He snapped off the electric light and in the darkness found his bed, throwing himself down with an exaggerated noise, in order that nobody might doubt that he had retired for the night. The darkness reanimated his hope.
"She's going to come…. She will come at any moment."
Again he arose cautiously, noiselessly, going on tiptoe. He must overcome any possible difficulty at the entrance. He put the door slightly ajar so as to avoid the swinging noise of the door-fastening. A chair in the frame of the doorway easily held it unlatched.
He got up several times more, arranging things to his satisfaction and then threw himself upon the bed, disposed to keep his watch all night, if it was necessary. He did not wish to sleep. No, he ought not to drowse…. And half an hour later he was slumbering profoundly without knowing at what moment he had slid down the soft slopes of sleep.
Suddenly he awoke as if some one had hit his head with a club. His ears were buzzing…. It was the rude impression of one who sleeps without wishing to and feels himself shaken by reviving restlessness. Some moments passed without his taking in the situation. Then he suddenly recalled it all…. Alone! She had not come!… He did not know whether minutes or hours had passed by.
Something besides his uneasiness had brought him back to life. He suspected that in the dark silence some real thing was approaching. A little mouse appeared to be moving down the corridor. The shoes placed outside one of the doors were moved with a slight creaking. Ferragut had the vague impression of air that is displaced by the slow advance of a body.
The door trembled. The chair was pushed back, little by little, very gently pushed. In the darkness he descried a moving shadow, dark and dense. He made a movement.
"Shhhh-h!" sighed a ghostly voice, a voice from the other world. "It is
I."
Instinctively he raised his right hand to the wall and turned on the light.
Under the electric light it was she,—a different Freya from any that he had ever seen, with her wealth of hair falling in golden serpents over her shoulders covered with an Asiatic tunic that enveloped her like a cloud.
It was not the Japanese kimono, vulgarized by commerce. It was made in one piece of Hindustanic cloth, embroidered with fantastic flowers and capriciously draped. Through its fine texture could be perceived the flesh as though it were a wrapping of multicolored air.
She uttered a protest. Then, imitating Ulysses' gesture, she reached her hand toward the wall … and all was darkness.
* * * * *
Upon awakening, he felt the sunlight on his face. The window, whose curtains he had forgotten to draw, was blue,—blue sky above and the blue of the sea in its lower panes.
He looked around him…. Nobody! For a moment he believed he must have been dreaming, but the sweet perfume of her hair still scented the pillow. The reality of awakening was as joyous for Ulysses, as sweet as had been the night hours in the mystery of the darkness. He had never felt so strong and so happy.
In the window sounded a baritone voice singing one of the songs of Naples,—"Oh, sweet land, sweet gulf!…" That certainly was the most beautiful spot in the world. Proud and satisfied with his fate, he would have liked to embrace the waves, the islands, the city, Vesuvius.
A bell jangled impatiently in the corridor. Captain Ferragut was hungry. He surveyed with the glance of an ogre the café au lait, the abundant bread, and the small pat of butter that the waiter brought him. A very small portion for him!… And while he was attacking all this with avidity, the door opened and Freya, rosy and fresh from a recent bath and clad like a man, entered the room.
The Hindu tunic had been replaced with masculine pyjamas of violet silk. The pantaloons had the edges turned up over a pair of white Turkish slippers into which were tucked her bare feet. Over her heart there was embroidered a design whose letters Ulysses was not able to decipher. Above this device the point of her handkerchief was sticking out of the pocket. Her opulent hair, twisted on top of her head and the voluptuous curves that the silk was taking in certain parts of her masculine attire were the only things that announced the woman.
The captain forgot his breakfast, enthusiastic over this novelty. She was a second Freya,—a page, an adorable, freakish novelty…. But she repelled his caresses, obliging him to seat himself.
She had entered with a questioning expression in her eyes. She was feeling the disquietude of every woman on her second amorous interview. She was trying to guess his impressions, to convince herself of his gratitude, to be certain that the fascinations of the first hours had not been dissipated during her absence.
While the sailor was again attacking his breakfast with the familiarity of a lover who has achieved his ends and no longer needs to hide and poetize his grosser necessities, she seated herself on an old chaise longue, lighting a cigarette.
She cuddled into this seat, her crossed legs forming an angle within the circle of one of her arms. Then she leaned her head on her knees, and in this position smoked a long time, with her glance fixed on the sea. He guessed that she was about to say something interesting, something that was puckering her mental interior, struggling to come out.
Finally she spoke with deliberation, without taking her eyes off the gulf. From time to time she would stop this contemplation in order to fasten her eyes on Ulysses, measuring the effect of her words. He stopped occupying himself definitely with the breakfast tray, foreseeing that something very important was coming.
"You have sworn that you will do for me whatever I ask you to do….
You do not wish to lose me forever."
Ulysses protested. Lose her?… He could not live without her.
"I know your former life; you have told me all about it…. You know nothing about me and you ought to know about me—now that I am really yours."
The sailor nodded his head; nothing could be more just.
"I have deceived you, Ulysses. I am not Italian."
Ferragut smiled. If that was all the deception consisted of!… From the day in which they had spoken together for the first time going to Paestum, he had guessed that what she had told him about her nationality was false.
"My mother was an Italian. I swear it…. But my father was not…."
She stopped a moment. The sailor listened to her with interest, with his back turned to the table.
"I am a German woman and …"
CHAPTER VII
THE SIN OF ULYSSES
Every morning on awaking at the first streak of dawn, Toni felt a sensation of surprise and discouragement.
"Still in Naples!" he would say, looking through the port-hole of his cabin.
Then he would count over the days. Ten had passed by since the Mare
Nostrum, entirely repaired, had anchored in the commercial harbor.
"Twenty-four hours more," the mate would add mentally.
And he would again take up his monotonous life, strolling over the empty and silent deck of the vessel, without knowing what to do, looking despondently at the other steamers which were moving their freighting antennae, swallowing up boxes and bundles and beginning to send out through their chimneys the smoke announcing departure.
He suffered great remorse in calculating what the boat might have gained were it now under way. The advantage was all for the captain, but he could not avoid despairing over the money lost.
The necessity of communicating his impressions to somebody, of protesting in chorus against this lamentable inertia, used to impel him toward Caragol's dominions. In spite of their difference in rank, the first officer always treated the cook with affectionate familiarity.
"An abyss is separating us!" Toni would say gravely.
