The cook explained it all simply enough when the captain besieged him with fresh questions.

"The lady-bird must just be passing through. Perhaps she flitted away that same evening.... That meeting was just a chance encounter."

Ferragut had to give up his investigations. The defensive work on the ship was about terminated and the holds contained their cargo of projectiles for the army of the Orient and various unmounted guns. He received his sailing orders, and one gray and rainy morning they lifted anchor and steamed out of the bay of Brest. The fog made even more difficult the passage between the reefs that obstruct this port. They passed before the lugubrious Bay of the Dead, ancient cemetery of sailboats, and continued their navigation toward the south in search of the strait in order to enter the Mediterranean.

Ferragut felt increased pride in examining the new aspect of the Mare Nostrum. The wireless telegraph was going to keep him in contact with the world. He was no longer a merchant captain, slave of destiny, trusting to good luck, and incapable of repelling an attack. The radiographic stations were watching for him the entire length of the coast, advising him of changes in his course that he might avoid the ambushed enemy. The apparatus was constantly hissing and sustaining invisible dialogues. Besides, mounted on the stern was a cannon covered with a canvas hood, ready to begin work.

The dreams of his childhood when he used to devour stories of corsairs and novels of maritime adventures seemed about to be realized. He was now entitled to call himself "Captain of Sea and War" like the ancient navigators. If a submarine should pass before him, he would attack it from the prow; if it should try to pursue him, he would respond with the cannon.

His adventurous humor actually made him anxious for one of these encounters. A maritime combat had not yet occurred in his life, and he wished to see how these modest and silent men who had made war on land and contemplated death at close range, would demean themselves.

It was not long before his desire was realized. One morning on the high seas near Lisbon, when he had just fallen asleep after a night on the bridge, the shouts and runnings of the crew awakened him.

A submarine had broken the surface about fifteen hundred yards astern and was coming toward the Mare Nostrum, evidently fearing that the merchant-boat would try to escape; but in order to oblige it to stop, its gun fired two shells which fell into the water.

The steamer moderated its pace but only to place itself in a more favorable position and to maneuver with more sea room, with its arms at the stern. At the first shot the submarine began to recede, keeping a more prudent distance, surprised to receive an answer to its aggression.

The combat lasted half an hour. The shots repeated themselves on both sides with the speed of rapid fire artillery. Ferragut was near the gun, admiring the calm coolness with which its servants manipulated it. One always had a projectile in his arms ready to give it to his companion who rapidly introduced it into the smoking chamber. The gunner was concentrating all his life in his eyes, and bending over the cannon, moved it carefully, seeking the sensitive part of that gray and prolonged body that was rising to the surface of the water as though it were a whale.

Suddenly a cloud of kindling wood flew near the steamer's prow. An enemy's projectile had just hit the edge of the roofs that covered the galley and mess rooms. Caragol, who was standing in the door of his dominions, raised his hands to his hat. When the yellowish and evil-smelling cloud dissolved, they saw him still standing there, scratching the top of his head, bare and red.

"It's nothing!" he cried. "Just a bit of wood that drew a little of my blood. Fire away!... Fire!"

He was yelling directions, inflamed by the shooting. The drug-like smell of the smokeless powder, the dull thud of the detonations appeared to intoxicate him. He was leaping and wringing his hands with the ardor of a war-dancer.

The gunners redoubled their activity; the shots became continuous.

"There it is!" yelled Caragol. "They have hit it.... They have hit it!"

Of all those aboard, he was the one who could least appreciate the effects of the shots for he could scarcely discern the silhouette of the submersible. But in spite of that he continued bellowing with all the force of his faith.

"Now you've hit it!... Hurrah! Hurrah!"

And the strange thing was that the enemy instantly disappeared from the blue surface. The gunners still sent some shots against their periscope. Then there was left in the place which they had occupied only a white and glistening expanse.

The steamer went toward this enormous spot of oil whose undulations were twinkling with sunflower-like reflections.

The marines uttered shouts of enthusiasm. They were sure of having sent the submersible to the bottom. The officers were less optimistic. They had never seen one raise itself up vertically, tilting its stern high in the air before sinking. Perhaps it simply had been damaged and obliged to hide.

The loss of the submarine was a sure thing in Caragol's estimation, and he considered it entirely unnecessary to ask the name of the one who had blown it to smithereens.

