They said nothing, but the captain surmised his soundless words. They were insults. It was the insult of the man of the superior hierarchy to his faithless servant; the pride of the n.o.ble official who accuses himself for having trusted in the loyalty of a simple merchant marine.
"Traitor!... Traitor!" his insolent eyes and murmuring, voiceless lips seemed to be saying.
Ulysses became furious before this haughtiness, but his wrath was cold and self-contained on seeing the enemy deprived of defense.
He advanced toward the prisoner, like one of the many who were insulting him, shaking his fist at him. His glance sustained that of the German and he spoke to him in Spanish with a dull voice.
"My son.... My only son was blown to a thousand atoms by the torpedoing of the _Californian_!"
These words made the spy change expression. His lips separated, emitting a slight exclamation of surprise.
"Ah!..."
The arrogant light in his pupils faded away. Then he lowered his eyes and soon after hung his head. The vociferating crowd was shoving and carrying him along without taking into consideration the man who had given the alarm and begun the chase.
That very afternoon the _Mare Nostrum_ sailed from Ma.r.s.eilles.
CHAPTER X
IN BARCELONA
Four months later Captain Ferragut was in Barcelona.
During the interval he had made three trips to Salonica, and on the second had to appear before a naval captain of the army of the Orient.
The French officer was informed of his former expeditions for the victualing of the allied troops. He knew his name and looked upon him as does a judge interested in the accused. He had received from Ma.r.s.eilles a long telegram with reference to Ferragut. A spy submitted to military justice was accusing him of having carried supplies to the German submarines.
"How about that, Captain?..."
Ulysses hesitated, looking at the official"s grave face, framed by a grey beard. This man inspired his confidence. He could respond negatively to such questions; it would be difficult for the German to prove his affirmation; but he preferred to tell the truth, with the simplicity of one who does not try to hide his faults, describing himself just as he had been,--blind with l.u.s.t, dragged down by the amorous artifices of an adventuress.
"The women!... Ah, the women!" murmured the French chief with the melancholy smile of a magistrate who does not lose sight of human weaknesses and has partic.i.p.ated in them.
Nevertheless Ferragut"s transgression was of gravest importance. He had aided in staging the submarine attack in the Mediterranean.... But when the Spanish captain related how he had been one of the first victims, how his son had died in the torpedoing of the _Californian_, the judge appeared touched, looking at him less severely.
Then Ferragut related his encounter with the spy in the harbor of Ma.r.s.eilles.
"I have sworn," he said finally, "to devote my ship and my life to causing all the harm possible to the murderers of my son.... That man is denouncing me in order to avenge himself. I realize that my headlong blindness dragged me to a crime that I shall never forget. I am sufficiently punished in the death of my son.... But that does not matter; let them sentence me, too."
The chief remained sunk in deep reflection, forehead in hand and elbow on the table. Ferragut recognized here military justice, expeditious, intuitive, pa.s.sional, attentive to the sentiments that have scarcely any weight in other tribunals, judging by the action of conscience more than by the letter of the law, and capable of shooting a man with the same dispatch that he would employ in setting him at liberty.
When the eyes of the judge again fixed themselves upon him, they had an indulgent light. He had been guilty, not on account of money nor treason, but crazed by a woman. Who has not something like this in his own history?... "Ah, the women!" repeated the Frenchman, as though lamenting the most terrible form of enslavement.... But the victim had already suffered enough in the loss of his son. Besides, they owed to him the discovery and arrest of an important spy.
"Your hand, Captain," he concluded, holding out his own. "All that we have said will be just between ourselves. It is a sacred, confessional secret. I will arrange it with the Council of War.... You may continue lending your services to our cause."
And Ferragut was not annoyed further about the affair of Ma.r.s.eilles.
Perhaps they were watching him discreetly and keeping sight of him in order to convince themselves of his entire innocence; but this suspected vigilance never made itself felt nor occasioned him any trouble.
On the third trip to Salonica the French captain saw him once at a distance, greeting him with a grave smile which showed that he no longer was thinking of him as a possible spy.
Upon its return, the _Mare Nostrum_ anch.o.r.ed at Barcelona to take on cloth for the army service, and other industrial articles of which the troops of the Orient stood in need. Ferragut did not make this trip for mercantile reasons. An affectionate interest was drawing him there....
He needed to see Cinta, feeling that in his soul the past was again coming to life.
The image of his wife, vivacious and attractive, as in the early years of their marriage, kept rising before him. It was not a resurrection of the old love; that would have been impossible.... But his remorse made him see her, idealized by distance, with all her qualities of a sweet and modest woman.
He wished to reestablish the cordial relations of other times, to have all the past pardoned, so that she would no longer look at him with hatred, believing him responsible for the death of her son.
In reality she was the only woman who had loved him sincerely, as she was able to love, without violence or pa.s.sional exaggeration, and with the tranquillity of a comrade. The other women no longer existed. They were a troop of shadows that pa.s.sed through his memory like specters of visible shape but without color. As for that last one, that Freya whom bad luck had put in his way--... How the captain hated her! How he wished to meet her and return a part of the harm she had done him!...
Upon seeing his wife, Ulysses imagined that no time had pa.s.sed by. He found her just as at parting, with her two nieces seated at her feet, making interminable, complicated blonde lace upon the cylindrical pillows supported on their knees.