This "abyss" was a metaphor extracted from his reading of radical papers and alluded to the old man's fervid and simple beliefs. But their common affection for the captain, all being from the same land, and the employment of the Valencian dialect as the language of intimacy, made the two seek each other's company instinctively. For Toni, Caragol was the most congenial spirit aboard … after himself.
As soon as he stopped at the door of the galley, supporting his elbow in the doorway and obstructing the sunlight with his body, the old cook would reach out for his bottle of brandy, preparing a "refresco" or a "caliente" in honor of his visitor.
They would drink slowly, interrupting their relish of the liquor to lament together the immovability of the Mare Nostrum. They would count up the cost as though the boat were theirs. While it was being repaired, they had been able to tolerate the captain's conduct.
"The English always pay," Toni would say. "But now nobody is paying and the ship isn't earning anything, and we are spending every day…. About how much are we spending?"
And he and the cook would again calculate in detail the cost of keeping up the steamer, becoming terrified on reaching the total. One day without moving was costing more than the two men could earn in a month.
"This can't go on!" Toni would protest.
His indignation took him ashore several times in search of the captain. He was afraid to speak to him, considering it a lack of discipline to meddle in the management of the boat, so he invented the most absurd pretext in order to run afoul of Ferragut.
He looked with antipathy at the porter of the albergo because he always told him that the captain had just gone out. This individual with the air of a procurer must be greatly to blame for the immovability of the steamer; his heart told him so.
Because he couldn't come to blows with the man, and because he could not stand seeing him laugh deceitfully while watching him wait hour after hour in the vestibule, he took up his station in the street, spying on Ferragut's entrances and exits.
The three times that he did succeed in speaking with the captain, the result was always the same. The captain was as greatly delighted to see him as if he were an apparition from the past with whom he could communicate the joy of his overflowing happiness.
He would listen to his mate, congratulating himself that all was going so well on the ship, and when Toni, in stuttering tones, would venture to ask the date of departure, Ulysses would hide his uncertainty under a tone of prudence. He was awaiting a most valuable cargo; the longer they waited for it, the more money they were going to gain…. But his words were not convincing to Toni. He remembered the captain's protests fifteen days before over the lack of good cargo in Naples, and his desire to leave without loss of time.
Upon returning aboard, the mate would at once hunt Caragol, and both would comment on the changes in their chief. Toni had found him an entirely different man, with beard shaved, wearing his best clothes, and displaying in the arrangement of his person a most minute nicety, a decided wish to please. The rude pilot had even come to believe that he had detected, while talking to him, a certain feminine perfume like that of their blonde visitor.
This news was the most unbelievable of all for Caragol.
"Captain Ferragut perfumed!… The captain scented!… The wretch!" And he threw up his arms, his blind eyes seeking the brandy bottles and the oil flasks, in order to make them witnesses of his indignation.
The two men were entirely agreed as to the cause of their despair. She was to blame for it all; she who was going to hold the boat spellbound in this port until she knew when, with the irresistible power of a witch.
"Ah, these females!… The devil always follows after petticoats like a lap-dog…. They are the ruination of our life."
And the wrathful chastity of the cook continued hurling against womankind insults and curses equal to those of the first fathers of the church.
One morning the men washing down the deck sent a cry passing from stem to stern,—"The captain!" They saw him approaching in a launch, and the word was passed along through staterooms and corridors, giving new force to their arms, and lighting up their sluggish countenances. The mate came up on deck and Caragol stuck his head out through the door of his kitchen.
At the very first glance, Toni foresaw that something important was about to happen. The captain had a lively, happy air. At the same time, he saw in the exaggerated amiability of his smile a desire to conciliate them, to bring sweetly before them something which he considered of doubtful acceptation.
"Now you'll be satisfied," said Ferragut, giving his hand, "we are going to weigh anchor soon."
They entered the saloon. Ulysses looked around his boat with a certain strangeness as though returning to it after a long voyage. It looked different to him; certain details rose up before his eyes that had never attracted his attention before.
He recapitulated in a lightning cerebral flash all that had occurred in less than two weeks. For the first time he realized the great change in his life since Freya had come to the steamer in search of him.
He saw himself in his room in the hotel opposite her, dressed like a man, and looking out over the gulf while smoking.
"I am a German woman, and …"
Her mysterious life, even its most incomprehensible details, was soon to be explained.
She was a German woman in the service of her country. Modern war had aroused the nations en masse; it was not as in other centuries, a clash of diminutive, professional minorities that have to fight as a business. All vigorous men were now going to the battlefield, and the others were working in industrial centers which had been converted into workshops of war. And this general activity was also taking in the women who were devoting their labor to factories and hospitals, or their intelligence on the other side of the frontiers, to the service of their country.
Ferragut, surprised by this outright revelation, remained silent, but finally ventured to formulate his thought.
"According to that, you are a spy?"…
She heard the word with contempt. That was an antiquated term which had lost its primitive significance. Spies were those who in other times,—when only the professional soldiers took part in war,—had mixed themselves in the operations voluntarily or for money, surprising the preparations of the enemy. Nowadays, with the mobilization of the nations en masse, the old official spy—a contemptible and villainous creature, daring death for money—had practically disappeared. Nowadays there only existed patriots—anxious to work for their country, some with weapons in their hands, others availing themselves of their astuteness, or exploiting the qualities of their sex.
Ulysses was greatly disconcerted by this theory.
"Then the doctor?…" he again questioned, guessing; what the imposing dame must be.
Freya responded with an expression of enthusiasm and respect. Her friend was an illustrious patriot, a very learned woman, who was placing all her faculties at the service of her country. She adored her. She was her protector; she had rescued her in the most difficult moment of her existence.
"And the count?" Ferragut continued asking.
Here the woman made a gesture of reserve.
"He also is a great patriot, but do not let us talk about him."
In her words there were both respect and fear. He suspected that she did not wish to have anything to do with this haughty personage.
A long silence. Freya, as if fearing the effects of the captain's meditations, suddenly cut them short with her headlong chatter.
The doctor and she had come from Rome to take refuge in Naples, fleeing from the intrigues and mutterings of the capital. The Italians were squabbling among themselves; some were partisans of the war, others of neutrality; none of them wished to aid Germany, their former ally.
"We, who have protected them so much!" she exclaimed. "False and ungrateful race!…"
Her gestures and her words recalled to Ulysses' mind the image of the doctor, execrating the Italian country from a little window of the coach, the first day that they had talked together.
The two women were in Naples, whiling away their tedious waiting with trips to neighboring places of interest, when they met the sailor.
"I have a very pleasant recollection of you," continued Freya. "I guessed from the very first instant that our friendship was going to terminate as it has terminated."
