Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) Part 9

A familiar admiration like that of an ancient squire for his paladin, or of an old subaltern for a superior officer, bound him to Ferragut.

The books that filled the captain's stateroom recalled his agonies upon being examined in Cartagena for his license as a pilot. The grave gentlemen of the tribunal had made him turn pale and stutter like a child before the logarithms and formulas of trigonometry. But just let them consult _him_ on practical matters and his skill as master of a bark habituated to all the dangers of the sea, and he would reply with the self-possession of a sage!

In the most difficult perils,--days of storm and sinister shoals in the neighborhood of the treacherous coasts, Ferragut could decide to rest only when Toni replaced him on the bridge. With him, he had no fear that, through carelessness, a wave would sweep across the deck and stop the machinery, or that an invisible ledge would drive its stony point into the vitals of the vessel. He held the helm to the course indicated. Silent and immovable he stood, as though sleeping on his feet; but at the right moment he always uttered the brief word of command.

He was very skinny, with the dried up leanness of the bronzed Mediterranean. The salt wind more than his years had tanned his face, wrinkling it with deep crevices. A capricious coloring had darkened the depths of these cracks while the part exposed to the sun appeared washed several shades lighter. His short stiff beard extended over all the furrows and crests of his skin. Furthermore, he had hair in his ears, hair in the nasal pa.s.sages, coa.r.s.e and vibrating growths, ready to tremble in moments of wrath or admiration.... But this ugliness disappeared under the light of his little eyes with pupils between green and olive color,--mild eyes with a canine expression of resignation, when the captain made fun of his beliefs.

Toni was a "man of ideas." Ferragut only knew of his having four or five, but they were hard, crystallized, tenacious, like the mollusks that stick to the rocks and eventually become a part of the stony excrescence. He had acquired them in twenty-five years of Mediterranean coast service by reading all the periodicals of lyric radicalism that were thrust upon him on entering the harbors. Furthermore, at the end of every journey was Ma.r.s.eilles; and in one of its little side alleys was a red room adorned with symbolic columns where sailors of all races and tongues met together, fraternally understanding each other by means of mysterious signs and ritual words.

Whenever Toni entered a South American port after a long absence, he particularly admired the rapid progress of the new villages,--enormous wharves constructed within the year, interminable streets that were not in existence on his former voyage, shady and elegant parks, replacing old, dried-up lakes.

"That's only natural," he would affirm roundly. "With good reason they are republics!"

Upon entering the Spanish ports, the slightest deviation in the docking, a discussion with the official employees, the lack of s.p.a.ce for a good anchorage would make him smile with bitterness. "Unfortunate country!... Everything here is the work of the altar and the throne!"

In the Thames, and before the docks of Hamburg, Captain Ferragut would chaff his subordinate.

"There's no republic here, Toni!... But, nevertheless this is rather worth while."

But Toni never gave in. He would contract his hairy visage, making a mental effort to formulate his vague ideas, clothing them with words.

In the very background of these grandeurs existed the confirmation of the idea he was so vainly trying to express. Finally he admitted himself checkmated, but not convinced.

"I don't know how to explain it; I haven't the words for it ... but ...

it's the _people_ who are doing all this."

Upon receiving in Teneriffe the news of war, he summed up all his doctrines with the terseness of a victor.

"In Europe there are too many kings.... If all the nations could be republics!... This calamity just had to come!"

And this time Ferragut did not venture to ridicule the single-mindedness of his second.

All the people of the _Mare Nostrum_ showed great enthusiasm over the new business aspect of things. The seamen who in former voyages were taciturn, as though foreseeing the ruin or exhaustion of their captain, were now working as eagerly as though they were going to partic.i.p.ate in the profits.

In the forward mess room many of them set themselves to work on commercial calculations. The first trip of the war would be equal to ten of their former ones; the second, perhaps, might bring in the profit of twenty. And recalling their former bad business ventures, they rejoiced for Ferragut, with the same disinterestedness as the first officer. The engineers were no longer called to the captain's cabin in order to contrive new economies in fuel. They had to take advantage of the time and opportunity; and the _Mare Nostrum_ was now going at full steam, making fourteen knots an hour, like a pa.s.senger vessel, stopping only when its course was blocked at the entrance of the Mediterranean by an English destroyer, sending out an officer to make sure that they were not carrying on board enemy pa.s.sengers.

