Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) Part 41

In this European conglomerate were dark gaps, open pa.s.sageways, the mouths of sloping streets climbing to the hillock above, crossing the Grecian, Mohammedan and Jewish quarters until they reached a table-land covered with lofty edifices between dark points of cypress.

The religious diversity of the Oriental Mediterranean made Salonica bristle with cupolas and towers. The Greek temple threw into prominence the gilded bulbs of its roof; the Catholic church made the cross glisten from the peak of its bell-tower; the synagogue of geometrical forms overflowed in a succession of terraces; the Mohammedan minaret formed a colonnade, white, sharp and slender. Modern life had added factory chimneys and the arms of steam-cranes which gave an anachronistic effect to this decoration of an Oriental harbor. Around the city and its acropolis was the plain which lost itself in the horizon,--a plain that Ferragut, on a former voyage, had seen desolate and monotonous, with few houses and spa.r.s.ely cultivated, with no other Vegetation except that in the little oases of the Mohammedan cemetery.

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

Now the brownish-gray steppes coming out from the fleecy fog of daybreak were palpitating with new life. Thousands and thousands of men were encamped around the city, occupying new villages made of canvas, rectangular streets of tents, cities of wooden cabins, and constructions as big as churches whose canvas walls were trembling under the violent squalls of wind.

Through his gla.s.ses, Ulysses could see warlike hosts occupied with the business of caring for strings of riderless horses that were going to watering places, parks of artillery with their cannon upraised like the tubes of a telescope, enormous birds with yellow wings that were trying to skip along the earth's surface with a noisy b.u.mping, gradually reappearing in s.p.a.ce with their waxy wings glistening in the first shafts of sunlight.

All the allied army of the Orient returning from the b.l.o.o.d.y and mistaken adventure of the Dardanelles or proceeding from Ma.r.s.eilles and Gibraltar were ma.s.sing themselves around Salonica.

The _Mare Nostrum_ anch.o.r.ed at the wharves filled with boxes and bales.

War had given a much greater activity to this port than in times of peace. Steamers of all the allied and neutral flags were unloading eatables and military materials.

They were coming from every continent, from every ocean, drawn thither by the tremendous necessities of a modern army. They were unloading harvests from entire provinces, unending herds of oxen and horses, tons upon tons of steel, prepared for deadly work, and human crowds lacking only a tail of women and children to be like the great martial exoduses of history. Then taking on board the residuum of war, arms needing repair, wounded men, they would begin their return trip.

These cargoes quietly transported through the darkness in spite of bad times and the submarine threats, were preparing the ultimate victory.

Many of these steamers were formerly luxurious vessels, but now commandeered by military necessity, were dirty and greasy and used as cargo boats. Lined up, drowsing along the docks, ready to begin their work, were new hospital s.h.i.+ps, the more fortunate transatlantic liners that still retained a certain trace of their former condition, quite clean with a red cross painted on their sides and another on their smokestacks.

Some of the transports had reached Salonica most miraculously. Their crews would relate with the fatalistic serenity of men of the sea how the torpedo had pa.s.sed at a short distance from their hulls. A damaged steamer lay on its side, with only the keel submerged, all its red exterior exposed to the air; on its water-line there had opened a breach, angular in outline. Upon looking from the deck into the depths of its hold filled with water, there might be seen a great gash in its side like the mouth of a luminous cavern.

Ferragut, while his boat was discharging its cargo under Toni's supervision, pa.s.sed his days ash.o.r.e, visiting the city.

From the very first moment he was attracted by the narrow lanes of the Turkish quarters--their white houses with protruding balconies covered with latticed blinds like cages painted red; the little mosques with their patios of cypresses and fountains of melancholy tinkling; the tombs of Mohammedan dervishes in kiosks which block the streets under the pale reflection of a lamp; the women veiled with their black _firadjes_; and the old men who, silent and thoughtful under their scarlet caps, pa.s.s along swaying to the staggering of the a.s.s on which they are mounted.

The great Roman way between Rome and Byzantium, the ancient road of the blue flagstones, pa.s.sed through a street of modern Salonica. Still a part of its pavement remained and appeared gloriously obstructed by an arch of triumph near whose weatherbeaten stone base were working barefooted bootblacks wearing the scarlet fez.

An endless variety of uniforms filed through the streets, and this diversity in attire as well as the ethnical difference in the men who wore it was very noticeable. The soldiers of France and the British Isles touched elbows with the foreign troops. The allied governments had sent out a call to the professional combatants and volunteers of their colonies. The black sharpshooters from the center of Africa showed their smiling teeth of marble to the bronze giants with huge white turbans who had come from India. The hunters from the glacial plains of Canada were fraternizing with the volunteers from Australia and New Zealand.