"It must have been that lad from Vannes.... He's the only one who could have done it."

For him the other gunners simply did not exist. And, inflamed by his enthusiasm, he wriggled out of the hands of the two seamen who had begun to bandage his head with a deftness learned in land combats.

Ferragut was entirely satisfied with this encounter. Although he could not be absolutely certain of the destruction of the enemy, the fact that his boat had saved itself would spread abroad the fact that the Mare Nostrum was entirely capable of self-defense.

His joy took him to Caragol's domains.

"Well done, old man! We're going to write to the Ministry of Marine to give you the Croix de Guerre."

The cook, taking his words in all seriousness, declined the honor. If such recompense were to be given to any one, let it be handed to "that lad from Vannes." Then he added as though reflecting the captain's thoughts:

"I like to sail in this fashion.... Our steamer has gotten its teeth, and now it will not have to run like a frightened rabbit.... They'll have to let it go on its way in peace because now it can bite."

The rest of the journey toward Salonica was without incident. Telegraphy kept it in contact with the instructions arriving from the shore. Gibraltar advised it to sail close to the African coast; Malta and Bizerta pointed out that it could continue forward since the passage between Tunis and Sicily was clear of enemies. From distant Egypt tranquillizing messages came to meet them while they were sailing among the Grecian Islands with the prow toward Salonica.

On their return, they were to take freight to the harbor of Marseilles.

Ferragut did not have to bother about the boat while it was at anchor. The French officials were the ones who made arrangements with the harbor authorities. He merely had to be the justification for the flag, a captain of a neutral country, whose presence certified to the nationality of the vessel. Only on the sea did he recover command, every one becoming obedient to those on the bridge.

He wandered through Marseilles as at other times, passing the first hours of the evening on the terraces of the Cannebiere.

An old Marseillaise, captain of a merchant steamer, used to chat with him before returning to his office. One afternoon, while Ferragut was absent-mindedly glancing at a certain Paris daily that his friend was carrying, his attention was suddenly attracted by a name printed at the head of a short article. Surprise made him turn pale while at the same time something contracted within his breast. Again he spelled out the name, fearing that he had been under an hallucination. Doubt was impossible: it was very clear,—Freya Talberg. He took the paper from his comrade's hand, disguising his impatience by an assumption of curiosity.

"What is the war news to-day?..."

And while the old sailor was giving him the news, he read feverishly the few lines grouped beneath that name.

He was bewildered. The heading told little to one ignorant of the preceding facts to which the periodical alluded. These lines were simply voicing a protest against the government for not having made the famous Freya Talberg pay the penalty to which she had been sentenced. The paragraph terminated with mention of the beauty and elegance of the delinquent as though to these qualities might be attributed the delay in punishment.

Ferragut put forth all his efforts to give his voice a tone of indifference.

"Who is this individual?" he said, pointing to the heading of the article.

His companion had some difficulty in recalling her. So many things were happening because of the war....

"She is a boche, a spy, sentenced to death.... It appears that she did a great deal of work here and in other ports, sending word to the German submarines about the departure of our transports.... They arrested her in Paris two months ago when she was returning from Brest."

His friend said this with a certain indifference. These spies were so numerous!... The newspapers were constantly publishing notices of their shooting:—two lines, no more, as though treating of an ordinary casualty.

"This Freya Talberg," he continued, "has had enough said about her personality. It seems that she is a chic woman,—a species of lady from a novel. Many are protesting because she has not yet been executed. It is sad to have to kill one of her sex,—to kill a woman and especially a beautiful woman!... But nevertheless it is very necessary.... I believe that she is to be shot at any moment."



CHAPTER XII

AMPHITRITE!... AMPHITRITE!

The Mare Nostrum made another trip from Marseilles to Salonica.

Before sailing, Ferragut hunted vainly through the Paris periodicals for fresh news of Freya. For some days past, the attention of the public had been so distracted by various other events that for the time being the spy was forgotten.

On arriving at Salonica, he made discreet inquiries among his military and marine friends in the harbor cafes. Hardly any one had ever heard the name of Freya Talberg. Those who had read it in the newspapers merely replied with indifference.

"I know who she is: she is a spy who was an actress,—a woman with a certain chic. I think that they've shot her.... I don't know certainly, but they ought to have shot her."