Abundance reigned equally between bridge and forecastle where were the sailors' quarters and the galley,--the s.p.a.ce respected by every one on the boat as the incontestable realm of Uncle Caragol.

This old man, nicknamed "Caracol" (snail), another old friend of Ferragut's, was the s.h.i.+p's cook, and, although he did not dare to talk as familiarly to the captain as in former times, the tone of his voice made it understood that mentally he was continuing to use the old, affectionate form. He had known Ulysses when he used to run away from the cla.s.srooms to row in the harbor and, on account of the bad state of his eyes, he had finally retired from the navigation of coast vessels, descending to be a simple bargeman. His gravity and corpulence had something almost priestly in character. He was the obese type of Mediterranean with a little head, voluminous neck and triple chin, seated on the stern of his fis.h.i.+ng skiff like a Roman patrician on the throne of his trireme.

His culinary talent suffered eclipse whenever rice did not figure as the fundamental basis of his compositions. All that this food could give of itself, he knew perfectly. In the tropical ports, the crews surfeited with bananas, pineapples, and alligator-pears, would greet with enthusiasm the apparition of a great frying pan of rice with cod and potatoes, or a ca.s.serole of rice from the oven with its golden crust perforated by the ruddy faces of garbanzos and points of black sausage. At other times, under the leaden-colored sky of the northern seas, the cook made them recall their distant native land by giving them the monastic rice dish with beet roots, or b.u.t.tery rice with turnips and beans.

On Sundays and the fiestas of the Valencian saints who for Uncle Caragol were the first in heaven,--_San Vicente Martir, San Vicente Ferrer, La Virgin de los Desamparados_ and the _Cristo del Grao_--would appear the smoking _paella_, a vast, circular dish of rice upon whose surface of white, swollen grains were lying bits of various fowls. The cook loved to surprise his following by distributing rotund, raw onions, with the whiteness of marble and an acrid surprise that brought tears to the eyes. They were a princely gift maintained in secret. One had only to break them with one blow and their sticky juices would gush forth and lose themselves in the palate like crisp mouthfuls of a sweet and spicy bread, alternating with knifefuls of rice. The boat was at times near Brazil in sight of Fernando de Norona,--yet even while viewing the conical huts of the negroes installed on an island under an equatorial sun, the crews could almost believe--thanks to Uncle Caragol's magic--that they were eating in a cabin of the farmland of Valencia, as they pa.s.sed from hand to hand the long-spouted jug filled with strong wine from Liria.

When they anch.o.r.ed in ports where fish was abundant, he achieved the great work of cooking a rice _abanda_. The cabin boys would bring to the captain's table the pot in which was boiled the rich sea food mixed with lobsters, mussels, and every kind of sh.e.l.l-fish available, but the _chef_ invariably reserved for himself the honor of offering the accompanying great platter with its pyramid, of rice, every grain golden and distinct.

Boiled apart (_abanda_) each grain was full of the succulent broth of the stew-pot. It was a rice dish that contained within it the concentration of all the sustenance of the sea. As though he were performing a liturgical ceremony, the _chef_ would go around delivering half a lemon to each one of those seated at the table. The rice should only be eaten after moistening it with this perfumed dew which called to mind the image of an oriental garden. Only the unfortunate beings who lived inland were ignorant of this exquisite confection, calling any mess of rice a Valencian rice dish.

Ulysses would humor the cook's notions, carrying the first spoonful to his mouth with a questioning glance.... Then he would smile, giving himself up to gastric intoxication. "Magnificent, Uncle Caragol!" His good humor made him affirm that only the G.o.ds should be nourished with rice _abanda_ in their abodes on Mount Olympus. He had read that in books. And Caragol, divining great praise in all this, would gravely reply, "That is so, my captain." Toni and the other officers by this time would be chewing away with heads down, only interrupting their feast to regret that the old Ganymede should have skimped them when measuring the ambrosia.

In his estimation, oil was as precious as rice. In the time of their money-losing navigation, when the captain was making special efforts at economy, Caragol used to keep an especially sharp eye on the great oil bottles in his galley, for he suspected that the cabin boys and the young seamen appropriated it to dress their hair when they wanted to play the dandy, using the oil as a pomade. Every head that put itself within reach of his disturbed glance he grasped between his arms, raising it to his nose. The slightest perfume of olive oil would arouse his wrath. "Ah, you thief!"... And down would fall his enormous hand, soft and heavy as a fencing gauntlet.

