alone in the compartment that was carrying toward Naples the traces and perfumes of the absent one, Ulysses felt as downcast as though he were returning from a burial, as if he had just lost one of the props of his life.
His appearance on board the Mare Nostrum was regarded as a calamity. He was capricious and intractable, complaining of Toni and the other two officials because they were not hastening repairs on the vessel. In the same breath he said it would be better not to hurry things too much, so that the job would be better done. Even Caragol was the victim of his bad humor which flamed forth in the form of cruel sermons against those addicted to the poison of alcohol.
"When men need to be cheered up, they have to have something better than wine. That which brings greater ecstasy than drink … is woman, Uncle Caragol. Don't forget this counsel!"
Through mere force of habit the cook replied, "That is so, my captain…." But down in his heart he was pitying the ignorance of those men who concentrate all their happiness on the whims and grimaces of this most frivolous of toys.
Two days afterwards those on board drew a long breath when they saw the captain taken ashore. The ship was moored in a very uncomfortable place,—near some that were discharging coal,—with the stern shored up so that the screw of the steamer might be repaired. The workmen were replacing the damaged and broken plates with ceaseless hammering. Since they would undoubtedly have to wait nearly a month, it would be much more convenient for the owner to go to a hotel; so he sent his baggage to the Albergo Partenope, on the ancient shore of S. Lucia,—the very one that Freya had mentioned.
Upon installing himself in an upper room, with a view of the blue circle of the gulf framed by the outlines of the balcony, Ferragut's first move was to change a bill for five liras into coppers, preparatory to asking various questions. The jaundiced and mustached steward listened to him attentively with the complacency of a go-between, and at last was able to formulate a complete personality with all its data. The lady for whom he was inquiring was the Signora Talberg. She was at present away on an excursion, but she might return at any moment.
Ulysses passed an entire day with the tranquillity of one who awaits at a sure place, gazing at the gulf from the balcony. Below him was the Castello dell' Ovo connected with the land by a bridge.
The bersaglieri were occupying their ancient castle, work of the viceroy, Pedro of Toledo. Many turrets of dark rose color were crowded together upon this narrow, egg-shaped island, where, in other days, the pusillanimous Spanish garrison was locked in the fortress for the purpose of aiming bombards and culverins at the Neapolitans when they no longer wished to pay taxes and imposts. Its walls had been raised upon the ruins of another castle in which Frederick II had guarded his treasures, and whose chapel Giotto had painted. And the medieval castle of which only the memory now remained had, in its turn, been erected upon the remnants of the Palace of Lucullus, who had located the center of his celebrated gardens in this little island, then called Megaris.
The cornets of the bersaglieri rejoiced the captain like the announcement of a triumphal entry. "She's going to come! She's going to come at any moment!…" And he would look across the double mountain of the island of Capri, black in the distance, closing the gulf like a promontory, and the coast of Sorrento as rectilinear as a wall. "There she is…." Then he would lovingly follow the course of the little steamboats plowing across the immense blue surface, opening a triangle of foam. In some of these Freya must be coming.
The first day was golden and full of hope. The sun was sparkling in a cloudless sky, and the gulf was foaming with bubbles of light under an atmosphere so calm that not the slightest zephyr was rippling its surface. The smoke plume of Vesuvius was upright and slender, expanding upon the horizon like a pine tree of white vapor. At the foot of the balcony the strolling musicians kept succeeding each other from time to time, singing voluptuous barcarolles and love serenades…. And—she did not come!
The second day was silvery and desperate. There was fog on the gulf; the sun was no more than a reddish disk such as one sees in the northern countries; the mountains were clothed with lead; the clouds were hiding the cone of the volcano; the sea appeared to be made of tin, and a chilly wind was distending sails, skirts, and overcoats, making the people scurry along the promenade and the shore. The musicians continued their singing but with melancholy sighs in the shelter of a corner, to keep out of the furious blasts from the sea. "To die…. To die for thee!" a baritone voice groaned between the harps and violins. And—she came!