They had more important things to think about. A spy!... On all sides they were discovering the intrigues of German espionage. They had to shoot a great many.... And immediately they forgot this affair in order to speak of the difficulties of the war that were threatening them and their comrades-at-arms.

When Ferragut returned to Marseilles two months afterwards, he was still ignorant as to whether his former mistress was yet among the living.

The first evening that he met his old comrade, the captain, in the cafe of the Cannebiere, he skillfully guided the conversation around until he could bring out naturally the question in the back of his mind: "What was the fate of that Freya Talberg that there was so much talk about in the newspapers before I went to Salonica?..."

The Marseillaise had to make an effort to recall her.

"Ah, yes!... The boche spy," he said after a long pause. "They shot her some weeks ago. The papers said little of her death,—just a few lines. Such people don't deserve any more...."

Ferragut's friend had two sons in the army; a nephew had died in the trenches, another, a mate aboard a transport, had just perished in a torpedo attack. The old man was passing many nights without sleeping thinking of his sons battling at the front. And this uneasiness gave a hard and ferocious tone to his patriotic enthusiasm.

"It's a good thing she is dead.... She was a woman, and shooting a woman is a painful thing. It is always repugnant to be obliged to treat them like men.... But according to what they tell me, this individual with her spy-information brought about the torpedoing of sixteen vessels.... Ah, the wicked beast!..."

And he said no more, changing the subject. Every one evinced the same revulsion on recalling the spy.

Ferragut eventually shared the same sentiments, his brain having divested itself of the contradictory duality which had attended all the critical moments of his existence. Remembering only her crimes, he hated Freya. As a man of the sea, he recalled his nameless fellow-sailors killed by torpedoes. This woman had indirectly prepared the ground for many assassinations.... And at the same time he recalled another image of her as the mistress who knew so well how to keep him spellbound by her artifices in the old palace of Naples, making that voluptuous prison her best souvenir.

"Let's think no more about her," he said to himself energetically. "She has died.... She does not exist."

But not even after her death did she leave him in peace. Remembrance of her soon came surging back, binding her to him with a tragic interest.

The very evening that he was talking with his friend in the cafe of the Cannebiere, he went to the post office to get the mail which had been forwarded to him at Marseilles. They gave him a great package of letters and newspapers. By the handwriting on the envelopes, and the postmarks on the postals, he tried to make out who was writing to him:—one letter only from his wife, evidently but a single sheet, judging from its slender flexibility, three very bulky ones from Toni,—a species of diary in which he continued relating his purchases, his crops, his hope of seeing the captain,—all this mixed in with abundant news about the war, and the wretched condition of the people. There were, besides, various sheets from the banking establishments at Barcelona, rendering Ferragut an account of the investment of his capital.

At the foot of the staircase he completed his examination of the outside of his correspondence. It was just what was always awaiting him on his return from his voyages.

He was about to put the package in his pocket and continue on his way when his attention was attracted by a voluminous envelope in an unknown handwriting, registered in Paris....

Curiosity made him open it immediately and he found in his hand a regular sheaf of loose leaves, a long account that far exceeded the limits of a letter. He looked at the engraved letter-head and then at the signature. The writer was a lawyer in Paris, and Ferragut suspected by the luxurious paper and address that he must be a celebrated maitre. He even recalled having run across his name somewhere in the newspapers.

Then and there he began reading the first page, anxious to know why this distinguished personage had written to him. But he had scarcely run his eyes over some of the sheets before he stopped his reading. He had come across the name of Freya Talberg. This lawyer had been her defender before the Council of War.

Ferragut hastened to put the letter in a safe place, and curb his impatience. He felt that necessity for silent isolation and absolute solitude which a reader, anxious to delve into a new book, experiences. This bundle of papers doubtless contained for him the most interesting of stories.

Returning to his ship, the road seemed to him far longer than at other times. He longed to lock himself in his stateroom, away from all curiosity as though he were about to perform some mysterious rite.