Ulysses believed him quite capable of climbing the bridge, and declaring that navigation could not go on because of his having exhausted the leathern bottles of amethyst-colored liquid proceeding from the Sierra de Espadan.

In the ports, his short-sighted eyes recognized immediately the nationality of the boats anch.o.r.ed on both sides of the _Mare Nostrum_.

His nose would sniff the air sadly. "Nothing!..." They were unsavory barks, barks from the North that prepared their dinner with lard or b.u.t.ter,--Protestant barks, perhaps.

Sometimes he would sneak along the gunwale, following an intoxicating trail until he planted himself in front of the galley of the neighboring boat, breathing in its rich perfume. "h.e.l.lo, brothers!"

Impossible to fool him, they were probably Spaniards and, if not, they were from Genoa or Naples,--in short, were compatriots accustomed to live and eat in all lat.i.tudes just as though they were in their own little inland sea. Soon they would begin a speech in the Mediterranean idiom, a mixture of Spanish, Provencal and Italian, invented by the hybrid peoples of the African coast from Egypt to Morocco. Sometimes they would send each other presents, like those that are exchanged between tribes,--fruits from distant countries. At other times, suddenly inimical, without knowing why, they would shake their fists over the railing, yelling insults at each other in which, between every two or three words, would appear the names of the Virgin and her holy Son.

This was the signal for Uncle Caragol, religious soul, to return in haughty silence to his galley. Toni, the mate, used to make fun of his devout enthusiasm. On the other hand, the foremast hands, materialistic and gluttonous, used to listen to him with deference, because he was the one who doled out the wine and the choicest tid-bits. The old man used to speak to them of the _Cristo del Grao_, whose pictures occupied the most prominent site in the kitchen, and they would all listen as to a new tale, to the story of the arrival by sea of the sacred image, mounted upon a ladder in a boat that had dissolved in smoke after discharging its miraculous cargo.

This had been when the _Grao_ was no more than a group of huts far from the walls of Valencia and threatened by the raids of the Moorish pirates. For many years Caragol, barefooted, had carried this sacred ladder on his shoulder on the day of the fiesta. Now other men of the sea were enjoying such honor and he, old and half-blind, would be waiting among the public for the procession to pa.s.s in order that he might throw himself upon the enormous relic, touching his clothes to the wood.

All his outer garments were sanctified by this contact. In reality they weren't very many, since he usually strolled about the boat very lightly clad, with the immodesty of a man who sees poorly and considers himself above human preoccupations.

A s.h.i.+rt with the tail always floating, and a pair of pantaloons of dirty cotton or yellow flannel, according to the season, const.i.tuted his entire outfit. The bosom of the s.h.i.+rt was open on all occasions, leaving visible a thatch of white hair. The pantaloons were fastened together with a single b.u.t.ton. A palm leaf hat always covered his head even when he was working among his cooking pots.

The _Mare Nostrum_ could not be s.h.i.+pwrecked nor suffer any harm while it carried him aboard. In the days of tempest, when waves were sweeping the deck from prow to p.o.o.p, and the sailors were treading warily, fearing that a heavy sea might carry them overboard, Caragol would stick his head out through the door of the galley, scorning a danger which he could not see.

The great water-spouts would pa.s.s over him, even putting out his fires, but only increasing his faith. "Courage, boys! Courage, lads!" The _Cristo del Grao_ had special charge of them and nothing bad could happen to the s.h.i.+p... Some of the seamen were silent, while others said this and that about the image without arousing the indignation of the old devotee. G.o.d, who sends dangers to the men of the sea, knows that their bad words lack malice.

His religiosity extended to the very deeps. He did not wish to say anything about the ocean fish, for they inspired him with the same indifference as those cold and unperfumed boats that were ignorant of olive oil, and all that was cooked with "pomade." They must be heretics.

He was better acquainted with the fish of the Mediterranean and even came to believe that they must be good Catholics, since in their own way they proclaimed the glory of G.o.d. Standing near the taffrail on torrid evenings in the tropics, he would recount, in honor of the inhabitants of his distant sea, the portentous miracle which had taken place in the glen of Alboraya.

