Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) Part 53

The cook offered her a gla.s.s and she, vanquished, drank and drank, making a wry face because of the alcoholic intensity of the liquid. She continued weeping at the same time that her mouth was relis.h.i.+ng the heavy sweetness. Her tears were mingled with the beverage that was slipping between her lips.

A comfortable warmth began making itself felt in her stomach, drying up the moisture in her eyes and giving new color to her cheeks. Caragol was keeping up his chat, satisfied with the outcome of his handiwork, making signs to the glowering Toni,--who was pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing before the door, with the vehement desire of seeing the intruder march away, and disappear forever.

"Don't cry any more, my daughter.... _Cristo del Grao!_ The very idea!

A lady as pretty as you, who can find sweethearts by the dozen, crying!... Believe me; find somebody else. This world is just full of men with nothing to do.... And always for every disappointment that you suffer, have recourse to my cordial.... I am going to give you the recipe."

He was about to note down on a bit of paper the proportions of brandy and sugar, when she arose, suddenly invigorated, looking around her in wonder.... But where was she? What had she to do with this good, kind, half-dressed man, who was talking to her as though he were her father?...

"Thanks! Many thanks!" she said on leaving the kitchen.

Then on deck she stopped, opening her gold-mesh bag, in order to take out the little gla.s.s and powder box. In the beveled edge of the oval gla.s.s she saw the faun-like countenance of Toni hovering behind her with glances of impatience.

"Tell Captain Ferragut that I shall never trouble him again.... All has ended.... Perhaps he may hear me spoken of some time, but he will never see me again."

And she left the boat without turning her head, with quickened step as though, fired by a sudden suggestion, she were hastening to put it into effect.

Toni ran also, but toward Ulysses' stateroom window.

"Has she gone yet?" asked the captain impatiently.

The mate nodded his head. She had promised not to return.

"Be it so!" said Ferragut.

Toni experienced the same desire. Would to G.o.d they might never again see this blonde who always brought them misfortune!...

In the days following, the captain rarely left his s.h.i.+p. He did not wish to run the risk of meeting her in the city streets for he was a little doubtful of the hardness of his character. He feared that upon seeing her again, weeping and pleading, he might yield to her beseeching.

Ulysses' uneasiness vanished as soon as the loading of the vessel was finished. This trip was going to be shorter than the others. The _Mare Nostrum_ went to Corfu with war material for the Serbs who were reorganizing their battalions destined for Salonica.

On the return trip Ferragut was attacked by the enemy. One day at dawn just as he mounted the bridge to relieve Toni, the two spied at the same time the tangible form that they were always seeing in imagination. Within the circle of their gla.s.ses there framed itself the end of a stick, black and upright, that was cutting the waters rosy in the sunrise, leaving a wake of foam.

"Submarine!" shouted the captain.

Toni said nothing, but shoving aside the helmsman with a stroke of his paw, he grasped the wheel, making the boat swerve in another direction.

The movement was opportune. Only a few seconds had pa.s.sed by when there began to be seen upon the water a black back of dizzying speed headed directly for the steamer.

"Torpedo!" shouted the captain.

The anxious waiting lasted but a few seconds. The projectile, hidden in the water, pa.s.sed some six yards from the stern, losing itself in s.p.a.ce. Had it not been for Toni's rapid tacking, the boat would have been hit squarely in the side.

Through the speaking tube connecting with the engine-room the captain shouted energetic orders to put on full speed. Meanwhile the mate, clamped to the wheel, ready to die rather than leave it, was directing the boat in zigzags so as not to offer a fixed point to the submarine.

All the crew were watching from the rail the distant and insignificant upright periscope. The third officer had rushed out of his stateroom, almost naked, rubbing his sleepy eyes. Caragol was in the stern, his loose s.h.i.+rt-tail flapping away as he held one hand to his eyebrows like a visor.

"I see it!... I see it perfectly.... Ah, the bandit, the heretic!"

And he extended his threatening fist toward a point in the horizon exactly opposite to the one upon which the periscope was appearing.

