Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) Part 61

For a few hours Ferragut was of Toni's opinion. His reckless undertaking was bound to come to a bad end. His enemies knew him, were lying in wait for him, and were many arrayed against one who was living alone on his s.h.i.+p with a crew of men of a different nationality. Aside from the few who had always loved him, n.o.body would lament his death.

He did not belong to any of the nations at war; he was a species of privateer bound not to begin an attack. He was even less,--an officer carrying supplies under the protection of a neutral flag. This flag was not deceiving anybody. His enemies knew the s.h.i.+p, seeking for it with more determination than if he were with the Allied fleets. Even in his own country, there were many people in sympathy with the German Empire who would celebrate joyously the disappearance of the _Mare Nostrum_ and its captain.

Freya's death had depressed his spirits more than he had imagined possible. He had gloomy presentiments; perhaps his next journey might be his last.

"You are going to die!" cried an anguished voice in his brain. "You'll die very soon if you do not retire from the sea."

And to Ferragut the queerest thing about the warning was that this counselor had the voice of the one who had always egged him on to foolish adventures,--the one that had hurled him into danger for the mere pleasure of discounting it, the one that had made him follow Freya even after knowing her vile profession.

On the other hand the voice of prudence, always cautious and temperate, was now showing an heroic tranquillity, speaking like a man of peace who considers his obligations superior to his life.

"Be calm, Ferragut; you have sold your person with your boat, and they have given you millions for it. You must carry through what you have promised even though it may send you out of existence.... The _Mare Nostrum_ cannot sail without a Spanish captain. If you abandon it, you will have to find another captain. You will run away through fear and put in your place a man who has to face death in order to maintain his family. Glorious achievement, that! ... while you would be on land, rich and safe!... And what are you going to do on land, you coward?"

His egoism hardly knew how to reply to such a question. He recalled with antipathy his bourgeois existence over there in Barcelona, before buying the steamer. He was a man of action and could live only when occupied in risky enterprises.

He would be bored to death on land and at the same time would be considered belittled, degraded, like one who comes down to an inferior grade in a country of hierarchies. The captain of a romantic, adventurous life would be converted into a real estate proprietor, knowing no other struggles than those which he might sustain with his tenants. Perhaps, in order to avoid a commonplace existence, he might invest his capital in navigation, the only business that he knew well.

He might become a s.h.i.+p-owner acquiring new vessels and, little by little, because of the necessity of keeping a sharp watch over them, would eventually renew his voyages.... Well, then, why should he abandon the _Mare Nostrum?_

Upon asking himself anxiously what his life had so far amounted to, he underwent a profound moral revolution.

All his former existence appeared to him like a desert. He had lived without knowing why nor wherefore, challenging countless dangers and adventures for the mere pleasure of coming out victorious. Neither did he know with certainty what he had wanted until then. If it was money, it had flowed into his hands in the last months with overwhelming abundance.... He had it to-spare and it had not made him happy. As to professional glory, he could not desire anything greater than he already had. His name was celebrated all over the Spanish Mediterranean. Even the rudest and most ungovernable of sailors would admit his exceptional ability.

"Love remained!..." But Ferragut made a wry face when thinking of that.

He had known it and did not wish to meet it again. The gentle love of a good companion, capable of surrounding the latter part of his existence with congenial comfort, he had just lost forever. The other, impa.s.sioned, fantastic, voluptuous, giving to life the crude interest of conflicts and contrasts, had left him with no desire of recommencing it.

Paternity, stronger and more enduring than love, might have filled the rest of his days had his son not died.... There only remained vengeance, the savage task of returning evil to those who had done him so much evil. But he was so powerless to struggle against all of them!... This final act appeared to be turning out so small and selfish in comparison with that other patriotic enthusiasm which was now dragging to sacrifice such great ma.s.ses of men!...

While he was thinking it all over, a phrase which he had somewhere heard--formed perhaps from the residuum of old readings--began to chant in his brain: "A life without ideals is not worth the trouble of living."

Ferragut mutely a.s.sented. It was true: in order to live, an ideal is necessary. But where could he find it?...

Suddenly, in his mind's eye, he saw Toni,--just as when he used to try to express his confused thoughts. With all his credulity and simplicity, his captain now considered his humble mate his superior. In his own way Toni had his ideal: he was concerned with something besides his own selfishness. He wished for other men what he considered good for himself, and he defended his convictions with the mystical enthusiasm of all those historic personages who have tried to impose a belief;--with the faith of the warriors of the Cross and those of the Prophet, with the tenacity of the Inquisition and of the Jacobins.