She read a question in his glance.
"I know what you are going to say to me. You wonder that I have made you wait so long, that I should have made you suffer so with my caprices…. It was because while I was loving you, at the same time I wished to separate myself from you. You represented an attraction and a hindrance. I feared to mix you up in my affairs…. Besides, I need to be free in order to dedicate myself wholly to the fulfillment of my mission."
There was another long pause. Freya's eyes were fixed on those of her lover with scrutinizing tenacity. She wished to sound the depths of his thoughts, to study the ripeness of her preparation—before risking the decisive blow. Her examination was satisfactory.
"And now that you know me," she said with painful slowness, "begone!… You cannot love me. I am a spy, just as you say,—a contemptible being…. I know that you will not be able to continue loving me after what I have revealed to you. Take yourself away in your boat, like the heroes of the legends; we shall not see each other more. All our intercourse will have been a beautiful dream…. Leave me alone. I am ignorant of what my own fate may be, but what is more important to me is your tranquillity."
Her eyes filled with tears. She threw herself face downward on the divan, hiding her face in her arms, while a sobbing outburst set all the adorable curves of her back a-tremble.
Touched by her grief, Ulysses at the same time admired Freya's shrewdness in divining all his thoughts. The voice of good counsel,—that prudent voice that always spoke in one-half of his brain whenever the captain found himself in difficult situations,—had begun to cry out, scandalized at the first revelations made by this woman:
"Flee, Ferragut!… Flee! You are in a bad fix. Do not agree to any relations with such people. What have you to do with the country of this adventuress? Why should you encounter dangers for a cause that is of no importance to you? What you wanted of her, you already have gotten. Be an egoist, my son!"
But the voice in his other mental hemisphere, that boasting and idiotic voice which always impelled him to embark on vessels bound to be shipwrecked, to be reckless of danger for the mere pleasure of putting his vigor to the proof, also gave him counsel. It was a villainous thing to abandon a woman. Only a coward would do such a thing…. And this German woman appeared to love him so much!…
And with his ardent, meridional exuberance, he embraced her and lifted her up, patting the loosened ringlets on her forehead, petting her like a sick child, and drinking in her tears with interminable kisses.
No; he would not abandon her…. He was more disposed to defend her from all her enemies. He did not know who her enemies were, but if she needed a man,—there he was….
In vain his inner monitor reviled him while he was making such offers; he was compromising himself blindly; perhaps this adventure was going to be the most terrible in his history…. But in order to quiet his scruples, the other voice kept crying, "You are a gentleman; and a gentleman does not desert a lady, through fear, a few hours after having won her affection. Forward, Captain!"
An excuse of cowardly selfishness arose in his thoughts, fabricated from one single piece. He was a Spaniard, a neutral, in no way involved in the conflict of the Central Powers. His second had often spoken to him of solidarity of race, of Latin nations, of the necessity of putting an end to militarism, of going to war in order that there might be no more wars…. Mere vaporings of a credulous reader! He was neither English nor French. Neither was he German; but the woman he loved was, and he was not going to give her up for any antagonisms in which he was not concerned.
Freya must not weep. Her lover affirmed repeatedly that he wished to live forever at her side, that he was not thinking of abandoning her because of what she had said: and he even pledged his word of honor that he would aid her in everything that she might consider possible and worthy of him.
Thus Captain Ulysses Ferragut impetuously decided his destiny.
When his beloved again took him to the doctor's home, he was received by her just as though he really belonged to the family. She no longer had to hide her nationality. Freya simply called her Frau Doktor and she, with the glib enthusiasm of the professor, finally succeeded in converting the sailor, explaining to him the right and reason of her country's entrance into war with half of Europe.
Poor Germany had to defend herself. The Kaiser was a man of peace in spite of the fact that for many years he had been methodically preparing a military force capable of crushing all humanity. All the other nations had driven him to it; they had all been the first in aggression. The insolent French, long before the war, had been sending clouds of aeroplanes over German cities, bombarding them.
Ferragut blinked with surprise. This was news to him. It must have occurred while he was on the high seas. The verbose positiveness of the doctor did not permit any doubt whatever…. Besides, that lady ought to know better than those who lived on the ocean.
Then had arisen the English provocation…. Like a traitor of melodrama, the British government had been preparing the war for a long time, not wishing to show its hand until the last moment; and Germany, lover of peace, had had to defend herself from this enemy, the worst one of all.
"God will punish England!" affirmed the doctor, looking at Ulysses.
And he not wishing to defraud her of her expectations, gallantly nodded his head…. For all he cared, God might punish England.
But in expressing himself in such a way, he felt himself agitated by a new duality. The English had been good comrades; he remembered agreeably his voyages as an official aboard the British boats. At the same time, their increasing power, invisible to the men on shore, monstrous for those who were living on the sea, had been producing in him a certain irritation. He was accustomed to find them either as dominators of all the seas, or else solidly installed on all the strategic and commercial coasts.
The Doctor, as though guessing the necessity of arousing his hatred of the great enemy, appealed to his historical memories: Gibraltar, stolen by the English; the piracies of Drake; the galleons of America seized with methodical regularity by the British fleets; the landings on the coast of Spain that in other centuries had perturbed the life of the peninsula. England at the beginning of her greatness in the reign of Elizabeth, was the size of Belgium; if she had made herself one of the great powers, it was at the cost of the Spaniards and then of Holland, even dominating the entire world. And the doctor spoke in English and with so much vehemence about England's evil deeds against Spain that the impressionable sailor ended by saying spontaneously:
"May God punish her!"
But just here reappeared the Mediterranean navigator, the complicated and contradictory Ulysses. He suddenly remembered the repairs on his vessel that must be paid for by England.
"May God punish them … but may He wait a little bit!" he murmured in his thoughts.
The imposing professor became greatly exasperated when speaking of the land in which she was living.
"Mandolin players! Bandits!" she always cried when referring to the
Italians.
How much they owed to Germany! The Emperor Wilhelm had been a father to them. All the world knew that!… And yet when the war was breaking out, they were going to refuse to follow their old friends. Now German diplomacy must busy itself, not to keep them at her side, but to prevent their going with the adversary. Every day she was receiving news from Rome. She had hoped that Italy might keep herself neutral, but who could trust the word of such people?… And she repeated her wrathful insults.
The sailor immediately adapted himself to this home, as though it were his own. On the few occasions that Freya separated herself from him, he used to go in search of her in the salon of the imposing dame who was now assuming toward Ulysses the air of a good-natured mother-in-law.