The cataclysm of the world war had dragged mankind from the antipodes to this drowsy little corner of Greece where were again repeated the invasions of remote centuries which had made ancient Thessalonica bow to the conquest of Bulgarians, Byzantians, Saracens, and Turks.

The crews of the battles.h.i.+ps in the roadstead had just added to this medley of uniforms the monotonous note of their midnight blue, almost like that of all the navies of the world.... And to the military amalgamation was also added the picturesque variety of civil dress,--the hybrid character of the neighborhood of Salonica, composed of various races and religions that were mingled together without confusing their individuality. Files of black tunics and hats with brimless crowns pa.s.sed through the streets, near the Catholic priests or the rabbis with their long, loose gowns. In the outskirts might be seen men almost naked, with no other clothing than a sheep-skin tunic, guiding flocks of pigs, just like the shepherds in the Odyssey.

Dervishes, with their aspect of dementia, chanted motionless in a crossway, enveloped in clouds of flies, awaiting the aid of the good believers.

A great part of the population was composed of Israelitish descendants of the Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal. The oldest and most conservative were clad just like their remote ancestors with large kaftans striped with striking colors. The women, when not imitating the European fas.h.i.+ons, usually wore a picturesque garment that recalled the Spanish apparel of the Middle Ages. Here they were not mere brokers or traders as in the rest of the world. The necessities of the city dominated by them had made them pick up all the professions, becoming artisans, fishermen, boatmen, porters and stevedores of the harbor.

They still kept the Castilian tongue as the language of the hearth like an original flag whose waving reunited their scattered souls,--a Castilian in the making, soft and without consistency like one newly-born.

"Are you a Spaniard?" they said brokenly to Captain Ferragut. "My ancestors were born there. It is a beautiful land."

But they did not wish to return to it. The country of their grandsires inspired a certain amount of terror in them, and they feared that upon seeing them return, the present-day Spaniards would banish the bullfights and reestablish the Inquisition, organizing an _auto de fe_ every Sunday.

Hearing them speak his language, the captain recalled a certain date--1492. In the very year that Christopher Columbus had made his first voyage, discovering the Indies, the Jews were expelled from the Spanish peninsula, and Nebrija brought out the first Castilian grammar.

These Spaniards had left their native land months before their idiom had been codified for the first time.

A sailor of Genoa, an old friend of Ulysses, took him to one of the harbor cafes, where the merchant captains used to gather together.

These were the only ones wearing civilian clothes among the crowds of land and sea officers who crowded the divans, obstructed the tables, and grouped themselves before the doorway.

These Mediterranean vagabonds who oftentimes could not converse together because of the diversity of their native idiom, instinctively sought each other out, keeping near together in a fraternal silence.

Their pa.s.sive heroism was in many instances more admirable than that of the men of war, who were able to return blow for blow. All the officers of the different fleets, seated near them, had at their disposition cannon, ram, torpedo, great speed and aerial telegraphy. These valorous muleteers of the sea defied the enemy in defenseless boats without wireless and without cannons. Sometimes when searching all the men of the crew, not a single revolver would be found among them, and yet these brave fellows were daring the greatest adventures with professional fatalism, and trusting to luck.

In the social groups of the cafe the captains would sometimes relate their encounters on the sea, the unexpected appearance of a submarine, the torpedo missing aim a few yards away, the flight at full speed while being sh.e.l.led by their pursuers. They would flame up for an instant upon recalling their danger, and then relapse into indifference and fatalism.

"If I've got to die by drowning," they would always conclude, "it would be useless for me to try to avoid it."

And they would hasten their departure in order to return a month later transporting a regular fortune in their vessel, completely alone, preferring free and wary navigation to the journey in convoy, slipping along from island to island and from coast to coast in order to outwit the submersibles.

They were far more concerned about the state of their s.h.i.+ps, that for more than a year had not been cleaned, than about the dangers of navigation. The captains of the great liners lamented their luxurious staterooms converted into dormitories for the troops, their polished decks that had been turned into stables, their dining-room where they used to sit among people in dress suits and low-neck gowns, which had now to be sprayed with every cla.s.s of disinfectant in order to repel the invasion of vermin, and the animal odors of so many men and beasts crowded together.

The decline of the s.h.i.+ps appeared to be reflected in the bearing of their captains, more careless than before, worse dressed, with the military slovenliness of the trench-fighter, and with calloused hands as badly cared for as those of a stevedore.

Among the naval men also there were some who had completely neglected their appearance. These were the commanders of "chaluteros," little ocean fis.h.i.+ng steamers armed with a quickfirer, which had come into the Mediterranean to pursue the submersible. They wore oilskins and tarpaulins, just like the North Sea fishermen, smacking of fuel and tempestuous water. They would pa.s.s weeks and weeks on the sea whatever the weather, sleeping in the bottom of the hold that smelled offensively of rancid fish, keeping on patrol no matter how the tempest might roar, bounding from wave to wave like a cork from a bottle, in order to repeat the exploits of the ancient corsairs.