He, a man of reason, had only known how to ridicule the generous and disinterested enthusiasms of other men, detecting at once their weak points and lack of adaptation to the reality of the moment.... What right had he to laugh at his mate who was a believer, dreaming, with the pure-mindedness of a child, of a free and happy humanity?... Aside from his stupid jeers, what could he oppose to that faith?...

Life began to appear to him under a new light, as something serious and mysterious that was exacting a bridge toll, a tribute of courage from all the beings who pa.s.s over it, leaving the cradle behind them and having the grave as a final resting-place.

It did not matter at all that their ideals might appear false. Where is the truth, the only and genuine truth?... Who is there that can demonstrate that he exists, and is not an illusion?...

The necessary thing was to believe in something, to have hope. The mult.i.tudes had never been touched by impulses of argument and criticism. They had only gone forward when some one had caused hopes and hallucinations to be born in their souls. Philosophers might vainly seek the truth by the light of logic, but the rest of mankind would always prefer the chimerical ideals that become transformed into powerful motives of action.

All religions were becoming beautifully less upon being subjected to cold examination. Yet, nevertheless, they were producing saints and martyrs, true super-men of morality. All revolutions had proved imperfect and ineffectual when submitted to scientific revision. Yet, nothwithstanding, they had brought forth the greatest individual heroes, the most astonis.h.i.+ng collective movements of history.

"To believe!... To dream!" a mysterious voice kept chanting in his brain. "To have an ideal!..."

He did not fancy living, like the mummies of the great Pharaohs, in a luxurious tomb, anointed with perfume and surrounded with everything necessary for nourishment and sleep. To be born, to grow up, to reproduce oneself was not enough to form a history:--all the animals do the same. Man ought to add something more which he alone possesses,--the faculty of framing a future.... To dream! To the heritage of idealism left by our forebears should be added a new ideal, or the power of bringing it about.

Ferragut realized that in normal times, he would have gone to his death just as he had lived, continuing a monotonous and uniform existence.

Now the violent changes around him were resuscitating the dormant personalities which we all carry within us as souvenirs of our ancestors, revolving around a central and keen personality the only one that has existed until then.

The world was in a state of war. The men of Middle Europe were clas.h.i.+ng with the other half on the battlefields. Both sides had a mystic ideal, affirming it with violence and slaughter just as the mult.i.tudes have always done when moved by religious or revolutionary certainty accepted as the only truth....

But the sailor recognized a profound difference in the two ma.s.ses struggling at the present day. One was placing its ideal in the past, wis.h.i.+ng to rejuvenate the sovereignty of Force, the divinity of war, and adapt it to actual life. The other throng was preparing for the future, dreaming of a world of free democracy, of nations at peace, tolerant and without jealousy.

Upon adjusting himself to this new atmosphere, Ferragut began to feel within him ideas and aspirations that were, perhaps, an ancestral legacy. He fancied he could hear his uncle, the _Triton_, describing the impact of the men of the North upon the men of the South when trying to make themselves masters of the blue mantle of Amphitrite. He was a Mediterranean, but just because the country in which he had been born happened to be uninterested in the fate of the world, he was not going to remain indifferent.

He ought to continue just where he was. Whatever Toni had told him of Latinism and Mediterranean civilization, he now accepted as great truths. Perhaps they might not be exact when examined in the light of pure reason, but they were worth as much as the a.s.surances of the others.

He was going to continue his life of navigation with new enthusiasm. He had faith, the ideals, the illusions that heroes are made of. While the war lasted he would a.s.sist in his own way, acting as an auxiliary to those who were fighting, transporting all that was necessary to the struggle. He began to look with greater respect upon the sailors obedient to his orders, simple folk who had given their blood without fine phrases and without arguments.

When peace should come he would not, therefore, retire from the sea.

There would still be much to be done. Then would begin the commercial war, the sharp rivalry to conquer the markets of the younger nations of America. Audacious and enormous plans were outlining themselves in his brain. In this war he might perhaps become a leader. He dreamed of the creation of a fleet of steamers that might reach even to the coast of the Pacific; he wished to contribute his means to the victorious re-birth of the race which had discovered the greater part of the planet.

His new faith made him more friendly with the s.h.i.+p's cook, feeling the attraction of his invincible illusions. From time to time he would amuse himself consulting the old fellow as to the future fate of the steamer; he wished to know if the submarines were causing him any fear.

"There's nothing to worry about," affirmed Caragol. "We have good protectors. Whoever presents himself before us is lost."

And he showed his captain the religious engravings and postal cards which he had tacked on the walls of the galley.

One morning Ferragut received his sailing orders. For the moment they were going to Gibraltar, to pick up the cargo of a steamer that had not been able to continue its voyage. From the strait they might turn their course to Salonica once more.

