Anointed and fragrant as an Asiatic despot, the strong Ulysses would sometimes revolt against this effeminateness. At others, he would accept it with the delight of a new pleasure.
Suddenly a window-shutter would seem to swing open in his imagination, and, passing by this luminous square, he would see the melancholy Cinta, his son Esteban, the bridge of his vessel and Toni at the helm.
"Forget!" cried the voice of his evil counselor, blotting out the vision. "Enjoy the present!… There is plenty of time to go in search of them."
And again he would sink himself in his refined and artificial luxurious state with the selfishness of the satrap who, after ordering various cruelties, locks himself in his harem.
The very finest linens, scattered by chance, enveloped his body or served as cushions. They were her lingerie, stray petals of her beauty, that still kept the warmth and perfume of her body. If Ferragut needed any object belonging to him, he had to hunt for it through sheaves of skirts, silk petticoats, white negligees, perfumes and portraits, all scattered over the furniture or tossed in the corners. When Freya, tired of dancing in the center of the salon, was not curling herself up in his arms she took delight in opening a box of sandalwood. In this she used to keep all her jewels, taking them out again and again with a nervous restlessness, as though she feared they might have evaporated in their enclosure. Her lover had to listen to the gravest explanations accompanying the display of her treasures.
"Kiss it," she said, offering him the string of pearls almost always on her neck.
These grains of moonlight splendor were to her little living beings, little creatures that she needed in contact with her skin. She was impregnated with the essence of all that she wore; she drank their life.
"They have slept upon me so many nights," she would murmur, contemplating them amorously. "This light amber tone I have given them with the warmth of my body."
They were no longer a piece of jewelry, they formed a part of her organism. They might grow pale and die if they were to pass many days forgotten in the depths of her casket.
After that she kept on ransacking the perfumed jewel-box for all the gems that were her great pride,—earrings and finger-rings of great price, mixed with other exotic jewels of bizarre form and slight value, picked up on her voyages.
"Look carefully at this," she said gravely to Ferragut, while she rubbed against her bare arm an enormous diamond in one of her rings.
Warmed by the friction, the precious stone became converted into a magnet. A bit of paper placed a few inches away was attracted to it with an irresistible fluttering.
She then rubbed one of the barbaric imitation-jewels of thick cut glass, and the scrap of paper remained motionless without the slightest evidence of attraction.
Satisfied with these experiments, she replaced her treasures in the casket and set herself to beguiling the passing monotony, again devoting herself to Ulysses.
These long imprisonments in an atmosphere charged with perfumes, Oriental tobaccos, and feminine seduction were gradually disordering Ferragut's mind. Besides this, he was drinking heavily in order to give new vigor to his organism which was beginning to break down under the excesses of his voluptuous seclusion. At the slightest sign of weariness, Freya would fall upon him with her dominating lips. If she freed herself from his embraces, it was to offer him a glass full of the strongest liquor.
When the spell of intoxication overcame him, weighing down his eyes, he always recalled the same dream. In his maudlin siestas, satiated and happy, there would always reappear another Freya who was not Freya, but Doña Constanza, the Empress of Byzantium. He could see her dressed as a peasant girl, just as she was portrayed in the picture in the church of Valencia, and at the same time completely undressed, like the other houri, who was dancing in the salon.
This double image, which disappeared and reappeared capriciously with the arbitrariness of dreams, was always telling him the same thing. Freya was Doña Constanza perpetuated across the centuries, taking on a new form. She was born of the union of a German and an Italian, just like this other one…. But the chaste empress was now smiling in her nudeness, satisfied with being simply Freya. Marital infidelity, persecution and poverty had been the result of her first existence when she was tranquil and virtuous.
"Now I know the truth," Doña Constanza would say with a sweetly immodest smile. "Only love exists; all the rest is illusion. Kiss me, Ferragut!… I have returned to life in order to recompense you. You gave me the first of your childish affection; you longed for me before you became a man."
And her kiss was like that of the spy—an absorbing kiss throughout his entire person, making him awake…. Upon opening his eyes he saw Freya with her mouth close to his.
"Arise, my sea-wolf!… It is already night. We are going to dine."
Outside the house, Ulysses would breathe in the twilight breeze and look at the first stars that were beginning to sparkle above the roofs. He felt the fresh delight and trembling limbs of the odalisque coming out of retreat.
The dinner finished, they would stroll through the darkest street or the promenades along the shore, avoiding the people. One night they stopped in the gardens of the Villa Nazionale, near the bench that had witnessed their struggle when returning from Posilipo.
"You wished to kill me, you little rascal!… You threatened me with your revolver, my bandit!…"
Ulysses protested. What a way to remember things! But she refuted his correction with a bold and lying authority.
"It was you!… It way you! I say so, and that is enough. You must become accustomed to accepting whatever I may affirm."
In the beer garden, where they used to dine almost every night—an imitation medieval saloon, with paneled beams made by machinery, plaster walls imitating oak, and neo-Gothic crystals—the proprietor used to exhibit as a great curiosity a jar of grotesque little figures among the porcelain steins that adorned the brackets of the pedestals.
Ferragut recognized it immediately; it was an ancient Peruvian jar.
"Yes, it is a huaca," she said. "I have been in that, too…. We were engaged in manufacturing antiques."
Freya misunderstood the gesture that her lover made. She thought that he was astonished at the audacity of this manufacture of souvenirs. "Germany is great; nothing can resist the adaptive powers of her industries…."
And her eyes burned with a proud light as she enumerated these exploits of false historical resurrection. They had filled museums and private collections with Egyptian and Phoenician statuettes recently reproduced. Then, on German soil, they had manufactured Peruvian antiquities in order to sell them to the tourists who visit the ancient realm of the Incas. Some of the inhabitants received wages for disinterring these things opportunely with a great deal of publicity. Now the fad of the moment was the black art, and collectors were hunting horrible wooden idols carved by tribes in the interior of Africa.
But what had really impressed Ferragut was the plural which she had employed in speaking of such industries. Who had fabricated these Peruvian antiquities?… Was it her husband, the sage?…
"No," replied Freya tranquilly. "It was another one—an artist from Munich. He had hardly any talent for painting, but great intelligence in business matters. We returned from Peru with the mummy of an Inca which we exhibited in almost all the museums of Europe without finding a purchaser. Bad business! We had to keep the Inca in our room in the hotel, and …"
Ferragut was not interested in the wanderings of the poor Indian monarch, snatched from the repose of his tomb…. One more! Each of Freya's confidences evoked a new predecessor from the haze of her past.