Upon learning from the waiter that the signora Talberg was in her room on the floor below, Ulysses thrilled with restlessness. What would she say upon finding him installed in her hotel?…
The luncheon hour was at hand, and he impatiently awaited the usual signals before going down to the dining room. First an explosion would be heard behind the albergo making the walls and roofs tremble, swelling out into the immensity of the gulf. That was the midday cannonade from the high castle of S. Elmo. Then cornets from the Castello dell' Ovo would respond with their joyous call to the smoking olio, and up the stairway of the hotel would come the beating of the Chinese gong, announcing that luncheon was served.
Ulysses went down to take his place at table, looking in vain at the other guests who had preceded him. Freya perhaps was going to come in with the delay of a traveler who has just arrived and has been occupied in freshening her toilet.
He lunched badly, looking continually at a great glass doorway decorated with pictures of boats, fishes, and sea gulls, and every time its polychromatic leaves parted, his food seemed to stick in his throat. Finally came the end of the lunch, and he slowly sipped his coffee. She did not appear.
On returning to his room, he sent the whiskered steward in search of news…. The signora had not lunched in the hotel; the signora had gone out while he was in the dining-room. Surely she would show herself in the evening.
At dinner time he had the same unpleasant experience, believing that Freya was going to appear every time that an unknown hand or a vague silhouette of a woman pushed the door open from the other side of the opaque glass.
He strolled up and down the vestibule a long time, chewing rabidly on a cigar, and finally decided to accost the porter, an astute brunette whose blue lapels embroidered with keys of gold were peeping over the edge of his writing desk, taking in everything, informing himself of everything, while he appeared to be asleep.
The approach of Ulysses made him spring up as though he heard the rustling of paper money. His information was very precise. The signora Talberg very seldom ate at the hotel. She had some friends who were occupying a furnished flat in the district of Chiaja, with whom she usually passed almost the entire day. Sometimes she did not even return to sleep…. And he again sat down, his hand closing tightly upon the bill which his imagination had foreseen.
After a bad night Ulysses arose, resolved to await the widow at the entrance to the hotel. He took his breakfast at a little table in the vestibule, read the newspaper, had to go to the door in order to avoid the morning cleaning, pursued by the dust of brooms and shaken rugs. And once there, he pretended to take great interest in the wandering musicians, who dedicated their love songs and serenades to him, rolling up the whites of their eyes upon presenting their hats for coins.
Some one came to keep him company. It was the porter who now appeared very familiar and confidential, as though since the preceding night a firm friendship, based upon their secret, had sprung up between the two.
He spoke of the beauties of the country, counseling the Spaniard to take divers excursions…. A smile, an encouraging word from Ferragut, and he would have immediately proposed other recreations whose announcement appeared to be fluttering around his lips. But the sailor repelled all such amiability, glowering with displeasure. This vulgar fellow was going to spoil with his presence the longed-for meeting. Perhaps he was hanging around just to see and to know…. And taking advantage of one of his brief absences, Ulysses went off down the long Via Partenope, following the parapet that extends along the coast, pretending to be interested in everything that he met, but without losing sight of the door of the hotel.
He stopped before the oystermen's stands, examining the valves of pearly shells piled up on the shelves, the baskets of oysters from Fusaro and the enormous conch-shells in whose hollow throats, according to the peddlers, the distant roll of the sea was echoing like a haunting memory. One by one he looked at all the motor launches, the little regatta skiffs, the fishing barks, and the coast schooners anchored in the quiet harbor of the island dell' Ova. He stood a long time quietly watching the gentle waves that were combing their foam on the rocks of the dikes under the horizontal fishing rods of various fishermen.
Suddenly he saw Freya following the avenue beside the houses. She recognized him at once and this discovery made her stop near a street-opening, hesitating whether to continue on or to flee toward the interior of Naples. Then she came over to the seaside pavement, approaching Ferragut with a placid smile, greeting him afar off, like a friend whose presence is only to be expected.
Such assurance rather disconcerted the captain. They shook hands and she asked him calmly what he was doing there looking at the waves, and if the repairs of his boat were progressing satisfactorily.
"But admit that my presence has surprised you!" said Ulysses, rather irritated by this tranquillity. "Confess that you were not expecting to find me here."
Freya repeated her smiles with an expression of sweet compassion.
"It is natural that I should find you here. You are in your district, within sight of a hotel…. We are neighbors."