In various visits he met the count. This taciturn personage would offer his hand instinctively though keeping a certain distance between them. Ulysses now knew his real nationality, and he knew that he knew it. But the two kept up the fiction of Count Kaledine, Russian diplomat, and this man exacted respect from every one in the doctor's dwelling. Ferragut, devoted to his amorous selfishness, was not permitting himself any investigation, adjusting himself to the hints dropped by the two women.
He had never known such happiness. He was experiencing the great sensuousness of one who finds himself seated at table in a well-warmed dining-room and sees through the window the tempestuous sea tossing a bark that is struggling against the waves.
The newsboys were crying through the streets terrible battles in the center of Europe; cities were burning under bombardment; every twenty-four hours thousands upon thousands of human beings were dying…. And he was not reading anything, not wishing to know anything. He was continuing his existence as though he were living in a paradisiacal felicity. Sometimes, while waiting for Freya, his memory would gloat over her wonderful physical charm, the refinements and fresh sensations which his passion was enjoying; at other times, the actual embrace with its ecstasy blotted out and suppressed all unpleasant possibilities.
Something, nevertheless, suddenly jerked him from his amorous egoism, something that was overshadowing his visage, furrowing his forehead with wrinkles of preoccupation, and making him go aboard his vessel.
When seated in the large cabin of his ship opposite his mate, he leaned his elbows on the table and commenced to chew on a great cigar that had just gone out.
"We're going to start very soon," he repeated with visible abstraction.
"You will be glad, Toni; I believe that you will be delighted."
Toni remained impassive. He was waiting for something more. The captain in starting on a voyage had always told him the port of destiny and the special nature of the cargo. Therefore, noting that Ferragut did not want to add anything more, he ventured to ask:
"Is it to Barcelona that we are going?"
Ulysses hesitated, looking toward the door, as though fearing to be overheard. Then he leaned over toward Toni.
The voyage was going to be one without any danger, but one which must be shrouded in mystery.
"I am counting on you, because you know all my affairs, because I consider you as one of my family."
The pilot did not appear to be touched with this sample of confidence. He still remained impassive, though within him all the uneasiness that had been agitating him in former days was reawakening.
The captain continued talking. These were war times and it was necessary to take advantage of them. For those two it would not be any novelty to transport cargoes of military material. Once he had carried from Europe arms and munitions for a revolution in South America. Toni had recounted to him his adventures in the Gulf of California, in command of a little schooner which had served as a transport to the insurrectionists of the southern provinces in the revolt against the Mexican government.
But the mate, while nodding his head affirmatively, was at the same time looking at him with questioning eyes. What were they going to transport on this trip?…
"Toni, it is not a matter of artillery nor of guns. Neither is it an affair of munitions…. It is a short and well-paid job that will make us go very little out of our way on our return to Barcelona."
He stopped himself in his confidences, feeling a curious hesitation and finally he added, lowering his voice:
"The Germans are paying for it!… We are going to supply their
Mediterranean submarines with petrol."
Contrary to all Ferragut's expectations, his second did not make any gesture of surprise. He remained as impassive as if this news were actually incomprehensible to him. Then he smiled lightly, shrugging his shoulders as though he had heard something absurd…. The Germans, perhaps, had submarines in the Mediterranean? It was likely, was it, that one of these navigating machines would be able to make the long crossing from the North Sea to the Strait of Gibraltar?…
He knew all about the great atrocities that the submarines were causing in the vicinity of England, but in a greatly reduced zone in the limited radius of action of which they were capable. The Mediterranean, fortunately for the merchant vessels, was quite beyond the range of their treacherous lying-in-wait.
Ferragut interrupted with his meridional vehemence. Beside himself with passion, he was already beginning to express himself as though the doctor were speaking through his mouth.
"You are referring to the submarines, Toni, to the little submarines that were in existence at the beginning of the war—little grasshoppers of fragile steel that moved with great difficulty when on a level with the water and might be overwhelmed at the slightest shock…. But to-day there is something more: there is a submersible that is like a submarine protected by a ship's hull which is able to go hidden between the two waters and, at the same time, can navigate over the surface better than a torpedo-boat…. You have no idea what these Germans are capable of! They are a great nation, the finest in the world!…"
And with impulsive exaggeration, he insisted in proclaiming German greatness and its inventive spirit as though he had some share in this mechanical and destructive glory.
Then he added confidentially, placing his hand on Toni's arm:
"I'm going to tell it only to you: you are the only person who knows the secret, aside from those who have told it to me…. The German submersibles are going to enter the Mediterranean. We are going to meet them in order to renew their supplies of oil and combustibles."
He became silent, looking fixedly at his subordinate, and smiling in order to conquer his scruples.
For two seconds he did not know what to expect. Toni was remaining pensive with downcast eyes. Then, little by little, he drew himself erect, abandoned his seat, and said simply:
"No!"
Ulysses also left his revolving chair with the impulsiveness of surprise. "No?… And why not?"
He was the captain and they all ought to obey him. For that reason he was responsible for the boat, for the life of its crew, for the fate of the cargo. Besides, he was the proprietor; no one exceeded him in command; his power was unlimited. Through friendly affection and custom, he had consulted his mate, making him share in his secrets and here Toni, with an ingratitude never seen before, was daring to rebel…. What did this mean?…
But the mate, instead of giving any explanation, merely confined himself to answering, each time more obstinately and wrathfully:
"No!… No!"
"But why not?" insisted Ferragut, waxing impatient and in a voice trembling with anger.
Toni, without losing energy in his negatives, was hesitating,—confused, bewildered, scratching his beard, and lowering his eyes in order to reflect better.
He did not know just how to explain himself. He envied his captain's facility in finding just the right word. The simplest of his ideas suffered terribly before coming anxiously from his mouth…. But, finally, little by little, between his stutterings, he managed to express his hatred of those monsters of modern industry which were dishonoring the sea with their crimes.
Each time that he had read in the newspapers of their exploits in the North Sea a wave had passed over the conscience of this simple, frank and upright man. They were accustomed to attack treacherously hidden in the water, disguising their long and murderous eyes like the visual antennae of the monsters of the deep. This aggression without danger appeared to revive in his soul the outraged souls of a hundred Mediterranean ancestors, cruel and piratical perhaps, but who, nevertheless, had sought the enemy face to face with naked breast, battle-axe in hand, and the barbed harpoon for boarding ship as their only means of struggle.