Coming out of the beer-garden, the captain stalked along with a gloomy aspect. She, on the other hand, was laughing at her memories surveying across the years, with a flattering optimism, this far-away adventure of her Bohemian days, and growing very merry on recalling the remains of the Inca on his passage from hotel to hotel.
Suddenly Ulysses' wrath blazed forth…. The Dutch, officer, the natural history sage, the singer who killed himself in one shot and now the fabricator of antiquities…. How many more men had there been in her existence? How many were there still to be told of? Why had she not brought them all out at once?…
Freya was astounded at his abrupt violence. The sailor's wrath was terrifying. Then she laughed, leaning heavily on his arm, and putting her face close to his.
"You are jealous!… My shark is jealous! Go on talking. You don't know how much I like to hear you. Complain away!… Beat me!… It's the first time that I've seen a jealous man. Ah, you Southerners!… Meridionals!… With good reason the women adore you."
And she was telling the truth. She was experiencing a new sensation before this manly wrath, provoked by amorous indignation. Ulysses appeared to her a very different man from all the others she had known in her former life,—cold, compliant and selfish.
"My Ferragut!… My Mediterranean hero! How I love you! Come … come…. I must reward you!"
They were in a central street, near the corner of a sloping little alley with stairs. She pushed him toward it, and at the first step in the narrow and dark passageway embraced him, turning her back on the movement and light in the great street, in order to kiss him with that kiss which always made the captain's knees tremble.
Although his temper was soothed, he continued complaining during the rest of the stroll. How many had preceded him?… He must know. He wished to know, no matter how horrible the knowledge might be. It was the delight of the jealous who persist in scratching open the wound.
"I want to know you," he repeated. "I ought to know you, since you belong to me. I have the right!…"
This right recalled with childish obstinacy made Freya smile dolorously. Long centuries of experience appeared to peep out from the melancholy curl of her lips. In her gleamed the wisdom of the woman, more cautious and foresighted than that of the man, since love was her only preoccupation.
"Why do you wish to know?" she asked discouragingly. "How much further could you go on that?… Would you perchance be any happier when you did know?…"
She was silent for some steps and then said as though disclosing a secret:
"In order to love, it is not necessary for us to know one another. Quite the contrary. A little bit of mystery keeps up the illusion and dispells monotony…. He who wishes to know is never happy."
She continued talking. Truth perhaps was a good thing in other phases of existence, but it was fatal to love. It was too strong, too crude. Love was like certain women, beautiful as goddesses under a discreet and artificial light, but horrible as monsters under the burning splendors of the sun.
"Believe me; put away these bugbears of the past. Is not the present enough for you?… Are you not happy?"
And, trying to convince him that he was, she redoubled her exertions, chaining Ulysses in bonds which were sweet yet weighed heavily upon him. Strongly convinced of his vileness, he nevertheless adored and detested this woman, with her tireless sensuality…. And it was impossible to separate himself from her!…
Anxious to find some excuse, he recalled the image of his cook philosophizing in his culinary dominion. Whenever he had wished to call down the greatest of evils upon an enemy, the astute fellow had always uttered this anathema:
"May God send you a female to your taste!…"
Ferragut had found the "female to his taste" and was forever slave of his destiny. It would follow him through every form of debasement which she might desire, and each time would leave him with less energy to protest, accepting the most disgraceful situations in exchange for love…. And it would always be so! And he who but a few months before used to consider himself a hard and overbearing man, would end by pleading and weeping if she should go away!… Ah, misery!…
In hours of tranquillity, when satiety made them converse placidly like two friends of the same sex, Ulysses would avoid allusions to the past, questioning her only about her actual life. These questions were chiefly concerned with the doctor's mysterious work; he wished to know with the interest that the slightest actions of a beloved person always inspire, the part that Freya was playing in them. Did he not belong now to the same association since he was obeying its orders?…
The responses were very incomplete. She had limited herself to obeying the doctor, who knew everything…. Then she hesitated and corrected herself. No, her friend could not know everything, because above her were the count and other personages who used to come from time to time to visit her like passing tourists. And the chain of agents, from the lowest to the highest, were lost in mysterious heights that made Freya turn pale, imposing on her eyes and voice an expression of superstitious respect.
She was free to speak only of her work, and she did this very cautiously, relating the measures she had employed, but without mentioning her co-workers nor stating what her final aim was to be. The most of the time she had been moved about without knowing toward what her efforts were converging, like a whirling wheel which knows only its immediate environments and is ignorant of the machinery as a whole and the class of production to which it contributes.
Ulysses marveled at the grotesque and dubious proceedings employed by the agents of the spy system.
"But that is like the paper novels! They are ridiculous and worn-out measures that any one can learn from books and melodramas."
Freya assented. For that very reason they were employing them. The surest way of bewildering the enemy was to avail themselves of obvious methods; thus the modern world, so intelligent and subtle, would refuse to believe in them. By simply telling the truth, Bismarck had deceived all European diplomacy, for the very reason that nobody was expecting the truth from his lips.
German espionage was comporting itself like the personages in a political novel, and people consequently could not seem to believe in it,—although it was taking place right under their eyes,—just because its methods appeared too exaggerated and antiquated.
"Therefore," she continued, "every time that France uncovers a part of our maneuvers, the opinion of the world which believes only in ingenious and difficult things ridicules it, considering it attacked with a delirium of persecution."
Women for some time past had been deeply involved in the service of espionage. There were many as wise as the doctor, as elegant as Freya, and many venerable ones with famous names, winning the confidence that illustrious dowagers inspire. They were very numerous, but they did not know each other. Sometimes they met out in the world and were suspicious of each other, but each continued on her special mission, pushed in different directions by an omnipotent and hidden force.
She showed him some portraits that were taken a few years before. Ulysses was slow to recognize her as a slim Japanese young girl, clad in a dark kimono.
"It is I when I was over there. It was to our interest to know the real force of that nation of little men with rat-like eyes."
In another portrait she appeared in short skirt, riding boots, a man's shirt, and a felt cowboy hat.
"That was from the Transvaal."
She had gone to South Africa in company with other German women of the "service" in order to sound the state of mind of the Boers under English domination.
"I've been everywhere," she affirmed proudly.
"In Paris, too?" questioned the sailor.
She hesitated before answering, but finally nodded her head…. She had been in Paris many times. The outbreak of the war had found her living in the Grand Hotel. Fortunately, two days before the rupture of hostilities, she had received news enabling her to avoid being made prisoner in a concentration camp…. And she did not wish to say more. She was verbose and frank in the relation of her far-distant experiences, but the memory of the more recent ones enshrouded her in a restless and frightened reserve.