In order more thoroughly to amuse herself with the captain's astonishment, she made a long pause. Then she added:
"I saw your name on the list of arrivals yesterday, on my return to the hotel. I always look them over. It pleases me to know who my neighbors are."
"And for that reason you did not come down to the dining-room?…"
Ulysses asked this question hoping that she would respond negatively. She could not answer it in any other way, if only for good manners' sake.
"Yes, for that reason," Freya replied simply. "I guessed that you were waiting to meet me and I did not wish to go into the dining-room…. I give you fair warning that I shall always do the same."
Ulysses uttered an "Ah!" of amazement…. No woman had ever spoken to him with such frankness.
"Neither has your presence here surprised me," she continued. "I was expecting it. I know the innocent wiles of you men. 'Since he did not find me in the hotel, he will wait for me to-day in the street,' I said to myself, upon arising this morning…. Before coming out, I was following your footsteps from the window of my room…."
Ferragut looked at her in surprise and dismay. What a woman!…
"I might have escaped through any cross street while your back was turned. I saw you before you saw me…. But these false situations stretching along indefinitely are distasteful to me. It is better to speak the entire truth face to face…. And therefore I have come to meet you…."
Instinct made him turn his head toward the hotel. The porter was standing at the entrance looking out over the sea, but with his eyes undoubtedly turned toward them.
"Let us go on," said Freya. "Accompany me a little ways. We shall talk together and then you can leave me…. Perhaps we shall separate greater friends than ever."
They strolled in silence all the length of the Via Partenope until they reached the gardens along the beach of Chiaja, losing sight of the hotel. Ferragut wished to renew the conversation, but could not begin it. He feared to appear ridiculous. This woman was making him timid.
Looking at her with admiring eyes, he noted the great changes that had been made in the adornment of her person. She was no longer clad in the dark tailor-made in which he had first seen her. She was wearing a blue and white silk gown with a handsome fur over her shoulders and a cluster of purple heron feathers on top of her wide hat.
The black hand-bag that had always accompanied her on her journeys had been replaced by a gold-meshed one of showy richness,—Australian gold of a greenish tone like an overlay of Florentine bronze. In her ears were two great, thick emeralds, and on her fingers a half dozen diamonds whose facets twinkled in the sunlight. The pearl necklace was still on her neck peeping out through the V-shaped opening of her gown. It was the magnificent toilet of a rich actress who puts everything on herself,—of one so enamored with jewels that she is not able to live without their contact, adorning herself with them the minute she is out of bed, regardless of the hour and the rules of good taste.
But Ferragut did not take into consideration the unsuitableness of all this luxury. Everything about her appeared to him admirable.
Without knowing just how, he began to talk. He was astonished at hearing his own voice, saying always the same thing in different words. His thoughts were incoherent, but they were all clustered around an incessantly repeated statement,—his love, his immense love for Freya.
And Freya continued marching on in silence with a compassionate expression in her eyes and in the corners of her mouth. It pleased her pride as a woman to contemplate this strong man stuttering in childish confusion. At the same time she grew impatient at the monotony of his words.
"Don't say any more, Captain," she finally interrupted. "I can guess all that you are going to say, and I've heard many times what you have said,—You do not sleep—you do not eat—you do not live because of me. Your existence is impossible if I do not love you. A little more conversation and you will threaten me with shooting yourself, if I am not yours…. Same old song! They all say the same thing. There are no creatures with less originality than you men when you wish something…."
They were in one of the avenues of the promenade. Through the palm trees and glossy magnolias the luminous gulf could be seen on one side, and on the other the handsome edifices of the beach of Chiaja. Some ragged urchins kept running around them and following them, until they took refuge in an ornamental little white temple at the end of the avenue.
"Very well, then, enamored sea-wolf," continued Freya; "you need not sleep, you need not eat, you may kill yourself if the fancy strikes you; but I am not able to love you; I shall never love you. You may give up all hope; life is not mere diversion and I have other more serious occupations that absorb all my time."
In spite of the playful smile with which she accompanied these words,
Ferragut surmised a very firm will.
"Then," he said in despair, "it will all be useless?… Even though I make the greatest sacrifices?… Even though I give proofs of love greater than you have ever known?…"
"All useless," she replied roundly, without a sign of a smile.
They paused before the ornamental little temple-shaped building, with its dome supported by white columns and a railing around it. The bust of Virgil adorned the center,—an enormous head of somewhat feminine beauty.