Through the blue circle of the gla.s.ses Ferragut saw this tube climbing up and up, growing larger and larger. It was no longer a stick, it was a tower; and from beneath this tower was coming up on the sea a base of steel spouting cascades of smoke,--a gray whale-back that appeared little by little to be taking the form of a sailing vessel, long and sharp-pointed.

A flag was suddenly run up upon the submarine. Ulysses recognized it.

"They are going to sh.e.l.l us!" he yelled to Toni. "It's useless to keep up the zigzagging. The thing to do now is to outspeed them, to go forward in a straight line."

The mate, skillful helmsman that he was, obeyed the captain. The hull vibrated under the force of the engines taxed to their utmost. Their prow was cutting the waters with increasing noise. The submersible upon augmenting its volume by emersion appeared, nevertheless, to be falling behind on the horizon. Two streaks of foam began to spring up on both sides of its prow. It was running with all its possible surface speed; but the _Mare Nostrum_ was also going at the utmost limit of its engines and the distance was widening between the two boats.

"They are shooting!" said Ferragut with the gla.s.ses to his eyes.

A column of water spouted near the prow. That was the only thing that Caragol was able to see clearly and he burst into applause with a childish joy. Then he waved on high his palm-leaf hat. "_Viva el Santo Cristo del Grao!_..."

Other projectiles were falling around the _Mare Nostrum_, spattering it with jets of foam. Suddenly it trembled from p.o.o.p to prow. Its plates trembled with the vibration of an explosion.

"That's nothing!" yelled the captain, bending himself double over the bridge in order to see better the hull of his s.h.i.+p. "A sh.e.l.l in the stern. Steady, Toni!..."

The mate, always grasping the wheel, kept turning his head from time to time to measure the distance separating them from the submarine. Every time that he saw an aquatic column of spray, forced up by a projectile, he would repeat the same counsel.

"Lie down, Ulysses!... They are going to fire at the bridge!"

This was a recollection of his far-away youth when, as a contrabandist, he used to stretch himself flat on the deck of his bark, manipulating the wheel and the sail under the fire of the custom-house officers on watch. He feared for the life of his captain while he was standing, constantly offering himself to the shots of the enemy.

Ferragut was storming from side to side, cursing his lack of means for returning the aggression. "This will never happen another time!... They won't get another chance to amuse themselves chasing me!"

A second projectile opened another breach in the p.o.o.p. "If it only won't hit the engines!" the captain was thinking. After that the _Mare Nostrum_ received no more damage, the following shots merely raising up columns of water in the steamer's wake. Every time now, these white phantasms leaped up further and further away. Although out of the range of the enemy's gun, it continued shooting and shooting uselessly.

Finally the firing ceased and the submarine disappeared from the view of the gla.s.ses and completely submerged, tired of vain pursuit.

"That'll never happen again!" the captain kept repeating. "They'll never attack me another time with impunity!"

Then it occurred to him that this submarine had attack him knowing just who he was. On the side of his vessel were painted the colors of Spain.

At the first shot from the gun, the third officer had hoisted the flag, but the shots did not cease on that account. They had wished to sink it "without leaving any trace." He believed that Freya, in her relations with the directors of the submarine campaign, must have advised them of his trip.

"Ah,... _tal!_ If I meet her another time!..."

He had to remain several weeks in Ma.r.s.eilles while the damage to his steamer was being repaired.

As Toni lacked occupation during this enforced idleness, he accompanied him many times on his strolls. They liked to seat themselves on the terrace of a cafe in order to comment upon the picturesque differences in the cosmopolitan crowd.

"Look; people from our own country!" said the captain one evening.

And he pointed to three seamen drawn into the current of different uniforms and types of various races flowing familiarly around the tables of the cafe.

He had recognized them by their silk caps with visors, their blue jackets and their heavy obesity of Mediterranean sailors enjoying a certain prosperity. They must be skippers of small boats.

As though Ferragut's looks and gestures had mysteriously notified them, the three turned, fixing their eyes on the captain. Then they began to discuss among themselves with a vehemence which made it easy to guess their words.

"It is he!..." "No, it isn't!..."

Those men knew him but couldn't believe that they were really seeing him.