To change the course of conversation, she spoke of the dangers that had threatened her on her journeys.
"We have to be very courageous…. The doctor, just as you see her, is a heroine…. You laugh, but if you should know her arsenal, perhaps it might strike fear to your heart. She is a scientist."
The grave lady had an invincible repugnance for vulgar weapons, and Freya referred freely to a portable medicine case full of anesthetics and poisons.
"Besides this she carries on her person a little bag full of certain powders of her own invention,—tobacco, red pepper…. Perfect little devils! Whoever gets them in the eyes is blinded for life. It is as though she were throwing flames."
She herself was less complicated in her measures of defense. She had her revolver, a species of firearms which she managed to keep hidden just as certain insects hide their sting, without knowing certainly when it might be necessary to draw it forth. And if she could not avail herself of that, she always relied on her hatpin.
"Just look at it!… With what gusto I could pierce the heart of many a person!…"
And she showed him a kind of hidden poniard, a keen, triangular stiletto of genuine steel, capped by a large glass pearl that served as its hilt.
"Among what kind of people are you living!" murmured the practical voice in Ferragut's interior. "What have you mixed yourself up with, my son!" But his tendency to discount danger, not to live like other people, made him find a deep enchantment in this novel-like existence.
The doctor no longer went on excursions, but her visitors were increasing in number. Sometimes, when Ulysses was starting toward her room, Freya would stop him.
"Don't go…. They're having a consultation."
Upon opening the door of the landing that corresponded to his quarters he saw, on various occasions, the green screened door of the office closing behind many men, all of them of Teutonic aspect, travelers who had just disembarked in Naples with a certain precipitation, neighbors from the city who used to receive orders from the doctor.
She appeared much more preoccupied than usual. Her eyes would pass over
Freya and the sailor as though she did not see them.
"Bad news from Rome," Ferragut's companion told him. "Those accursed mandolin-strummers are getting away from us."
Ulysses began to feel a certain boredom in these monotonously voluptuous days. His senses were becoming blunted with so many indulgences mechanically repeated. Besides, a monstrous debilitation was making him think in self-defense of the tranquil life of the hearth. He timidly began calculating the time of his seclusion. How long had he been living with her?… His confused and crowded memory besought her aid.
"Fifteen days," replied Freya.
Again he persisted in his calculations, and she affirmed that only three weeks had passed by since his steamer had left Naples.
"I shall have to go," said Ulysses hesitatingly. "They will be expecting me in Barcelona; I have no news…. What will become of my vessel?…"
She who generally listened to these inquiries with a distraught air, not wishing to understand his timid insinuations, responded one afternoon unequivocally:
"The time is approaching when you are going to fulfill your word of honor in regard to sacrificing yourself for me. Soon you will be able to go to Barcelona, and I—I shall join you there. If I am not able to go, we shall meet again…. The world is very small."
Her thought did not go beyond this sacrifice exacted of Ferragut. After that, who could tell where she would stop?…
Two afternoons later, the doctor and the count summoned the sailor. The lady's voice, always so good-natured and protecting, now assumed a slight accent of command.
"Everything is all ready, Captain." As she had not been able to avail herself of his steamer, she had prepared another boat for him. He was merely to follow the instructions of the count who would show him the bark of which he was going to take command.
The two men went away together. It was the first time that Ulysses had gone out in the street without Freya, and in spite of his enamored enthusiasm, he felt an agreeable sensation of freedom.
They went down to the shore and in the little harbor of the Castello dell' Ovo passed over the plank that served as a bridge between the dock and a little schooner with a greenish hull. Ferragut, who had taken in its exterior with a single glance, ran his eye over its deck…. "Eighty tons." Then he examined the apparatus and the auxiliary machinery,—a petroleum motor which permitted it to make seven miles an hour whenever the sails did not find a breeze.
He had seen on the poop the name of the boat and its destination, guessing at once the class of navigation to which it was dedicated. It was a Sicilian schooner from Trapani, built for fishing. An artistic calker had sculptured a wooden cray-fish climbing over the rudder. From the two sides of the prow dangled a double row of cray-fish carved with the innocent prolixity of medieval imagination.
Coming out of the hatchway, Ferragut saw half of the hold full of boxes. He recognized this cargo; each one of these boxes contained two cans of gasoline.
"Very well," he said to the count, who had remained silent behind him, following him in all his evolutions. "Where is the crew?…"
Kaledine pointed out to him three old sailors huddled on the prow and a ragged boy. They were veterans of the Mediterranean, silent and self-centered, accustomed to obey orders mechanically, without troubling themselves as to where they were going, nor who was commanding them.
"Are there no more?" Ferragut asked.
The count assured him that other men would come to reënforce the crew at the moment of its departure. This would be just as soon as the loading was finished. They had to take certain precautions in order not to attract attention.
"In any case, you will be ready to embark quickly, Captain. Perhaps you may be advised with only a couple of hours' notice."
Talking it over with Freya at night, Ulysses was astonished at the promptness with which the doctor had found a boat, the discretion with which she had had it loaded,—with all the details of this business that had been developing so easily and mysteriously right in the very mouth of a great harbor without any one's taking any notice of it.
His companion affirmed proudly that Germany well understood how to conduct such affairs. It was not the doctor only who was working such miracles. All the German merchants of Naples and Sicily had been giving aid…. And convinced that the captain might be sent for at any moment, she arranged his baggage, packing the little suit-case that always accompanied him on short trips.
The next day at twilight the count came in search of him. All was ready; the boat was awaiting its captain.
The doctor bade Ulysses farewell with a certain solemnity. They were in the salon, and in a low voice she gave an order to Freya, who went out, returning immediately with a tall, thin bottle. It was mellow Rhine wine, the gift of a merchant of Naples, that the doctor was saving for an extraordinary occasion. She filled four glasses, and, raising hers, looked around her uncertainly.
"Where is the North?…"
The count pointed it out silently. Then the lady continued raising her glass, with solemn slowness, as though offering a religious libation to the mysterious power hidden in the North, far, far away. Kaledine imitated her with the same fervid manner.
Ulysses was going to raise the glass to his lips, wishing to hide a ripple of laughter provoked by the imposing lady's gravity.
"Do like the others," murmured Freya in his ear.
And the two quietly drank to his health with their eyes turned toward the North.
"Good luck to you, Captain!" said the doctor. "You will return promptly and with all happiness, since you are working for such a just cause. We shall never forget your services."
Freya wished to accompany him, even to the boat. The count began a protest, but stopped on seeing the good-natured gesture of the sentimental lady.
"They love each other so much!… Something must be conceded to love…."