A priest was one day fording on horseback the mouth of a river in order to carry the eucharist to a dying person, when his beast stumbled and the ciborium, falling open, the Hosts fell out and were carried off by the current. From that time on, mysterious lights glowed every night on the water, and at sunrise a swarm of little fishes would come to range themselves opposite the glen, their heads emerging from the water, in order to show the Host which each one of them was carrying in his mouth. In vain the fishermen wished to take them away from them. They fled to the inland sea with their treasures. Only when the clergy, with cross erect and with the same priest, fell on their knees in the glen did they decide to approach; and one after the other deposited his Host in the ciborium, retiring then from wave to wave, gracefully waggling their little tails.

In spite of the vague hope for a jug of choice wine that was animating most of his hearers, a murmur of incredulity always arose at the end of this tale. The devout Caragol then became as wrathful and foul-mouthed as a prophet of old when he considered his faith in danger. "Who was that son of a flea?... Who _was_ that son of a flea daring to doubt what I myself have seen?..." And what he had seen was the fiesta of the _Peixet_ that was celebrated every year, simply listening to most learned men discoursing about the miracle in a commemorative chapel built on the banks of the glen.

This prodigy of the little fishes was almost always followed with what he called the miracle of the _Peixot_, endeavoring with the weight of such a marvelous fish tale to crush the doubts of the impious.

The galley of Alphonso V of Aragon (the only sailor king of Spain), upon coming out of the Gulf of Naples, once struck a hidden rock near the island of Capri which took away a side of the s.h.i.+p without making it leak; and the vessel continued on with all sails spread, carrying the king, the ladies of his court, and the retinue of mail-clad barons.

Twenty days afterward they arrived at Valencia safe and sound like all sailors who in moments of danger ask aid of the _Virgen del Puig_. Upon inspecting the hull of the galley, the master calkers beheld a monstrous fish detach itself from its bottom with the tranquility of an upright person who has fulfilled his duty. It was a dolphin sent by the most holy Senora in order that his side might stop up the open breach.

And thus, like a plug, it had sailed from Naples to Valencia without allowing a drop of water to pa.s.s in.

The _chef_ would not admit any criticisms nor protests. This miracle was undeniable. He had seen it with his own eyes, and they were good.

He had seen it in an ancient picture in the monastery of Puig, everything appearing on the tablet with the realism of truth,--the galley, the king, the _peixt_ and the Virgin above giving the order.

At this juncture the breeze would flap the narrator's s.h.i.+rt tail, disclosing his abdomen divided into hemispheres by the tyranny of its only pantaloon b.u.t.ton.

"Uncle Caragol, look out!" warned a teasing voice.

The holy man would smile with the seraphic calm of one who sees beyond the pomps and vanities of existence, and would begin the relation of a new miracle.

Ferragut used to attribute his cook's periods of exaltation to the lightness of his clothing in all weathers. Within him was burning a fire incessantly renewed. On foggy days he would climb to the bridge with some gla.s.ses of a smoking drink that he used to call _calentets_.

Nothing better for men that had to pa.s.s long hours in the inclement weather in motionless vigilance! It was coffee mixed with rum, but in unequal proportions, having more alcohol than black liquid. Toni would drink rapidly all the gla.s.ses offered. The captain would refuse them, asking for clear coffee.

His sobriety was that of the ancient sailor,--the sobriety of Father Ulysses who used to mix wine with water in all his libations. The divinities of the old sea did not love alcoholic drinks. The white _Amphitrite_ and the Nereids only accepted on their altars the fruits of the earth, sacrifices of doves, libations of milk. Perhaps because of this the seafaring men of the Mediterranean, following an hereditary tendency, looked upon intoxication as the vilest of degradations. Even those who were not temperate avoided getting frankly drunk like the sailors of other seas, dissimulating the strength of their alcoholic beverage with coffee and sugar.

Caragol was the understudy charged with drinking all which the captain refused, together with certain others which he dedicated to himself in the mystery of the galley. On warm days he manufactured _refresquets_, and these refreshments were enormous gla.s.ses, half of water and half of rum upon a great bed of sugar,--a mixture that made one pa.s.s like a lightning flash, without any gradations, from vulgar serenity to most angelic intoxication.