The poet had died in Naples in "Sweet Parthenope," on his return from Greece and his body, turned to dust, was perhaps mingled with the soil of this garden. The Neapolitan people of the Middle Ages had attributed to him all kinds of wonderful things, even transforming the poet into a powerful magician. The wizard Virgil in one night had constructed the Castello dell' Ovo, placing it with his own hands upon a great egg (Ovo) that was floating in the sea. He also had opened with his magic blasts the tunnel of Posilipo near which are a vineyard and a tomb visited for centuries as the last resting place of the poet. Little scamps, playing around the railing, used to hurl papers and stones inside the temple. The white head of the powerful sorcerer attracted them and at the same time filled them with admiration and fear.
"Thus far and no further," ordered Freya. "You will continue on your way. I am going to the high part of Chiaja…. But before separating as good friends, you are going to give me your word not to follow me, not to importune me with your amorous attentions, not to mix yourself in my life."
Ulysses did not reply, hanging his head in genuine dismay. To his disillusion was added the sting of wounded pride. He who had imagined such very different things when they should see each other again together, alone!…
Freya pitied his sadness.
"Don't be a Baby!… This will soon pass. Think of your business affairs, and of your family waiting for you over there in Spain…. Besides, the world is full of women; I'm not the only one."
But Ferragut interrupted her. "Yes, she was the only one!… The only one!…" And he said it with a conviction that awakened another one of her compassionate smiles.
This man's tenacity was beginning to irritate her.
"Captain, I know your type very well. You are an egoist, like all other men. Your boat is tied up in the harbor because of an accident; you've got to remain ashore a month; you meet on one of your trips a woman who is idiot enough to admit that she remembers meeting you at other times, and you say to yourself, Magnificent occasion to while away agreeably a tedious period of waiting!…' If I should yield to your desire, within a few weeks, as soon as your boat was ready, the hero of my love, the knight of my dreams, would betake himself to the sea, saying as a parting salute: 'Adieu, simpleton!'"
Ulysses protested with energy. No: he wished that his boat might never be repaired. He was computing with agony the days that remained. If it were necessary, he would abandon it, remaining forever in Naples.
"And what have I to do in Naples?" interrupted Freya. "I am a mere bird of passage here, just as you are. We knew each other on the seas of another hemisphere, and we have just happened to run across each other here in Italy. Next time, if we ever meet again, it will be in Japan or Canada or the Cape…. Go on your way, you enamored old shark, and let me go mine. Imagine to yourself that we are two boats that have met when becalmed, have signaled each other, have exchanged greetings, have wished each other good luck, and afterwards have continued on our way, perhaps never to see each other again."
Ferragut shook his head negatively. Such a thing could not be, he could not resign himself to losing sight of her forever.
"These men!" she continued, each time a little more irritated. "You all imagine that things must be arranged entirely according to your caprices. 'Because I desire thee, thou must be mine….' And what if I don't want to?… And if I don't feel any necessity of being loved?… If I wish only to live in liberty, with no other love than that which I feel for myself?…"
She considered it a great misfortune to be a woman. She always envied men for their independence. They could hold themselves aloof, abstaining from the passions that waste life, without anybody's coming to importune them in their retreat. They were at liberty to go wherever they wanted to, to travel the wide world over, without leaving behind their footsteps a wake of solicitors.
"You appear to me, Captain, a very charming man. The other day I was delighted to meet you; it was an apparition from the past; I saw in you the joy of my youth that is beginning to fade away, and the melancholy of certain recollections…. And nevertheless, I am going to end by hating you. Do you hear me, you tedious old Argonaut?… I shall loathe you because you will not be a mere friend; because you know only how to talk everlastingly about the same thing; because you are a person out of a novel, a Latin, very interesting, perhaps, to other women,—but insufferable to me."
Her face contracted with a gesture of scorn and pity. "Ah, those
Latins!…"
"They're all the same,—Spaniards, Italians, Frenchmen…. They were born for the same thing. They hardly meet an attractive woman but they believe that they are evading their obligations if they do not beg for her love and what comes afterward…. Cannot a man and woman simply be friends? Couldn't you be just a good comrade and treat me as a companion?"