The three went down the sloping streets of Chiaja to the shore of S. Lucia. In spite of his preoccupation, Ferragut could not but look attentively at the count's appearance. He was now dressed in blue, with a yachts-man's black cap, as though prepared to take part in a regatta. He had undoubtedly adopted this attire in order to make the farewell more solemn.
In the gardens of the Villa Nazionale Kaledine stopped, giving an order to Freya. He could not permit her to go any further. She would attract attention in the little harbor dell' Ovo frequented only by fishermen. As the tone of his order was sharp and imperious, she obeyed without protest, as though accustomed to such superiority.
"Good-bye!… Good-bye."
Forgetting the presence of the haughty witness, she embraced Ulysses ardently; then she burst out weeping with a nervous sobbing. It seemed to him that she had never been so sincere as in that moment. And he had to make a great effort to disentangle himself from her embrace.
"Good-bye!… Good-bye!…"
Then he followed the count without daring to turn his head, suspecting that her eyes were still upon him.
On the shores of S. Lucia, he saw in the distance his old hotel with its illuminated windows. The porter was preceding a young man who was just descending from a carriage, carrying a suit-case. Ferragut was instantly reminded of his son Esteban. The young tourist bore a certain resemblance to him…. And Ferragut continued on, smiling rather bitterly at this inopportune recollection.
On entering the schooner he encountered Karl, the doctor's factotum, who had brought his little baggage and had just installed it in his cabin. "He could retire."… Then he looked over the crew. In addition to the three old Sicilians he now saw seven husky young fellows, blonde and stout, with rolled-up sleeves. They were talking Italian, but the captain had no doubt as, to their real nationality.
As some of them were already beginning to weigh anchor, Ferragut looked at the count as though inviting him to depart. The boat was gradually detaching itself from the dock. They were going to draw in the gangplank which had served as a bridge.
"I'm going, too," said Kaledine. This trip interests Ulysses, who was disposed not to be surprised at anything in this extraordinary voyage, merely exclaimed courteously, "So much the better!" He was no longer concerned with him, and devoted all his efforts to conducting the boat out of the little harbor, directing its course through the gulf. The glass windows on the shore of S. Lucia trembled with the vibration of the motor of the decrepit steamer—an old and scandalous piece of machinery imitating the paddling of a tired dog. Meanwhile the sails were unfurled and swelling under the first gusts of the wind.
The trip lasted three days. The first night, the captain enjoyed the selfish delights of resting alone. He was living among men…. And he appreciated the satisfaction chastity offered with all the enchantments of novelty.
The second night, in the narrow and noisome cabin of the skipper, he felt wakeful because of the memories that were again springing up. Oh, Freya!… When would he ever see her again?
The count and he conversed little, but passed long hours together, seated at the side of the wheel looking out on the sea. They were more friendly than on land, although they exchanged very few words. The common life lessened the haughtiness of the pretended diplomat and enabled the captain to discover new merits in his personality. The freedom with which he was going through the boat, and certain technical words employed against his will, left no doubt in Ferragut's mind regarding his true profession.
"You are in the navy," he said suddenly.
And the count assented, judging dissimulation useless.
Yes, he was a naval officer.
"Then what am I doing here? Why have you given the command to me?…" So Ferragut was thinking without discovering why this man should seek his assistance when he could direct a boat himself, without any outside aid.
Undoubtedly he was a naval officer, and all the blonde sailors that were working like automatons must also have come from some fleet. Discipline was making them respect Ferragut's orders, but the captain suspected that for them he was merely a proxy, the true chief on board being the count.
The schooner passed within sight of the Liparian archipelago; then, twisting its course toward the west, followed the coast of Sicily, from Cape Gallo to the Cape of Vito. From there it turned its prow to the southeast, heading toward the Aegadian Islands.
It had to wait in the waters where the Mediterranean was beginning to narrow between Tunis and Sicily, where the volcanic peak of the Pantellarian Island rises up in the middle of the immense strait.
Brief indications from the count were sufficient to make the course followed by Ferragut in accordance with his desire. He finally could not hide his admiration for the Spaniard's mastery of navigation.
"You know your sea well," said the count.
The captain shrugged his shoulders, smiling. It truly was his. He could call it "mare nostrum" just as the Romans and their former rulers had done.
As though divining the subsea depths by a simple glance, he kept his boat within the limits of the extensive ledge of the Aventura. He was navigating slowly with only a few sails, crossing and recrossing the same water.
Kaledine, after two days had passed by, began to grow uneasy. Several times it sounded to Ferragut as though he were muttering the name of Gibraltar. The passage from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean was the greatest danger for those that he was expecting.
From the deck of the schooner he was able to see only a short distance, and the count clambered up the rigging in order that his eyes might take in a more extensive sweep.
One morning up aloft he called something to the captain, pointing out a speck on the horizon. He must steer in that very direction. What he was seeking was over there.
Ferragut obeyed him, and half an hour later there appeared, one after the other, two long, low boats, moving with great velocity. They were like destroyers, but without mastheads, without smokestacks, skimming along almost on a level with the water, painted in a gray that made them seem a short distance away of the same color as the sea. They came around on both sides of the sailboat as though they were going to crush it with the meeting of their hulls. Various metallic cables came up from their decks and were thrown over the bitts of the schooner, fastening it to them, and forming the three vessels into a solid mass that, united, followed the slow undulation of the sea.
Ulysses examined curiously his two companions in this improvised float. Were these the famous submarines?… He saw on their steel decks round and protruding hatchways like chimneys through which groups of heads were sticking out. The officers and crews were dressed like fishermen from the northern coast with waterproof suits of one piece and oilskin hats. Many of them were swinging their tarpaulins over their heads, and the count replied to them by waving his cap. The blonde sailors of the schooner shouted in reply to the acclamations of their comrades on the submersibles, "Deutchsland über alles!…"
But this enthusiasm, equivalent to a song of triumph in the midst of the solitude of the sea, lasted but a very short time. Whistles sounded, men ran over the steel decks and Ferragut saw his vessel invaded by two files of seamen. In a moment the hatchways were opened; there sounded the crash of breaking pieces of wood, and the cases of petrol began to be carried off on both sides. The water all around the sailboat was filled with broken cases that were gently floating away.
The count on the poop deck was listening to an officer dressed in waterproof garments.
He was recounting their passage through the Strait of Gibraltar, completely submerged, seeing through the periscope the English torpedo-chasers on patrol.
"Nothing, Commandant," continued the officer. "Not even the slightest incident…. A magnificent voyage!"
"May God punish England!" said the count now called Commandant.
"May God punish her!" replied the official as though he were saying
"Amen."