The only novelty of the captain"s stay in this dwelling of monastic calm was that Don Pedro abstained from his visits. Cinta received her husband with a pallid smile. In that smile he suspected the work of time. She had continued thinking of her son every hour, but with a resignation that was drying her tears and permitting her to continue the deliberate mechanicalness of existence. Furthermore, she wished to remove the impression of the angry words, inspired by grief,--the remembrance of that scene of rebellion in which she had arisen like a wrathful accuser against the father. And Ferragut for some days believed that he was living just as in past years when he had not yet bought the _Mare Nostrum_ and was planning to remain always ash.o.r.e.
Cinta was attentive to his wishes and obedient as a Christian wife ought to be. Her words and acts revealed a desire to forget, to make herself agreeable.
But something was lacking that had made the past so sweet. The cordiality of youth could not be resuscitated. The remembrance of the son was always intervening between the two, hardly ever leaving their thoughts. And so it would always be!
Since that house could no longer be a real home to him, he again began to await impatiently the hour of sailing. His destiny was to live henceforth on the ship, to pa.s.s the rest of his days upon the waves like the accursed captain of the Dutch legend, until the pallid virgin wrapped in black veils--Death--should come to rescue him.
While the steamer finished loading he strolled through the city visiting his cousins, the manufacturers, or remaining idly in the cafes. He looked with interest on the human current pa.s.sing through the Ramblas in which were mingled the natives of the country and the picturesque and absurd medley brought in by the war.
The first thing that Ferragut noticed was the visible diminution of German refugees.
Months before he had met them everywhere, filling the hotels and monopolizing the cafes,--their green hats and open-neck shirts making them recognized immediately. The German women in showy and extravagant gowns, were everywhere kissing each other when meeting, and talking in shrieks. The German tongue, confounded with the Catalan and the Castilian, seemed to have become naturalized. On the roads and mountains could be seen rows of bare-throated boys with heads uncovered, staff in hand, and Alpine knapsack on the back, occupying their leisure with pleasure excursions that were at the same time, perhaps, a foresighted study.
These Germans had all come from South America,--especially from Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. From Barcelona they had, at the beginning of the war, tried to return to their own country but were now interned, unable to continue their voyage for fear of the French and English cruisers patrolling the Mediterranean.
At first no one had wished to take the trouble to settle down in this land, and they had all cl.u.s.tered together in sight of the sea with the hope of being the first to embark at the very moment that the road of navigation might open for them.
The war was going to be very short.... Exceedingly short! The Kaiser and his irresistible army would require but six months to impose their rule upon all Europe. The Germans enriched by commerce were lodged in the hotels. The poor who had been working in the new world as farmers or shop clerks were quartered in a slaughter house on the outskirts.
Some, who were musicians, had acquired old instruments and, forming strolling street bands, were imploring alms for their roarings from village to village.
But the months were pa.s.sing by, the war was being prolonged, and n.o.body could now discern the end. The number of those taking arms against the medieval imperialism of Berlin was constantly growing greater, and the German refugees, finally convinced that their wait was going to be a very long one, were scattering themselves through the interior of the state, hunting a more satisfying and less expensive existence. Those who had been living in luxurious hotels were establishing themselves in villas and chalets of the suburbs; the poor, tired of the rations of the slaughter-house, were exerting themselves to find jobs in the public works of the interior.
Many were still remaining in Barcelona, meeting together in certain beer gardens to read the home periodicals and talk mysteriously of the works of war.
Ferragut recognized them at once upon pa.s.sing them in the Rambla. Some were dealers, traders established for a long time in the country, bragging of their Catalan connections with that lying facility of adaptability peculiar to their race. Others came from South America and were a.s.sociated with those in Barcelona by the free-masonry of comradeship and patriotic interest. But they were all Germans, and that was enough to make the captain immediately recall his son, planning b.l.o.o.d.y vengeance. He sometimes wished to have in his arm all the blind forces of Nature in order to blot out his enemies with one blow. It annoyed him to see them established in his country, to have to pa.s.s them daily without protest and without aggression, respecting them because the laws demanded it.
He used to like to stroll among the flower stands of the Rambla, between the two walls of recently-cut flowers that were still guarding in their corollas the dews of daybreak. Each iron table was a pyramid formed of all the hues of the rainbow and all the fragrance that the earth can bring forth.
The fine weather was beginning. The trees of the Ramblas were covering themselves with leaves and in their shady branches were twittering thousands of birds with the deafening tenacity of the crickets.
The captain found special enjoyment in surveying the ladies in lace mantillas who were selecting bouquets in the refreshing atmosphere. No situation, however anguished it might be, ever left him insensible to feminine attractions.
One morning, pa.s.sing slowly through the crowds, he noticed that a woman was following him. Several times she crossed his path, smiling at him, hunting a pretext for beginning conversation. Such insistence was not particularly gratifying to his pride; for she was a female of protruding bust and swaying hips, a cook with a basket on her arm, like many others who were pa.s.sing through the Rambla in order to add a bunch of flowers to the daily purchase of eatables.
Finding that the sailor was not moved by her smiles nor the glances from her sharp eyes, she planted herself before him, speaking to him in Catalan.