Ferragut protested energetically. No; no, he couldn't. He loved her and, after being repelled with such cruelty, his love would simply go on increasing. He was sure of that.
A nervous tremor made Freya's voice sharp and cutting, and her eyes took on a dangerous gleam. She looked at her companion as though he were an enemy whose death she longed for.
"Very well, then, if you must know it. I abominate all men; I abominate them, because I know them so well. I would like the death of all of them, of every one!… The evil that they have wrought in my life!… I would like to be immensely beautiful, the handsomest woman on earth, and to possess the intellect of all the sages concentrated in my brain, to be rich and to be a queen, in order that all the men of the world, crazy with desire, would come to prostrate themselves before me…. And I would lift up my feet with their iron heels, and I would go trampling over them, crushing their heads … so … and so … and so!…"
She struck the sands of the garden with the soles of her little shoes.
An hysterical sneer distorted her mouth.
"Perhaps I might make an exception of you…. You who, with all your braggart arrogance, are, after all, outright and simple-hearted. I believe you capable of assuring a woman of all kinds of love-lies … believing them yourself most of all. But the others!… Ay, the others!… How I hate them!…"
She looked over toward the palace of the Aquarium, glistening white between the colonnade of trees.
"I would like to be," she continued pensively, "one of those animals of the sea that can cut with their claws, that have arms like scissors, saws, pincers … that devour their own kind, and absorb everything around them."
Then she looked at the branch of a tree from which were hanging several silver threads, sustaining insects with active tentacles.
"I would like to be a spider, an enormous spider, that all men might be drawn to my web as irresistibly as flies. With what satisfaction would I crunch them between my claws! How I would fasten my mouth against their hearts!… And I would suck them…. I would suck them until there wasn't a drop of blood left, tossing away then their empty carcasses!…"
Ulysses began to wonder if he had fallen in love with a crazy woman.
His disquietude, his surprise and questioning eyes gradually restored
Freya's serenity.
She passed one hand across her forehead, as though awakening from a nightmare and wishing to banish remembrance with this gesture. Her glance became calmer.
"Good-by, Ferragut; do not make me talk any more. You will soon doubt my reason…. You are doing so already. We shall be friends, just friends and nothing more. It is useless to think of anything else…. Do not follow me…. We shall see each other…. I shall hunt you up…. Good-by!… Good-by!"
And although Ferragut felt tempted to follow her, he remained motionless, seeing her hurry rapidly away, as though fleeing from the words that she had just let fall before the little temple of the poet.
CHAPTER V
THE AQUARIUM OF NAPLES
In spite of her promise, Freya made no effort to meet the sailor. "We shall see each other…. I shall hunt you up." But it was Ferragut who did the hunting, stationing himself around the hotel.
"How crazy I was the other morning!… I wonder what you could have thought of me!" she said the first time that she spoke to him again.
Not every day did Ulysses have the pleasure of a conversation which invariably developed from the Via Partenope to Virgil's monument. The most of the mornings he used to wait in vain opposite the oyster stands, listening to the musicians who were bombarding the closed windows of the hotel with their sentimental romances and mandolins. Freya would not appear.
His impatience usually dragged Ulysses back to the hotel in order to beg information of the porter. Animated by the hope of a new bill, the flunkey would go to the telephone and inquire of the servants on the upper floor. And then with a sad and obsequious smile, as though lamenting his own words: "The signora is not in. The signora has passed the night outside of the albergo." And Ferragut would go away furious.
Sometimes he would go to see how the repairs were getting on in his boat,—an excellent pretext for venting his wrath on somebody. On other mornings he would go to the garden of the beach of Chiaja,—to the very same places through which he had strolled with Freya. He was always looking for her to appear from one moment to another. Everything 'round about suggested some reminder of her. Trees and benches, pavements and electric lights knew her perfectly because of having formed a part of her regular walk.
Becoming convinced that he was waiting in vain, a last hope made him glance toward the white building of the Aquarium. Freya had frequently mentioned it. She was accustomed to amuse herself, oftentimes passing entire hours there, contemplating the life of the inhabitants of the sea. And Ferragut blinked involuntarily as he passed rapidly from the garden boiling under the sun into the shadow of the damp galleries with no other illumination than that of the daylight which penetrated to the interior of the Aquarium,—a light that, seen through the water and the glass, took on a mysterious tone, the green and diffused tint of the subsea depths.