Ferragut saw himself forgotten, ignored, by all the men aboard the schooner. Some of the sailors even pushed him to one side in the haste of their work. He was the mere master of a sailing vessel who counted for nothing in this hierarchy of warlike men.
He now began to understand why they had given him the command of the little vessel. The count was in possession of the situation. Ferragut saw him approaching as though he had suddenly recollected him, stretching out his right hand with the affability of a comrade.
"Many thanks, Captain. This service is of the kind that is not easily forgotten. Perhaps we shall never see each other again…. But if at any time you need me, you may know who I am."
And, as though presenting him to another person, he gave his name and
titles ceremoniously:—Archibald von Kramer, Naval Lieutenant of the
Imperial Navy…. His diplomatic rôle had not been entirely false….
He had served as Naval Attaché in various embassies.
He then gave instructions for the return trip. Ferragut was to wait opposite Palermo where a boat would come out after him and take him ashore. Everything had been foreseen…. He must deliver the command to the true owner of the schooner, a timorous man who had made them pay very high for the hire of the boat without venturing to jeopardize his own person. In the cabin were the customary papers for clearing the vessel.
"Salute the ladies in my name. Tell them that they will soon have news of us. We are going to make ourselves lords of the Mediterranean."
The unloading of combustibles still continued. Ferragut saw von Kramer slipping through the openings of one of the submarines. Then he thought he recognized on the submersible two of the sailors of the crew of the schooner who, after being received with shouts and embraces by their comrades, disappeared through a tubular hatchway.
The unloading lasted until mid-afternoon. Ulysses had not imagined that the little boat could carry so many cases. When the hold was empty, the last German sailors disappeared and with them the cables that had lashed them to the sailboat. An officer shouted to him that he could get under way.
The two submersibles with their cargo of oil and gasoline were nearer the level of the sea than on their arrival and now began to disappear in the distance.
Finding himself alone in the stern of the schooner, the Spaniard felt a sudden disquietude.
"What have you done!… What have you done!" clamored a voice in his brain.
But contemplating the three old men and the boy who had remained as the only crew, he forgot his remorse. He would have to bestir himself greatly in order to supply the lack of men. For two nights and a day he scarcely rested, managing almost at the same time both helm and motor, since he did not dare to let out all his sails with this scarcity of sailors.
When he found himself opposite the port of Palermo, just as it was beginning to extinguish its night lights, Ferragut was able to sleep for the first time, leaving the watch of the boat in charge of one of the seamen, who maintained it with sails furled. In the middle of the morning he was awakened by some voices shouting from the sea:
"Where is the captain?"
He saw a skiff and various men leaping aboard the schooner. It was the owner who had come to claim, his boat in order to bring it into port in the customary legal form. The skiff was commissioned to take Ulysses ashore with his little suitcase. He was accompanied by a red-faced, fat gentleman who appeared to have great authority over the skipper.
"I suppose you are already informed of what is happening," he said to
Ferragut while the two oarsmen made the skiff glide over the waves.
"Those bandits!… Those mandolin-players!…"
Ulysses, without knowing why, made an affirmative gesture. This indignant burgher was a German, one of those that were useful to the doctor…. It was enough just to listen to him.
A half hour later Ferragut leaped on the dock without any one's opposing his disembarking, as though the protection of his obese companion had made all the guards drowsy. The good gentleman showed, notwithstanding, a fervent desire to separate himself from his charge—to hurry away, attending to his own affairs.
He smiled upon learning that Ulysses wished to go immediately to Naples. "You do well…. The train leaves in two hours." And putting him in a vacant hack, he disappeared with precipitation.
Finding himself alone, the captain almost believed that he had dreamed of those two preceding days.
He was again seeing Palermo after an absence of long years: and he experienced the joy of an exiled Sicilian on meeting the various carts of the countryside, drawn by broken-down horses with plumes, whose badly-painted wagon bodies represented scenes from "Jerusalem Delivered." He recalled the names of the principal roads,—the roads of the old Spanish viceroys. In one square he saw the statue of four kings of Spain…. But all these souvenirs only inspired in him a fleeting interest. What he particularly noticed was the extraordinary movement in the streets, the people grouping themselves together in order to listen to the reading of the daily papers. Many windows displayed the national flag, interlaced with those of France, England, and Belgium.
Upon arriving at the station he learned the truth,—was informed of the
event to which the merchant had alluded while they were in the skiff.
It was war!… Italy had broken her relations the day before with the
Central Powers.
Ulysses felt very uneasy on remembering what he had done out on the Mediterranean. He feared that the popular groups, thronging past him and giving cheers behind their flags, were going to guess his exploit and fall upon him. It was necessary to get away from this patriotic enthusiasm, and he breathed more freely when he found himself in one of the coaches of a train…. Besides, he was going to see Freya. And it was enough for him merely to evoke her image to make all his remorse vanish.
The short journey proved long and difficult. The necessities of war had made themselves felt from the very first moment, absorbing all means of communication. The train would remain immovable for hours together in order to give the right of way to other trains loaded with men and military materials…. In all the stations were soldiers in campaign uniform, banners and cheering crowds.
When Ferragut arrived at Naples, fatigued by a journey of forty-eight hours, it seemed to him that the coachman was going too slowly toward the old palace of Chiaja.
Upon crossing the vestibule with his little suit-case, the portress,—a fat old crone with dusty, frizzled hair whom he had sometimes caught a glimpse of in the depths of her hall cavern,—stopped his passage.
"The ladies are no longer living in the house…. The ladies have suddenly left with Karl, their employee." And she explained the rest of their flight with a hostile and malignant smile.
Ferragut saw that he must not insist. The slovenly old wife was furious over the flight of the German ladies, and was examining the sailor as a probable spy fit for patriotic denunciation. Nevertheless, through professional honor, she told him that the blonde signora, the younger and more attractive one, had thought of him on going away, leaving his baggage in the porter's room.
Ulysses hastened to disappear. He would soon send some one to collect those valises. And taking another carriage, he betook himself to the albergo of S. Lucia…. What an unexpected blow!
The porter made a gesture of surprise and astonishment upon seeing him enter. Before Ferragut could inquire for Freya, with the vague hope that she might have taken refuge in the hotel, this man gave him some news.
"Captain, your son has been here waiting for you."
The captain stuttered in dismay, "What son?…"
The man with the embroidered keys brought the register, showing him one line, "Esteban Ferragut, Barcelona." Ulysses recognized his son's handwriting, and at the same time his heart was oppressed with indefinable anguish.