"If they would torpedo only the armed vessels!" he added. "War is a form of savagery, and it is necessary to shut the eyes to its treacherous blows, accepting them as glorious achievements…. But there is something more than that: you know it well. They sink merchant vessels, and passenger ships carrying women, carrying little children…."
His weather-beaten cheeks assumed the color of a baked brick. His eyes flashed with a bluish splendor. He was feeling the same wrath that he had experienced when reading the accounts of the first torpedoing of the great transatlantic steamer on the coast of England.
He was seeing the defenseless and peaceable throng crowding to the boats that were capsizing; the women throwing themselves into the sea with children in their arms; all the deadly confusion of a catastrophe…. Then the submarine arising to contemplate its work; the Germans grouped on the decks of dripping steel, laughing and joking, satisfied with the rapid result of their labors; and for a distance of many miles the sea was filled with black bulks dragged slowly along by the waves—men floating on their backs, immovable, with their glassy eyes fixed on the sky; children with their fair hair clinging like masks to their livid face; corpses of mothers pressing to their bosom with cold rigidity little corpses of babies, assassinated before they could even know what life might mean.
When reading the account of these crimes, Toni had naturally thought of his own wife and children, imagining what their condition might have been on that steamer, experiencing the same fate as its innocent passengers. This imagination had made him feel so intense a wrath that he even mistrusted his own self-control on the day that he should again encounter German sailors in any port…. And Ferragut, an honorable man, a good captain whose praises every one was sounding, could he possibly aid in transplanting such horrors as these to the Mediterranean?…
Poor Toni!… He did not know how to express himself properly, but the very possibility that his beloved sea might witness such crimes gave new vehemence to his indignation. The soul of Doctor Ferragut appeared to be reviving in this rude Mediterranean sailor. He had never seen the white Amphitrite, but he trembled for her with a religious fervor, without even knowing her. Was the luminous blue from which had arisen the early gods to be dishonored by the oily spot that would disclose assassination en masse!… Were the rosy strands from whose foam Venus had sprung to receive clusters of corpses, impelled by the waves!… Were the sea-gull wings of the fishing-boats to flee panic-stricken before those gray sharks of steel!… Were his family and neighbors to be terrified, on awakening, by this floating cemetery washed to their doors during the night!…
He was thinking all this, he was seeing it; but not succeeding in expressing it, so he limited himself to insisting upon his protest:
"No!… I won't tolerate it in our sea!"
Ferragut, in spite of his impetuous character, now adopted a conciliatory tone like that of a father who wishes to convince his scowling and stubborn son.
The German submersibles would confine themselves, in the Mediterranean, to military actions only. There was no danger of their attacking defenseless barks as in the northern seas. Their drastic exploits there had been imposed by circumstances, by the sincere desire of terminating the war as quickly as possible, by giving terrifying and unheard-of blows.
"I assure you that in our sea there will be nothing of that sort. People who ought to know have told me so…. If that had not been the case, I should not have promised to give them aid."
He affirmed this several times in good faith, with absolute confidence in the people who had given him their promise.
"They will sink, if they can, the ships of the Allies that are in the Dardanelles. But what does that matter to us?… That is war! When we were carrying cannons and guns to the revolutionists in South America we did not trouble ourselves about the use which they might make of them, did we?"
Toni persisted in his negative.
"It is not the same thing…. I don't know how to express myself, but it is not the same. There, cannon can be answered by cannon. He who strikes also receives blows…. But to aid the submarines is a very different thing. They attack, hidden, without danger…. And I, for my part, do not like treachery."
Finally his mate's insistence exasperated Ferragut, exhausting his enforced good nature.
"We will say no more about it," he said haughtily. "I am the captain and I command as I see fit…. I have given my promise, and I am not going to break it just to please you…. We have finished."
Toni staggered as though he had just received a blow on the breast. His eyes shone again, becoming moist. After a long period of reflection, he held out his shaggy right hand to the captain.
"Good-by, Ulysses!…"
He could not obey, and a sailor who takes disrespectful exception to the orders of his chief must leave the ship. In no other boat could he ever live as in the Mare Nostrum. Perhaps he might not get another job, perhaps the other captains might not like him, considering him to have grown too habituated to excessive familiarity. But, if it should be necessary, he would again become the skipper of a little coast-trader…. Good-by! He would not sleep on board that night.
Ferragut was very indignant, even yelling angrily:
"But, don't be such a barbarian!… What a stubborn fool you are!…
What do these exaggerated scruples amount to?…"
Then he smiled malignly and said in a low tone, "You know already what we know, and I know very well that in your youth you carried contraband."
Toni drew himself up haughtily. Now it was he who was indignant.
"I have carried contraband, yes. And what is there astonishing about that?… Your grandparents did the same thing. There is not a single honorable sailor on our sea who has not committed this little offense…. Who is the worse for that?…"
The only one who could complain was the State, a vague personality whose whereabouts and place nobody knew and who daily experienced a million of similar violations. In the custom-houses Toni had seen the richest tourists eluding the vigilance of the employees in order to evade an insignificant payment. Every one down in his heart was a smuggler…. Besides, thanks to these fraudulent navigators, the poor were able to smoke better and more cheaply. Whom were they assassinating with their business?… How did Ferragut dare to compare these evasions of the law which never did anybody any harm with the job of aiding submarine pirates in continuing their crimes?…
The captain, disarmed by this simple logic, now appealed to his powers of persuasion.
"Toni, at least you will do it for me. Do it for my sake. We shall continue friends as we have always been. On some other occasion I'll sacrifice myself. Think…. I have given my word of honor."
And the mate, although much touched by his pleadings, replied dolefully:
"I cannot…. I cannot!"
He was anxious to say something more to round out his thought, and added:
"I'm a Republican…."
This profession of faith he brought forward as an insurmountable barrier, striking himself at the same time on the breast, in order to prove the hardness of the obstacle.
Ulysses felt tempted to laugh, as he had always done, at Toni's political affirmations. But the situation was not one for joking, and he continued talking in the hope of convincing him.
He had always loved liberty and been on the side opposed to despotism!… England was the great tyrant of the sea; she had provoked the war in order to strengthen her jurisdiction and if she should achieve the victory, her haughtiness would have no limit. Poor Germany had done nothing more than defend herself…. Ferragut repeated all that he had heard in the doctor's home, winding up in a tone of reproach:
"And are you on the side of the English, Toni? You, a man of advanced ideas?…"
The pilot scratched his beard with an expression of perplexity, searching for the elusive words. He knew what he ought to say. He had read it in the writings of gentlemen who knew quite as much as his captain; besides, he had thought a great deal about this matter in his solitary pacing on the bridge.