The captain of the _Mare Nostrum_ had never undertaken a journey with so much joy. He believed that he was going to leave on land forever the recollection of that executed woman whose corpse he was seeing so many nights in his dreams. From all the past, the only thing that he wished to transplant to his new existence was the image of his son. Henceforth he was going to live, concentrating all his enthusiasm and ideals on the mission which he had imposed on himself.

He took the boat directly from Ma.r.s.eilles to the Cape of San Antonio far from the coast, keeping to the mid-Mediterranean, without pa.s.sing the Gulf of Lyons. One twilight evening the crew saw some bluish mountains in the hazy distance,--the island of Mallorca. During the night the lighthouses of Ibiza and Formentera slipped past the dark horizon. When the sun arose a vertical spot of rose color like a tongue of flame, appeared above the sea line. It was the high mountain of Mongo, the Ferrarian promontory of the ancients. At the foot of its abrupt steeps was the village of Ulysses' grandparents, the house in which he had pa.s.sed the best part of his childhood. Thus it must have looked in the distance to the Greeks of Ma.s.salia, exploring the desert Mediterranean in s.h.i.+ps which were leaping the foam like wooden horses.

All the rest of the day, the _Mare Nostrum_ sailed very close to the sh.o.r.e. The captain knew this sea as though it were a lake on his own property. He took the steamer through shallow depths, seeing the reefs so near to the surface that it appeared almost a miracle that the boat did not crash upon them. Sometimes the s.p.a.ce between the keel and the sunken rocks was hardly two yards wide. Then the gilded water would take on a dark tone and the steamer would continue its advance over the greater depths.

Along the sh.o.r.e, the autumn sun was reddening the yellowing mountains, now dry and fragrant, covered with pasturage of strong odor which could be smelt at great distances. In all the windings of the coast,--little coves, beds of dry torrents or gorges between two peaks--were visible white groups of hamlets.

Ferragut contemplated carefully the native land of his grandparents.

Toni must be there now: perhaps from the door of his dwelling he was seeing them pa.s.s by; perhaps he was recognizing the s.h.i.+p with surprise and emotion.

A French official, motionless near Ulysses on the bridge, was admiring the beauty of the day and the sea. Not a single cloud was in the sky.

All was blue above and below, with no variation except where the bands of foam were combing themselves on the jutting points of the coast, and the restless gold of the sunlight was forming a broad roadway over the waters. A flock of dolphins frisked around the boat like a cortege of oceanic divinities.

"If the sea were always like this!" exclaimed the captain, "what delight to be a sailor!"

The crew could see the people on land running together and forming groups, attracted by the novelty of a steamer that was pa.s.sing within reach of their voice. On each of the jutting points of the sh.o.r.e was a low and ruddy tower,--last vestige of the thousand-year war of the Mediterranean. Accustomed to the rugged sh.o.r.es of the ocean and its eternal surf, the Breton sailors were marveling at this easy navigation, almost touching the coast whose inhabitants looked like a swarm of bees. Had the boat been directed by another captain, so close a journey would have resulted most disastrously: but Ferragut was laughing, throwing out gloomy hints to the officers who were on the bridge, merely to accentuate his professional confidence. He pointed out the rocks hidden in the deeps. Here an Italian liner that was going to Buenos Ayres had been lost.... A little further on, a swift four-masted sailboat had run aground, losing its cargo.... He could tell by the fraction of an inch the amount of water permissible between the treacherous rocks and the keel of his boat.

He usually sought the roughest waters by preference, but they were in the danger-zone of the Mediterranean where the German submarines were lying in wait for the French and English convoys navigating in the shelter of the Spanish coast. The obstacles of the submerged coast were for him now the best defense against invisible attacks.

Behind him, the Ferrarian promontory was growing more and more shadowy, becoming a mere blur on the horizon. By nightfall the _Mare Nostrum_ was in front of Cape Palos and he had to sail in the outer waters in order to double it, leaving Cartagena in the distance. From there, he turned his course to the southwest, to the cape where the Mediterranean was beginning to grow narrow, forming the funnel of the strait. Soon they would pa.s.s before Almeria and Malaga, reaching Gibraltar the following day.

"Here is where the enemy is oftentimes waiting," said Ferragut to one of the officers. "If we have no bad luck before night, we shall have safely concluded our voyage."

The boat had withdrawn from the sh.o.r.e route, and it was no longer possible to distinguish the lower coast. Only from the prow could be seen the jutting hump of the cape, rising up like an island.

Caragol appeared with a tray on which were smoking two cups of coffee.

He would not yield to any cabinboy the honor of serving the captain when on the bridge.