Surprise made him speechless, and the porter took advantage of his silence to continue speaking. He was such a charming and intelligent lad!… Some mornings he had accompanied him in order to point out to him the best things in the city. He had inquired among the consignees of the Mare Nostrum, hunting everywhere for news of his father. Finally convinced that the captain must already be returning to Barcelona, he also had gone the day before.
"If you had only come twelve hours sooner, you would have found him still here."
The porter knew nothing more. Occupied in doing errands for some South American ladies, he had been unable to say good-bye to the young man when he left the hotel, undecided whether to make the trip in an English steamer to Marseilles or to go by railroad to Genoa, where he would find boats direct to Barcelona.
Ferragut wished to know when he had arrived. And the porter, rolling his eyes, gave himself up to long mental calculation…. Finally he reached a date and the sailor, in his turn, concentrated his powers of recollection.
He struck himself on the forehead with his clenched hand. It must have been his son then, that youth whom he had seen entering the albergo the very day that he was going to take charge of the schooner, to carry combustibles to the German submarines!
CHAPTER VIII
THE YOUNG TELEMACHUS
Whenever the Mare Nostrum returned to Barcelona, Esteban Ferragut had always felt as dazzled as though a gorgeous stained glass window had opened upon his obscure and monotonous life as the son of the family.
He now no longer wandered along the harbor admiring from afar the great transatlantic liners in front of the monument of Christopher Columbus, nor the cargo steamers that were lined up along the commercial docks. An important boat was going to be his absolute property for some weeks, while its captain and officers were passing the time on land with their families. Toni, the mate, was the only one who slept aboard. Many of the seamen had begged permission to live in the city, and so the steamer had been entrusted to the guardianship of Uncle Caragol with half a dozen men for the daily cleaning. The little Ferragut used to play that he was the captain of the Mare Nostrum and would pace the bridge, pretending that a great tempest was coming up, and examine the nautical instrument with the gravity of an expert. Sometimes he used to race through all the habitable parts of the boat, climbing down to the holds that, wide open, were being ventilated, waiting for their cargo; and finally he would clamber into the ship's gig, untying it from the landing in order to row in it for a few hours, with even more satisfaction than in the light skiffs of the Regatta Club.
His visits always ended in the kitchen, invited there by Uncle Caragol, who was accustomed to treat him with fraternal familiarity. If the youthful oarsman was perspiring greatly…. "A refresquet?" And the chef would prepare his sweet mixture that made men, after one gulp, fall into the haziness of intoxication.
Esteban esteemed highly the "refrescos" of the cook. His imagination, excited by the frequent reading of novels of travel, had made him conceive a type of heroic, gallant, dashing sailor—a regular swash-buckler capable of swallowing by the pitcherful the most rousing drinks without moving an eyelid. He wanted to be that kind; every good sailor ought to drink.
Although on land he was not acquainted with other liquors than those innocent and over-sweet ones kept by his mother for family fiestas, once he trod the deck of a vessel he felt the necessity for alcoholic liquids so as to make it evident that he was entirely a man. "There wasn't in the whole world a drink that could do him any harm…." And after a second "refresco" from Uncle Caragol, he became submersed in a placid nirvana, seeing everything rose-colored and considerably enlarged,—the sea, the nearby boats, the docks, and Montjuich in the background.
The cook, looking at him affectionately with his bleared eyes, believed that he must have bounded back a dozen years and be still in Valencia, talking with that other Ferragut boy who was running away from the university in order to row in the harbor. He almost came to believe that he had lived twice.
He always listened patiently to the lad's complaints, interrupting him with solemn counsels. This fifteen-year-old Ferragut appeared discontented with life. He was a man and he had to live with women—his mother and two nieces, who were always making laces,—just as in other times his mother had been the lace-making companion of her mother-in-law, Doña Cristina. He wanted to be a seaman and they were obliging him to study the uninteresting courses leading to a bachelor's degree. It was scarcely likely, was it, that a captain would have to know Latin?… He wanted to bring his student life to an end so as to become a pilot and continue practicing on the bridge, beside his father. Perhaps at thirty years of age, he might achieve the command of the Mare Nostrum or some similar boat.
Meanwhile the lure of the sea dragged him far from the classroom, prompting him to visit Uncle Caragol at the very hour that his professors were calling the roll and noting the students' absence.
The old man and his protégé used to betake themselves in the galley with the uneasy conscience of the guilty. Steps and voices on deck always changed their topic of conversation. "Hide yourself!" and Esteban would dodge under the table or hide in the provision-closet while the cook sallied forth with a seraphic countenance to meet the recent arrival.
Sometimes it was Toni, and the boy would then dare to come out, relying on his silence; for Toni liked him, too, and approved of his aversion to books.
If it was the captain who was coming to the boat for a few moments, Caragol would talk with him, obstructing the door with his bulk at the same time that he was smiling maliciously.
For Esteban the two most wonderful things in all the world were the sea and his father. All those romantic heroes that had come from the pages of novels to take their place in his imagination had the face and ways of Captain Ferragut.
From babyhood he had seen his mother weeping occasionally in resigned sadness. Years later, recognizing with the precocity of a little-watched boy the relations that exist between men and women, he suspected that all these tears must be caused by the flirtations and infidelities of the distant sailor.
He adored his mother with the passion of an only and spoiled child, but he admired the captain no less, excusing every fault that he might commit. His father was the bravest and handsomest man in all the world.
And when rummaging one day through the drawers in his father's stateroom, he chanced upon various photographs having the names of women from foreign countries, the lad's admiration was greater still. Everybody must have been madly in love with the captain of the Mare Nostrum. Ay! No matter what he might do when he became a man, he could never hope to equal this triumphant creature who had given him existence….
When the boat, on its return from Naples, arrived at Barcelona without its owner, Ferragut's son did not feel any surprise.
Toni, who was always a man of few words, was very lavish with them on the present occasion. Captain Ferragut had remained behind because of important business, but he would not be long in returning. His second was looking for him at any moment. Perhaps he would make the trip by land, in order to arrive sooner.
Esteban was astounded to see that his mother did not accept this absence as an insignificant event. The good lady appeared greatly troubled and her eyes filled with tears. Her feminine instinct made her suspect something ominous in her husband's delay.
In the afternoon, when her old lover, the professor, visited her as usual, the two talked slowly with guarded words but with eyes of understanding and long intervals of silence.
When Don Pedro reached the height of his glorious career, the possession of a professorship in the institute of Barcelona, he used to visit Cinta every afternoon, passing an hour and a half in her parlor with chronometric exactitude. Never did the slightest impure thought agitate the professor. The past had fallen into oblivion…. But he needed to see daily the captain's wife weaving laces with her two little nieces, as he had seen Ferragut's widow years before.