"I am where I ought to be. I am with France…."
He expressed this thought sluggishly, with stutterings and half-formed words. France was the country of the great Revolution, and for that reason he considered it as something to which he belonged, uniting its faith with that of his own person.
"And I do not need to say more. As to England…."
Here he made a pause like one who rests and gathers all his forces together for a difficult leap.
"There always has to be one nation on top," he continued. "We hardly amount to anything at present and, according to what I have read, Spain was once mistress of the entire world for a century and a half. Once we were everywhere; now we are in the soup. Then came France's turn. Now it is England's…. It doesn't bother me that one nation places itself above the rest. The thing that interests me is what that nation represents,—the fashion it, will set."
Ferragut was concentrating his attention in order to comprehend what
Toni wished to say.
"If England triumphs," the pilot continued, "Liberty will be the fashion. What does their haughtiness amount to with me, if there always has to be one dominating Nation?… The nations will surely copy the victor…. England, so they say, is really a republic that prefers to pay for the luxury of a king for its grand ceremonials. With her, peace would be inevitable, the government managed by the people, the disappearance of the great armies, the true civilization. If Germany triumphs, we shall live as though we were in barracks. Militarism will govern everything. We shall bring up our children, not that they may enjoy life, but that they may become soldiers and go forth to kill from their very youth. Might as the only Right, that is the German method,—a return to barbarous times under the mask of civilization."
He was silent an instant, as though mentally recapitulating all that he had said in order to convince himself that he had not left any forgotten idea in the corners of his cranium. Again he struck himself on the breast. Yes, he was where he ought to be, and it was impossible for him to obey his captain.
"I am a Republican!… I am a Republican!" he repeated energetically, as though having said that, there was nothing more to add.
Ferragut, not knowing how to answer this simple and solid enthusiasm, gave way to his temper.
"Get out, you brute!… I don't want to see you again, ungrateful wretch! I shall do the thing alone; I don't need you. It is enough for me to take my boat where it pleases me and to follow out my own pleasure. Be off with all the old lies with which you have crammed your cranium…. You blockhead!"
His wrath made him fall into his armchair, swinging his back toward the mate, hiding his head in his hands, in order to make him understand that with this scornful silence everything between them had come to an end.
Toni's eyes, growing constantly more distended and glassy, finally released a tear…. To separate thus, after a fraternal life in which the months were like years!…
He advanced timidly in order to take possession of one of Ferragut's soft, inert, inexpressive hands. Its cold contact made him hesitate. He felt inclined to yield…. But immediately he blotted out this weakness with a firm, crisp tone:
"Good-by, Ulysses!…"
The captain did not answer, letting him go away without the slightest word of farewell. The mate was already near the door when he stopped to say to him with a sad and affectionate expression:
"Do not fear that I shall say anything about this to anybody…. Everything remains between us two. I will make up some excuse in order that those aboard will not be surprised at my going."
He hesitated as though he were afraid to appear importunate, but he added:
"I advise you not to undertake that trip. I know how our men feel about these matters; you can't rely upon them. Even Uncle Caragol, who only concerns himself with his galley, will criticize you…. Perhaps they will obey you because you are the captain, but when they go ashore, you will not be the master of their silence…. Believe me; do not attempt it. You are going to disgrace yourself. You well know for what cause…. Good-by, Ulysses!"
When the captain raised his head the pilot had already disappeared and solitude, with its deadly burden, soon weighed upon his thoughts. He felt afraid to carry out his plans without Toni's aid. It appeared to him that the chain of authority which united him to his men had been broken. The mate was carrying away a part of the prestige that Ferragut exercised over the crew. How could he explain his disappearance on the eve of an illegal voyage which exacted such great secrecy? How could he rely upon the silence of everybody?… He remained pensive a long time, then suddenly leaping up from his armchair, he went out on deck, shouting to the seamen:
"Where is Don Antonio? Go find him. Call him for me."
"Don Antoni!… Don Antoni!…" replied a string of voices from poop to prow, while Uncle Caragol's head poked itself out of the door of his dominions.
"Don Antoni" appeared through the hatchway. He had been going all over the boat, after taking leave of his captain. Ferragut received him with averted face, avoiding his glance, and with a complex and contradictory gesture. He felt angry at being vanquished and the shame of weakness yet, allied to these sensations, was the instinctive gratitude which one experiences upon being freed from an unwise step by a violent hand which mistreats and saves.
"You are to remain, Toni!" he said in a dull voice. "There is nothing to say. I will redeem my word as best I can…. To-morrow you shall know certainly what we are going to do."
The solar face of Caragol was beaming beatifically without seeing anything, without hearing anything. He had suspected something serious in the captain's arrival, his long interview alone with the mate, and the departure of the latter passing silent and scowling before the door of his galley. Now the same presentiment advised him that a reconciliation between the two men whose figures he could only distinguish confusedly, must have taken place. Blessed be the Christ of the Grao!… And upon learning that the captain would remain aboard until afternoon, he set himself to the confection of one of his masterly rice-dishes in order to solemnize the return of peace.
A little before sunset Ulysses again found himself with his mistress in the hotel. He had returned to land, nervous and uneasy. His uneasiness made him fear this interview while at the same time he wished it.
"Out with it! I am not a child to feel such fears," he said to himself upon entering his room and finding Freya awaiting him.
He spoke to her with the brusqueness of one who wishes to conclude everything quickly…. "I could not undertake the service that the doctor asked. I take back my word. The mate on board would not consent to it."
Her wrath burst forth without any finesse, with the frankness of intimacy. She always hated Toni. "Hideous old faun!…" From the very first moment she had suspected that he would prove an enemy.
"But you are master of your own boat," she continued. "You can do what you want to, and you don't need his permission to sail."
When Ulysses furthermore said that he was not sure of his crew either, and that the voyage was impossible, the woman again became furious at him. She appeared to have grown suddenly ten years older. To the sailor she seemed to have another face, of an ashy pallor, with furrowed brows, eyes filled with angry tears, and a light foam in the corners of her mouth.
"Braggart…. Fraud…. Southerner! Meridional!"
Ulysses tried to calm her. It might be possible to find another boat.
He would try to help them find another. He was going to send the Mare
Nostrum to await him in Barcelona, and he himself would stay in
Naples, just as long as she wished him to.
"Buffoon!… And I believed in you! And I yielded myself to you, believing you to be a hero, believing your offer of sacrifice to be the truth!…"
She marched off, furious, giving the door a spiteful slam.