Ferragut had a relative in the army which was a.s.sembling at Salonica making ready for the inland march. As he did not wish to go away without seeing the lad he pa.s.sed several mornings making investigations in the offices of the general staff.

This relative was his nephew, a son of Blanes, the manufacturer of knit goods, who had fled from Barcelona at the outbreak of the war with other boys devoted to singing _Los Segadores_ and perturbing the tranquillity of the "Consul of Spain" sent by Madrid. The son of the pacific Catalan citizen had enlisted in the battalion of the Foreign Legion made up to a great extent of Spaniards and Spanish-Americans.

Blanes had asked the captain to see his son. He was sad yet at the same time proud of this romantic adventure blossoming out so unexpectedly in the utilitarian and monotonous existence of the family. A boy that had such a great future in his father's factory!... And then he had related to Ulysses with shaking voice and moist eyes the achievements of his son,--wounded in Champagne, two citations and the _Croix de Guerre_.

Who would ever have imagined that he could be such a hero!... Now his battalion was in Salonica after having fought in the Dardanelles.

"See if you can't bring him back with you," repeated Blanes. "Tell him that his mother is going to die of grief.... You can do so much!"

But all that Captain Ferragut could do was to obtain a permit and an old automobile with which to visit the encampment of the legionaries.

The arid plain around Salonica was crossed by numerous roads. The trains of artillery, the rosaries of automobiles, were rolling over recently opened roads that the rain had converted into mire. The mud was the worst calamity that could befall this plain, so extremely dusty in dry weather.

Ferragut pa.s.sed two long hours, going from encampment to encampment, before reaching his destination. His vehicle frequently had to stop in order to make way for interminable files of trucks. At other times machine-guns, big guns dragged by tractors, and provision cars with pyramids of sacks and boxes, blocked their road.

On all sides were thousands and thousands of soldiers of different colors and races. The captain recalled the great invasions of history--Xerxes, Alexander, Genghis-Khan, all the leaders of men who had made their advance carrying villages _en ma.s.se_ behind their horses, transforming the servants of the earth into fighters. There lacked only the soldierly women, the swarms of children, to complete exactly the resemblance to the martial exoduses of the past.

In half an hour more he was able to embrace his nephew, who was with two other volunteers, an Andulasian and a South American,--the three united by brotherhood of birth and by their continual familiarity with death.

Ferragut took them to the canteen of a trader established near the cantonment. The customers were seated under a sail-cloth awning before boxes that had contained munitions and were converted into office tables. This discomfort was surpa.s.sed by the prices. In no Palace Hotel would drink have cost such an extraordinary sum.

In a few moments the sailor felt a fraternal affection for these three youths to whom he gave the nickname of the "Three Musketeers," He wished to treat them to the very best which the canteen afforded, so the proprietor produced a bottle of champagne or rather ptisan from Rheims, presenting it as though it were an elixir fabricated of gold.

The amber liquid, bubbling in the gla.s.ses, seemed to bring the three youths back to their former existence. Boiled by the sun and the inclemency of the weather, habituated to the hard life of war, they had almost forgotten the softness and luxuriant conveniences of former years.

Ulysses examined them attentively. In the course of the campaign they had grown with youth's last rapid growth. Their arms were sticking out to an ungainly degree from the sleeves of their coats, already too short for them. The rude gymnastic exercise of the marches, with the management of the shovel, had broadened their wrists and calloused their hands.

The memory of his own son surged up in his memory. If only he could see him thus, made into a soldier like his cousin! See him enduring all the hards.h.i.+ps of military existence ... but living!

In order not to be too greatly moved, he drank and paid close attention to what the three youths were saying. Blanes, the legionary, as romantic as the son of a merchant bent upon adventure should be, was talking of the daring deeds of the troops of the Orient with all the enthusiasm of his twenty-two years. There wasn't time to throw themselves upon the Bulgarians with bayonets and arrive at Adrianopolis. As a Catalan, this war in Macedonia was touching him very close.

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

And his uncle wanted to weep and to laugh before this simple faith comparable only to the retrospective memory of the poet Labarta and that village secretary who was always lamenting the remote defeat of Ponza.

Blanes explained like a knight-errant the impulse that had called him to the war. He wanted to fight for the liberty of all oppressed nations, for the resurrection of all forgotten nationalities,--Poles, Czechs, Jugo-Slavs.... And very simply, as though he were saying something indisputable, he included Catalunia among the people who were weeping tears of blood under the lashes of the tyrant. Thereupon his companion, the Andalusian, burst forth indignantly. They pa.s.sed their time arguing furiously, exchanging insults and continually seeking each other's company as though they couldn't live apart.

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