Freya was not in existence. She had disappeared from the world in the infamous manner in which criminals disappear,—doubly condemned since even her memory was hateful to the people; and Ferragut within a few moments was going to resurrect her like a ghost, in the floating house that she had visited on two occasions. He now might know the last hours of her existence wrapped in disreputable mystery; he could violate the will of her judges who had condemned her to lose her life and after death to perish from every one's memory. With eager avidity he seated himself before his cabin table, arranging the contents of the envelope in order;—more than twelve sheets, written on both sides, and several newspaper clippings. In these clippings he saw portraits of Freya, a hard and blurred likeness which he could recognize only by her name underneath. He also beheld the portrait of her defender,—an old lawyer of fastidious aspect with white locks carefully combed, and sharp eyes.

From the very first lines, Ferragut suspected that the maitre could neither write nor speak except in the most approved literary form. His letter was a moderated and correct account in which all emotion, however keen it might have been, was discreetly controlled so as not to disorganize the sweep of a majestic style.

He began by explaining that his professional duty had made him decide to defend this spy. She was in need of a lawyer; she was a foreigner; public opinion, influenced by the exaggerated accounts given by the newspapers of her beauty and her jewels, was ferociously inimical, demanding her immediate punishment. Nobody had wished to take charge of her defense. And for this very reason he had accepted it without fear of unpopularity.

Ferragut believed that this sacrifice might be attributed to the impulse of a gallant old beau, attracted to Freya because of her beauty. Besides, this criminal process represented a typical Parisian incident and might give a certain romantic notoriety to the one intervening in its developments.

A few paragraphs further on the sailor became convinced that the maitre had fallen in love with his client. This woman even in her dying moments shed around her most amazing powers of seduction. The professional success anticipated by the lawyer disappeared on his first questioning. Defense of Freya would be impossible. When he questioned her regarding the events of her former life, she either wept for every answer, or else remained silent, immovable, with as unconcerned a glance as though the fate of some other woman were at stake.

The military judges did not need her confessions: they knew, detail for detail, all her existence during the war and in the last years of peace. Never had the police agents abroad worked with such rapidity and success. Mysterious and omnipotent good fortune had crowned every investigation. They knew all of Freya's doings. They had even received from a secret agent exact data regarding her personality, the number by which she was represented in the director's office at Berlin, the salary that she was paid, as well as her reports during the past month. Documents written by her personally, of an irrefutable culpability, had poured in without any one's knowing from what point they were sent or by whom.

Every time that the judge had placed before Freya's eyes one of these proofs, she looked at her lawyer in desperation.

"It is they!" she moaned. "They who desire my death!"

Her defender was of the same opinion. The police had learned of her presence in France by a letter that her superiors in Barcelona had sent, stupidly disguised, written with regard to a code whose mystery had been discovered some time before by the French counter-spies. To the maitre it was only too evident that some mysterious power had wished to rid itself of this woman, dispatching her to an enemy's country, intending to send her to death.

Ulysses suspected in the defender a state of mind similar to his own,—the same duality that had tormented him in all his relations with Freya.

"I, sir," wrote the lawyer, "have suffered much. One of my sons, an officer, died in the battle of the Aisne. Others very close to me, nephews and pupils, died in Verdun and with the expeditionary army of the Orient...."

As a Frenchman, he had felt an irresistible aversion upon becoming convinced that Freya was a spy who had done great harm to his country.... Then as a man, he had commiserated her inconsequence, her contradictory and frivolous character, amounting almost to a crime, and her egoism as a beautiful woman and lover of luxury that had made her willing to suffer moral vileness in exchange for creature comfort.

Her story had attracted the lawyer with the palpitating interest of a novel of adventure. Commiseration had finally developed the vehemence of a love affair. Besides, the knowledge that the exploiters of this woman were the ones that had denounced her, had aroused his knightly enthusiasm in the defense of her indefensible cause.

Appearance before the Council of War had proved painful and dramatic. Freya, who until then, had seemed brutalized by the regime of the prison, roused herself upon being confronted by a dozen grave and uniformed men.

Her first moves were those of every handsome and coquettish female. She knew perfectly well her physical influence. These soldiers transformed into judges were recalling those other flirts that she had seen at the teas and grand balls at the hotels.... What Frenchman can resist feminine attraction?...

She had smiled, she had replied to the first questions with graceful modesty, fixing her wickedly guileless eyes upon the officials seated behind the presidential table, and on those other men in blue uniform, charged with accusing her or reading the documents of her prosecution.