This visit enabled him to kill time more placidly. There came to his mind old readings confirmed now by direct vision. He was not the kind of sailor that sails along regardless of what exists under his keel. He wanted to know the mysteries of the immense blue palace over whose roof he was usually navigating, devoting himself to the study of oceanography, the most recent of sciences.
Upon taking his first steps in the Aquarium, he immediately pictured the marine depths which exploration had divided and charted so unequally. Near the shores, in the zone called "the littoral" where the rivers empty, the materials of nourishment were accumulated by the impulse of the tides and currents, and there flourished sub-aquatic vegetation. This was the zone of the great fish and reached down to within two hundred fathoms of the bottom,—a depth to which the sun's rays never penetrate. Beyond that there was no light; plant life disappeared and with it the herbivorous animals.
The submarine grade, a gentle one down to this point, now becomes very steep, descending rapidly to the oceanic abysses,—that immense mass of water (almost the entire ocean), without light, without waves, without tides, without currents, without oscillations of temperature, which is called the "abyssal" zone.
In the littoral, the waters, healthfully agitated, vary in saltiness according to the proximity of the rivers. The rocks and deeps are covered with a vegetation which is green near the surface, becoming darker and darker, even turning to a dark red and brassy yellow as it gets further from the light. In this oceanic paradise of nutritive and luminous waters charged with bacteria and microscopic nourishment, life is developed in exuberance. In spite of the continual traps of the fishermen, the marine herds keep themselves intact because of their infinite powers of reproduction.
The fauna of the abyssal depths where the lack of light makes all vegetation impossible, is largely carnivorous, the weak inhabitants usually devouring the residuum and dead animals that come down from the surface. The strong ones, in their turn, nourish themselves on the concentrated sustenance of the little cannibals.
The bottom of the ocean, a monotonous desert of mud and sand, the accumulated sediment of hundreds of centuries, has occasional oases of strange vegetation. These grove-like growths spring up like spots of light just where the meeting of the surface currents rain down a manna of diminutive dead bodies. The twisted limestone plants, hard as stone, are really not plants at all, but animals. Their leaves are simply inert and treacherous tentacles which contract very suddenly, and their flowers, avid mouths, which bend over their prey, and suck it in through their gluttonous openings.
A fantastic light streaks this world of darkness with multicolored shafts, animal light produced by living organisms. In the lowest abysses sightless creatures are very scarce, contrary to the common opinion, which imagines that almost all of them lack eyes because of their distance from the sun. The filaments of the carnivorous trees are garlands of lamps; the eyes of the hunting animals, electric globes; the insignificant bacteria, light-producing little glands all of which open or close with phosphorescent switches according to the necessity of the moment,—sometimes in order to persecute and devour, and at others in order to keep themselves hidden in the shadows.
The animal-plants, motionless as stars, surround their ferocious mouths with a circle of flashing lights, and immediately their diminutive prey feel themselves as irresistibly drawn toward them as do the moths that fly toward the lamp, and the birds of the sea that beat against the lighthouse.
None of the lights of the earth can compare with those of this abyssal world. All artificial fires pale before the varieties of its organic brilliance.
The living branches of polyps, the eyes of the animals, even the mud sown with brilliant points, emit phosphoric shafts like sparks whose splendors incessantly vanish and reappear. And these lights pass through many gradations of colors:—violet, purple, orange, blue, and especially green. On perceiving a victim nearby, the gigantic cuttle-fishes become illuminated like livid suns, moving their arms with death-dealing strokes.
All the abyssal beings have their organs of sight enormously developed in order to catch even the weakest rays of light. Many have enormous, protruding eyes. Others have them detached from the body at the end of two cylindrical tentacles like telescopes.
Those that are blind and do not throw out any radiance are compensated for this inferiority by the development of the tactile organs. Their antennae and swimming organs are immeasurably prolonged in the darkness. The filaments of their body, long hairs rich in nerve terminals, can distinguish instantaneously the appetizing prey, or the enemy lying in wait.