"She is going to see the doctor," thought Ferragut. "It is all over."
He regretted the loss of this woman, even after having seen her in her tragic and fleeting ugliness. At the same time, the injurious word, the cutting insults with which she had accompanied her departure caused sharp pain. He already was tired and sick of hearing himself called "meridional," as though it were a stigma.
Yet he rather relished his enforced happiness, the sensation of false liberty which every enamored person feels after a quarrelsome break. "Now to live again!…" He wished to return at once to the ship, but feared a revival of the memories evoked by silence. It would be better to remain in Naples, to go to the theater, to trust to the luck of some chance encounter just as when he used to come ashore for a few hours. The next morning he would leave the hotel, with all his baggage, and before sunset he would be sailing the open sea.
He ate outside of the albergo, and he passed the night elbowing women in cabarets where an insipid variety show served as a pretext to disguise the baser object. The recollection of Freya, fresh-looking and gay, kept rising between him and those painted mouths every time that they smiled upon him, trying to attract his attention.
At one o'clock in the morning he went up the hotel stairway, surprised at seeing a ray of light underneath the door of his room. He entered…. She was awaiting him—reading, tranquil and smiling. Her face, refreshed and retouched with juvenile color, did not show the slightest trace of the morning's spasmodic outbreak. She was clad in pyjamas.
Seeing Ulysses enter, she arose with outstretched arms.
"Tell me that you are not still angry with me!… Tell me that you will forgive me!… I was very naughty toward you this afternoon, I admit it."
She was embracing him, rubbing her mouth against his neck with a feline purr. Before the captain could respond she continued with a childish voice:
"My shark! My sea-wolf!—who has made me wait all these hours!… Swear to me that you have not been unfaithful!… I can perceive at once the trace of another woman."
Sniffing his beard and face, her mouth approached the sailor's.
"No, you have not been unfaithful…. I still find my own perfume….
Oh, Ulysses! My hero!…"
She kissed him with that absorbing kiss, which appeared to take all the life from him, obscuring his thoughts and annulling his will-power, making him tremble from head to foot. All was forgotten,—offenses, slights, plans of departure…. And, as usual, he fell, conquered by that vampire caress.
In the darkness he heard Freya's gentle voice. She was recapitulating what they had not said, but what the two were thinking of at the same time.
"The doctor believes that you ought to remain. Let your boat go with its hideous old faun, who is nothing but a drawback. You are to remain here, on land…. You will be able to do us a great favor…. You know you will; you will remain?… What happiness!"
Ferragut's destiny was to obey this idolized and dominating voice…. And the following morning Toni saw him approaching the vessel with an air of command which admitted no opposition. The Mare Nostrum must set forth at once for Barcelona. He would entrust the command to his mate. He would join it just as soon as he could finish certain affairs that were detaining him in Naples.
Toni opened his eyes with a gesture of surprise. He wished to respond, but stood with his mouth open, not venturing to speak a single word…. This was his captain, and he was not going to permit any objections to his orders.
"Very well," he said finally. "I only ask you that you return as soon as possible to take up your command…. Do not forget what we are losing while the boat is tied up."
A few days after the departure of the steamer Ulysses radically changed his method of living.
Freya no longer wished to continue lodging in the hotel. Attacked by a sudden modesty, the curiosity and smiles of the tourists and servants were annoying her. Besides, she wished to enjoy complete liberty in her love affairs. Her friend, who was like a mother to her, would facilitate her desire. The two would live in her house.
Ferragut was greatly surprised to discover the extreme size of the apartment occupied by the doctor. Beyond her salon there was an endless number of rooms, somewhat dismantled and without furniture, a labyrinth of partitioned walls and passageways, in which the captain was always getting lost, and having to appeal to Freya for aid; all the doors of the stair-landings that appeared unrelated to the green screen of the office were so many other exits from the same dwelling.
The lovers were lodged in the extreme end, as though living in a separate house. One of the doors was for them only. They occupied a grand salon, rich in moldings and gildings and poor in furniture. Three armchairs, an old divan, a table littered with papers, toilet articles and eatables, and a rather narrow couch in one of the corners, were all the conveniences of this new establishment.
In the street it was hot, and yet they were shivering with cold in this magnificent room into which the sun's rays had never penetrated. Ulysses attempted to make a fire on a hearth of colored marble, big as a monument, but he had to desist half-suffocated by the smoke. In order to reach the doctor's apartment they had to pass through a row of numberless connecting rooms, long since abandoned.
They lived as newly-wed people, in an amorous solitude, commenting with childish hilarity on the defects of their quarters and the thousand little inconveniences of material existence. Freya would prepare breakfast on a small alcohol stove, defending herself from her lover, who believed himself more skilled than she in culinary affairs. A sailor knows something of everything.
The mere suggestion of hunting a servant for their most common needs irritated the German maiden.
"Never!… Perhaps she might be a spy!"
And the word "spy" on her lips took on an expression of immense scorn.
The doctor was absent on frequent trips and Karl the employee in the study, was the one who received visitors. Sometimes he would pass through the row of deserted rooms in order to ask some information of Freya, and she would follow him out, deserting her lover for a few moments.
Left to himself, Ulysses would suddenly realize the dual nature of his personality. Then the man he was before that meeting in Pompeii would assert himself, and he would see his vessel and his home in Barcelona.
"What have you got yourself into?" he would ask himself remorsefully.
"How is all this affair ever going to turn out?…"
But at the sound of her footsteps in the next room, on perceiving the atmospheric wave produced by the displacement of her adorable body, this second person would fold itself back and a dark curtain would fall over his memory, leaving visible only the actual reality.
With the beatific smile of an opium-smoker, he would accept the impetuous caress of her lips, the entwining of her arms, strangling him like marble boas.
"Ulysses, my master!… The moments that separate me from you weigh upon me like centuries!"
He, on the other hand, had lost all notion of time. The days were all confused in his mind, and he had to keep asking in order to realize their passing. After a week passed in the doctor's home, he would sometimes suppose that the sweet sequestration had been but forty-eight hours long, at others that nearly a month had flitted by.
They went out very little. The mornings slipped away insensibly between the late awakening and preparations for a breakfast made by themselves. If it was necessary to go after some eatable forgotten the day before, it was she who took charge of the expedition, wishing to keep him from all contact with outside life.
The afternoons were afternoons of the harem, passed upon the divan or stretched on the floor. In a low voice she would croon Oriental songs, incomprehensible and mysterious. Suddenly she would spring up impetuously like a spring that is unwound, like a serpent that uncoils itself, and would begin to dance, almost without moving her feet, waving her lithe limbs…. And he would smile with stupefied infatuation, extending a right hand toward an Arabian tabaret, covered with bottles.