He informed them of the most important events in Barcelona and in the entire world; they would comment together on the future of Esteban, and the former suitor used to listen rapturously to her sweet voice, conceding great importance to the details of domestic economy or descriptions of religious fiestas, solely because it was she who was recounting them.
Many times they would remain in a long silence. Don Pedro represented patience, even temper, and silent respect, in that tranquil and immaculate house which lost its monastic calm only when its head presented himself there for a few days between voyages.
Cinta had accustomed herself to the professor's visits. At half-past three by the clock his footsteps could always be heard in the passageway.
If any afternoon he did not come, the sweet Penelope was greatly disappointed.
"I wonder what can be the matter with Don Pedro?" she would ask her nieces uneasily.
She oftentimes asked this question of her son; but Esteban, without exactly hating the visitor, appreciated him very slightly.
Don Pedro belonged to that group of gentlemen at the Institute whom the government paid to annoy youth with their explanations and their examinations. He still remembered the two years that he had passed in his course, as in the torture chamber, enduring the torments of Latin. Besides that, the professor was a timid man who was always afraid of catching cold, and who never dared to venture into the street on cloudy days without an umbrella. Let people talk to him about courageous men!
"I don't know," he would reply to his mother. "Perhaps he's gone to bed with seven kerchiefs on his head."
When Don Pedro returned, the house recovered its normality of a quiet and well-regulated clock. Doña Cinta, after many consultations, had come to believe his collaboration indispensable. The professor mildly supplemented the authority of the traveling husband, and took it upon himself to represent the head of the family in all outside matters…. Many times Ferragut's wife would be awaiting him with impatience in order to ask his mature counsel, and he would emit his opinion in a slow voice after long reflection.
Esteban found it intolerable that this gentleman, who was no more than a distant relative of his grandmother, should meddle in the affairs of the house, pretending to oversee him as though he were his father. But it irritated him still more to see him in a good humor and trying to be funny. It made him furious to hear his mother called "Penelope" and himself "the young Telemachus."… "Stupid, tedious old bore!"
The young Telemachus was not slow to wrath nor vengeance. From babyhood he had interrupted his play in order to "work" in the reception room near to the hatrack by the door. And the poor professor on his departure would find his hat crown dented in or its nap roughened up, or he would sally home innocently carrying spitballs on the skirts of his overcoat.
Now the boy contented himself with simply ignoring the existence of the family friend, passing in front of him without recognizing him and only greeting him when his mother ordered him to do so.
The day in which he brought the news of the return of the ship without its captain, Don Pedro made a longer visit than usual. Cinto shed two tears upon the lace, but had to stop weeping, vanquished by the good sense of her counselor.
"Why weep and get your mind overwrought with so many suppositions without foundation?… What you ought to do, my daughter, is to call in this Toni who is mate of the vessel; he must know all about it…. Perhaps he may tell you the truth."
Esteban was told to hunt him up the following day, and he quickly noticed Toni's extreme disquietude upon learning that Doña Cinta wished to talk with him. The mate left the boat in lugubrious silence as though he were being taken away to mortal torment: then he began to hum loudly, an indication that he was in deep thought.
The young Telemachus was not able to be present at the interview but he hung around the closed door and succeeded in hearing a few loud words which slipped through the cracks. His mother was speaking with greater frequency. Toni was reiterating in a dull voice the same excuse:—"I don't know. The captain will come at any moment…." But when the mate found himself outside the house, his wrath broke out against himself, against his cursed character that did not know how to lie, against all women bad and good. He believed he had said too much. That lady had the skill of a judge in getting words out of him.
That night, at the supper hour, the mother scarcely opened her mouth. Her fingers communicated a nervous trembling to the plates and forks, and she looked at her son with tragic commiseration as though she foresaw terrible troubles about to burst upon his head. She opposed a desperate silence to Esteban's questions and finally exclaimed:
"Your father is deserting us!… Your father has forgotten us!…"
And she left the dining-room to hide her overflowing tears.
The boy slept rather restlessly, but he slept. The admiration which he always felt for his father and a certain solidarity with the strong examples of his sex made him take little account of these complaints. Matters for women! His mother just didn't know how to be the wife of an extraordinary man like Captain Ferragut. He who was really a man, in spite of his few years, was going to intervene in this affair in order to show up the truth.
When Toni, from the deck of the vessel, saw the lad coming along the wharf the following morning, he was greatly tempted to hide himself…. "If Doña Cinta should call me again in order to question me!…" But he calmed himself with the thought that the boy was probably coming of his own free will to pass a few hours on the Mare Nostrum. Even so, he wished to avoid his presence as though he feared some slip in talking with him, and so pretended that he had work in the hold. Then he left the boat going to visit a friend on a steamer some distance off.
Esteban entered the galley, calling gayly to Uncle Caragol. He wasn't the same, either. His humid and reddish eyes were looking at the child with an extraordinary tenderness. Suddenly he stopped his talk with an expression of uneasiness on his face. He looked uncertainly around him, as though fearing that a precipice might open at his feet.
Never forgetful of the respect due to every visitor in his dominion, he prepared two "refrescos." He was going to treat Esteban for the first time on this return trip. On former days, incredible as it may seem, he had not thought of making even one of his delicious beverages. The return from Naples to Barcelona had been a sad one: the vessel had a funereal air without its master.
For all these reasons, Caragol's hand lavishly measured out the rum until the liquid took on a tobacco tone.
They drank…. The young Telemachus began to talk about his father when the glasses were only half empty, and the cook waved both hands in the air, giving a grunt which signified that he had no wish to bother about the captain's absence.
"Your father will return, Esteban," he added. "He will return but I don't know when. Certainly later than Toni says."
And not wishing to say more, he gulped down the rest of the glass, devoting himself hastily to the confection of the second "refresco" in order to make up for lost time.
Little by little he slipped away from the prudent barrier that was hedging in his verbosity and spoke with his old time abandon; but his flow of words did not exactly convey news.
Caragol preached morality to Ferragut's son,—morality from his standpoint, interrupted by frequent caresses of the glass.
"Esteban, my son, respect your father greatly. Imitate him as a seaman. Be good and just toward the men that you command…. But avoid the females!"
The women!… There was no better theme for his piously drunken eloquence. The world inspired his pity. It was all governed by the infernal attraction exercised by the female of the species. The men were working, struggling, and trying to grow rich and celebrated, all in order to possess one of these creatures.
"Believe me, my son, and do not imitate your father in this respect."