The abyssal deeps have two floors or roofs. In the highest, is the so-called neritic zone,—the oceanic surface, diaphanous and luminous, far from any coast. Next is seen the pelagic zone, much deeper, in which reside the fishes of incessant motion, capable of living without reposing on the bottom.
The corpses of the neritic animals and of those that swim between the two waters are the direct or indirect sustenance of the abyssal fauna. These beings with weak dental equipment and sluggish speed, badly armed for the conquest of living prey, nourish themselves with the dropping of this rain of alimentary material. The great swimmers, supplied with formidable mandibles and immense and elastic stomachs, prefer the fortunes of war, the pursuit of living prey, and devour,—as the carnivorous devour the herbivorous on land,—all the little feeders on débris and plancton. This word of recent scientific invention presented to Captain Ferragut's mind the most humble and interesting of the oceanic inhabitants. The plancton is the life that floats in loose clusters or forming cloud-like groups across the neritic surface, even descending to the abyssal depths.
Wherever the plancton goes, there is living animation, grouping itself in closely packed colonies. The purest and most translucent salt water shows under certain luminous rays a multitude of little bodies as restless as the dust motes that dance in shafts of sunlight. These transparent beings mingled with microscopic algae and embryonic mucosities are the plancton. In its dense mass, scarcely visible to the human eye, float the siphonoforas, garlands of entities united by a transparent thread as fragile, delicate and luminous as Bohemian crystal. Other equally subtle organisms have the form of little glass torpedoes. The sum of all the albuminous materials floating on the sea are condensed in these nutrient clouds to which are added the secretions of living animals, the remnants of cadavers, the bodies brought down by the rivers, and the nourishing fragments from the meadows of algae.
When the plancton, either by chance or following some mysterious attraction, accumulates on some determined point of the shore, the waters boil with fishes of an astonishing fertility. The seaside towns increase in number, the sea is filled with sails, the tables are more opulent, industries are established, factories are opened and money circulates along the coast, attracted thither from the interior by the commerce in fresh and dried fish.
If the plancton capriciously withdraws itself, floating toward another shore, the marine herds emigrate behind these living meadows, and the blue plain remains as empty as a desert accursed. The fleets of fishing boats are placed high and dry on the beach, the shops are closed, the stewpot is no longer steaming, the horses of the gendarmerie charge against protesting and famine stricken crowds, the Opposition howls in the Chambers, and the newspapers make the Government responsible for everything.
This animal and vegetable dust nourishes the most numerous species which, in their turn, serve as pasture for the great swimmers armed with teeth.
The whales, most bulky of all the oceanic inhabitants, close this destructive cycle, since they devour each other in order to live. The Pacific giant, without teeth, supplies his organism with plancton alone, absorbing it by the ton; that imperceptible and crystalline manna nourishes his body (looking like an overturned belfry), and makes purple, fatty rivers of warm blood circulate under its oily skin.
The transparency of the beings in the plancton recalled to Ferragut's memory the marvelous colorings of the inhabitants of the sea, adjusted exactly to their needs of preservation. The species that live on the surface have, as a general rule, a blue back and silver belly. In this way it is possible for them to escape the sight of their enemies; seen from the shadows of the depths, they are confounded with the white and luminous color of the surface. The sardines that swim in shoals are able to pass unnoticed, thanks to their backs blue as the water, thus escaping the fish and the birds which are hunting them.
Living in the abysses where the light never penetrates, the pelagic animals are not obliged to be transparent or blue like the neritic beings on the surface. Some are opaque and colorless, others, bronzed and black; most of them are clad in somber hues, whose splendor is the despair of the artist's brush, incapable of imitating them. A magnificent red seems to be the base of this color scheme, fading gradually to pale pink, violet, amber, even losing itself in the milky iris of the pearls and in the opalescence of the mother-of-pearl of the mollusks. The eyes of certain fish placed at the end of jaw bones separated from the body, sparkle like diamonds in the ends of a double pin. The protruding glands, the warts, the curving backs, take on the colorings of jewelry.
But the precious stones of earth are dead minerals that need rays of light in order to emit the slightest flash. The animated gems of the ocean—fishes and corals—sparkle with their own colors that are a reflex of their vitality. Their green, their rose color, their intense yellow, their metallic iridescence, all their liquid tints are eternally glazed by a moist varnish which cannot exist in the atmospheric world.