Freya took even greater care of the supply of liquor than of things to eat. The sailor was half-drunk, but with a drunkenness wisely tempered that never went beyond the rose-colored period. But he was so happy!…
They dined outside the house. Sometimes their excursions were at midday and they would go to the restaurants of Posilipo or Vomero, the very places that he had known when he was a hopeless suppliant, and which saw him now with her hanging on his arm, with a proud air of possession. If nightfall surprised them, they would hastily betake themselves to a café in the interior of the city, a beer-garden whose proprietor always spoke to Freya in German in a low voice.
Whenever the doctor was in Naples she would seat herself at their table, with the air of a good mother who is receiving her daughter and son-in-law. Her scrutinizing glasses appeared to be searching Ferragut's very soul, as though doubtful of his fidelity. Then she would become more affectionate in the course of these banquets, composed of cold meats with a great abundance of drinks, in the German style. For her, love was the most beautiful thing in existence, and she could not look upon these two enamored ones without a mist of emotion blurring the crystals of her second eyes.
"Ah, Captain!… How much she loves you!… Do not disappoint her; obey her in every respect…. She adores you."
Frequently she returned from her trips in evident bad humor. Ulysses surmised that she had been in Rome. At other times she would appear very gay, with an ironic and tedious gayety. "The mandolin-strummers appear to be coming to their senses. Germany is constantly receiving more support from their ranks. In Rome the 'German propaganda' is distributed among millions."
One night emotion overcame her rugged sensibilities. She had brought back from her trip a portrait which she pressed lovingly against her vast bosom before showing it.
"Look at it," she said to the two. "It is the hero whose name brings tears of enthusiasm to all Germans…. What an honor for our family!"
Pride made her hasty, snatching the photograph from Freya's hand in order to pass it on to Ulysses. He saw a naval official rather mature, surrounded by a numerous family. Two children with long blonde hair were seated on his knees. Five youngsters, chubby and tow-headed, appeared at his feet with crossed legs, lined up in the order of their ages. Near his shoulder extended a double line of brawny young girls with coronal braids imitating the coiffures of empresses and grand duchesses…. Behind these, proudly erect, was his virtuous and prolific companion, aged by too continuous maternity.
Ferragut contemplated this patriotic warrior very deliberately. He had the face of a kindly person with clear eyes and grayish, pointed beard. He almost inspired a tender compassion by his overwhelming duties as a father.
Meanwhile the doctor's voice was chanting the glories of her relative.
"A hero!… Our gracious Kaiser has decorated him with the Iron Cross.
They have given him honorary citizenship in various capitals…. May
God punish England!"
And she extolled this patriarch's unheard-of exploit. He was the commandant of the submarine that had torpedoed one of the greatest English transatlantic steamers. Out of the twelve hundred passengers from New York more than eight hundred were drowned…. Women and children had gone down in the general destruction.
Freya, more quick-witted than the doctor, read Ulysses' thoughts in his eyes…. He was now surveying with astonishment the photograph of this official surrounded with his biblical progeny, like a good-natured burgher. And a man who appeared so complacent had committed such butchery without encountering any danger whatever!—hidden in the water with his eye glued to the periscope, he had coldly ordered the sending of a torpedo against this floating and defenseless city?…
"Such is war," said Freya.
"Of course it is war!" retorted the doctor as if offended at the propitiatory tone of her friend. "And it is our right also. They blockade us, and they wish our women and children to die of hunger, and so we kill theirs."
The captain felt obliged to protest, in spite of the hidden nudges and gestures of his mistress. The doctor had many times told him that, thanks to her organization, Germany could never know hunger, and that she could exist years and years on the consumption of her own product.
"That is so," replied the dame, "but war has to make itself ferocious, implacable, in order that it may not last so long. It is our human duty to terrify the enemy with a cruelty beyond what they are able to imagine."
The sailor slept badly that night, evidently greatly troubled. Freya guessed the presence of something beyond the influence of her caresses. The following day his pensive reserve continued and she, well knowing the cause, tried to dissipate it with her words….
The torpedoing of defenseless steamers was only made on the coast of England. They had to cut short, cost what it might, the source of supplies for that hated island.
"In the Mediterranean nothing of that kind will ever occur. I can assure you of that…. The submarines will attack battleships only."
And, as if fearing a reappearance of Ulysses' scruples, she redoubled her seductions on their afternoons of voluptuous imprisonment. She was constantly devising new fascinations, that her lover might never be surfeited. He, on his part, came to believe that he was living with several women at the same time, like an Oriental personage. Freya upon multiplying her charms, had to do no more than to swing around on herself, showing a new facet of her past existence.
The sentiment of jealousy, the bitterness of not having been the first and only one, rejuvenated the sailor's passion, alleviating the tedium of satiety, yet at the same time giving to her caresses an acrid, desperate and attractive relish due to his enforced fraternity with unknown predecessors.
Desisting from her enchantments, she came and went through the salon, sure of her beauty, proud of her firm and superb physique, which had not yielded in the slightest degree to the passing of the years. A couple of colored shawls served as her transparent clothing. Waving them as rainbow shafts around her marble-white body, she used to interpret the priestess dances to the terrible Siva that she had learned in Java.
Suddenly the chill of the room would begin biting in awaking her from her tropical dream. With a final bound, she sought refuge in his arms.
"Oh, my beloved Argonaut!… My shark!"
She threw herself on the sailor's breast, stroking his beard, and pushing him so as to edge in on the divan which was too narrow for the two.
She guessed at once the cause of his furrowed brow, the listlessness with which he responded to her caresses, the gloomy fire that was smouldering in his eyes. The exotic dance had made him recall her past and in order to regain her sway over him, subjecting him in sweet passivity, she sprang up from the divan, running about the room.
"What shall I give to my bad little man, in order to make him smile a bit?… What shall I do in order to make him forget his wrong ideas?…"
Perfumes were her pet fad. As she herself used to say, it was possible for her to do without eating but never without the richest and most expensive essences. In that scantily furnished room, like the interior of an army and navy supply store, the cut glass flasks with gold and nickel stoppers, protruded among the clothing and papers, and stood up in the corners denouncing the forgetfulness of their enchanting breath.
"Take it! Take it!"
And she sprinkled the precious perfumes as though they were water on Ferragut's hair, over his curled beard, advising the sailor to close his eyes in order not to be blinded by this crazy baptism.