The old man had said too much to back out now and he had to go on, letting out the rest of it, bit by bit. Thus Esteban learned that the captain was enamored with a lady in Naples and that he had remained there pretending business matters, but in reality dominated by this woman's influence.
"Is she pretty?" asked the boy eagerly.
"Very pretty," replied Caragol. "And such odors!… And such a swishing of fine clothes!…"
Telemachus thrilled with contradictory sensations of pride and envy. He admired his father once more, but this admiration only lasted a few seconds. A new idea was taking possession of him while the cook continued:
"He will not come now. I know what these elegant females are, reeking with perfume. They are true demons that dig their nails in when they clutch, and it is necessary to cut off their hands in order to loosen them…. And the boat as useless now as though it were aground, while the others are filling themselves with gold!… Believe me, my son, this is the only truth in the world."
And he concluded by gulping in one draft all that was left in the second glass.
Meanwhile the boy was forming in his mind an idea prompted by his pleasant intoxication. What if he should go to Naples in order to bring his father back!…
At this moment everything seemed possible to him. The world was rose-colored as it always was when he looked at it, glass in hand, near to Uncle Caragol. All obstacles would turn out to be trifling: everything would arrange itself with wonderful facility. Men were able to progress by bounds.
But hours afterward when his thoughts were cleared of their beatific visions, he felt a little fearful when recollecting his absent parent. How would he receive him upon his arrival?… What excuses could he give his father for his presence in Naples?… He trembled, recalling the image of his scowling brow and angry eyes.
On the following day a sudden self-confidence replaced this uneasiness. He recalled the captain as he had seen him many times on the deck of his vessel, telling of his escapades when rowing in the harbor of Barcelona, or commenting to friends on his son's strength and intelligence. The image of the paternal hero now came to his mind with good-humored eyes and a smile passing like a fresh breeze over his face.
He would tell him the whole truth. He would make him understand that he had come to Naples just to take him away with him, like a good comrade who comes to another's rescue in time of danger. Perhaps he might be irritated and give him a blow, but he would eventually accede to his proposition.
Ferragut's character was reborn in him with all the force of decisive argument. And if the voyage should prove absurd and dangerous?… All the better! So much the better! That was enough to make him undertake it. He was a man and should know no fear.
During the next two weeks he prepared his flight. He had never taken a long journey. Only once he had accompanied his father on a flying business trip to Marseilles. It was high time that he should go out in the world like the man that he was, acquainted with almost all the cities of the earth,—through his readings.
The money question did not worry him any. Doña Cinta had it in abundance and it was easy to find her bunch of keys. An old and slow-going steamer, commanded by one of his father's friends, had just entered port and the following day would weigh anchor for Italy.
This sailor accepted the son of his old comrade without any traveling papers. He would arrange all irregularities with his friends in Genoa. Between captains they ought to exchange such services, and Ulysses Ferragut, who was awaiting his son in Naples (so Esteban told him), would not wish to waste time just because of some ridiculous, red tape formality.
Telemachus with a thousand pesetas in his pocket, extracted from a work box which his mother used as a cash box, embarked the following day. A little suit-case, taken from his home with deliberate and skillful precaution, formed his entire baggage.
From Genoa he went to Rome, and from there to Naples, with the foolhardiness of the innocent, employing Spanish and Catalan words to reinforce his scanty Italian vocabulary acquired at the opera. The only positive information that guided him on his quest of adventure was the name of the albergo on the shore of S. Lucia which Caragol had given him as his father's residence.
He sought him vainly for many days and visited in Naples the consignees who thought that the captain had returned to his country some time ago.
Not finding him, he began to be afraid. He ought to be back in Barcelona by this time and what he had begun as an heroic voyage was going to turn into a runaway, a boyish escapade. He thought of his mother who was perhaps weeping hours at a time, reading and rereading the letter that he had left for her explaining the object of his flight. Besides, Italy's intervention in the war,—an event which every one had been expecting but had supposed to be still a long way off,—had suddenly become an actual fact. What was there left for him to do in this country?… And one morning he had disappeared.
Since the hotel porter could not tell him anything more, the father, after his first impression of surprise had passed, thought it would be a good plan to visit the firm of consignees. Perhaps there they might give him some news.
The war was the only thing of interest in that office. But Ferragut, owner of a ship and a former client, was guided by the director to the employees who had received Esteban.
They did not know much about it. They recalled vaguely a young Spaniard who said that he was the captain's son and was making inquiries about him. His last visit had been two days before. He was then hesitating between returning to his country by rail or embarking in one of the three steamers that were in port ready to sail for Marseilles.
"I believe that he has gone by railroad," said one of the clerks.
Another of the office force supported his companion's supposition with a positive affirmation in order to attract the attention of his chief. He was sure of his departure by land. He himself had helped him to calculate what the trip to Barcelona would cost him.
Ferragut did not wish to know more. He must get away as soon as possible. This inexplicable voyage of his son filled him with remorse and immeasurable alarm. He wondered what could have occurred in his home….
The director of the offices pointed out to him a French steamer from Suez that was sailing that very afternoon to Marseilles, and took upon himself all the arrangements concerning his passage and recommendation to the captain. There only remained four hours before the boat's departure, and Ulysses, after collecting his valises and sending them aboard, took a last stroll through all the places where he had lived with Freya. Adieu, gardens of the Villa Nazionale and white Aquarium!… Farewell, albergo!…
His son's mysterious presence in Naples had intensified his disgust at the German girl's flight. He thought sadly of lost love, but at the same time he thought with dolorous suspense of what might greet him when reentering his home.
A little before sunset the French steamer weighed anchor. It had been many years since Ulysses had sailed as a simple passenger. Entirely out of his element, he wandered over the decks and among the crowds of tourists. Force of habit drew him to the bridge, talking with the captain and the officers, who from his very first words recognized his professional genius.
Realizing that he was no more than an intruder in this place, and annoyed at finding himself on a bridge from which he could not give a single order, he descended to the lower decks, examining the groups of passengers. They were mostly French, coming from Indo-China. On prow and poop there were quartered four companies of Asiatic sharpshooters,—little, yellowish, with oblique eyes and voices like the miauling of cats. They were going to the war. Their officers lived in the staterooms in the center of the ship, taking with them their families who had aquired a foreign aspect during their long residence in the colonies.
Ulysses saw ladies clad in white stretched out on their steamer chairs, having themselves fanned by their little Chinese pages; he saw bronzed and weather-beaten soldiers who appeared disgusted yet galvanized by the war that was snatching them from their Asiatic siesta, and children,—many children—delighted to go to France, the country of their dreams, forgetting in their happiness that their fathers were probably going to their death.