But something cold and hostile existed in the atmosphere and paralyzed her smiles, leaving her words without echo and making ineffectual the splendors of her eyes. All foreheads were bowed under the weight of severe thought: all the men in that instant appeared thirty years older. They simply would not see such a one as she was, however much effort she might make. They had left their admiration and their desires on the other side of the door.

Freya perceived that she had ceased to be a woman and was no more than one accused. Another of her sex, an irresistible rival, was now engrossing everything, binding these men with a profound and austere love. Instinct made her regard fixedly the white matron of grave countenance whose vigorous bust appeared over the head of the president. She was Patriotism, Justice, the Republic, contemplating with her vague and hollow eyes this female of flesh and blood who was beginning to tremble upon realizing her situation.

"I do not want to die!" cried Freya, suddenly abandoning her seductions and becoming a poor, wretched creature crazed by fear. "I am innocent."

She lied with the absurd and barefaced illogicalness of one finding herself in danger of death. It was necessary to re-read her first declarations, which she was now denying, of presenting afresh the material proofs whose existence she did not wish to admit, of making her entire past file by supported by that irrefutable data of anonymous origin.

"It is they who have done it all!... They have mis-represented me!... Since they have brought about my ruin, I am going to tell what I know."

In his account the lawyer passed lightly over what had occurred in the Council of War. Professional secrecy and patriotic interest prevented greater explicitness. The session had lasted from morning till night, Freya revealing to her judges all that she knew.... Then her defender had spoken for five hours, trying to establish a species of interchange in the application of the penalty. The guilt of this woman was undeniable and the wickedness that she had carried through was very great, but they should spare her life in exchange for her important confessions.... Besides, the inconsequence of her character should be taken into consideration ... also, that vengeance of which the enemy had made her the victim....

With Freya he had waited, until well on into the night, the decision of the tribunal. The defendant appeared animated by hope. She had become a woman again: she was talking placidly with him and smiling at the gendarmes and eulogizing the army.... "Frenchmen, gentlemen, were incapable of killing a woman...."

The maitre was not surprised at the sad and furrowed brows of the officers as they came out from their deliberations. They appeared discontented with their recent vote, and yet at the same time showed the serenity of a tranquil countenance. They were soldiers who had just fulfilled their full duty, suppressing every purely masculine instinct. The one deputed to read the sentence swelled his voice with a fictitious energy.... "Death!..." After a long enumeration of crimes Freya was condemned to be shot:—she had given information to the enemy that represented the loss of thousands of men and boats, torpedoed because of her reports, on which had perished defenseless families.

The spy nodded her head upon listening to her own acts, for the first time appreciating their enormity and recognizing the justice of their tremendous punishment. But at the same time she was relying upon a good-natured reprieve in exchange for all which she had revealed, upon a gallant clemency ... because she was she.

As the fatal word sounded, she uttered a cry, became ashy pale, and leaned upon the lawyer for support.

"I do not want to die!... I ought not to die!... I am innocent."

She continued shrieking her innocence, without giving any other proof of it than the desperate instinct of self-preservation. With the credulity of one who wishes to save herself, she accepted all the problematical consolations of her defender. There remained the last recourse of appealing to the mercy of the President of the Republic: perhaps he might pardon her.... And she signed this appeal with sudden hope.

The lawyer managed to delay the fulfillment of the sentence for two months, visiting many of his colleagues who were political personages. The desire of saving the life of his client was tormenting him as an obsession. He had devoted all his activity and his personal influence to this affair.

"In love!... In love, as you were!" said, with scornful accent, the voice of Ferragut's prudent counselor.

The periodicals were protesting against this delay in the execution of the sentence. The name of Freya Talberg was beginning to be heard in conversation as an argument against the weakness of the government. The women were the most implacable.

One day, in the Palace of Justice, the maitre Became convinced of this general animosity that was pushing the defendant toward the day of execution. The woman who had charge of the gowns, a verbose old wife, on a familiar footing with the illustrious lawyers, had rudely made known their opinions.

"I wonder when they're going to execute that spy!... If she were a poor woman with children and needed to earn their bread, they would have shot her long ago.... But she is an elegant cocotte and with jewels. Perhaps she has bewitched some of the cabinet ministers. We are going to see her on the street now almost any day.... And my son who died at Verdun!..."

The prisoner, as though divining this public indignation, began to consider her death very near losing, little by little, that love of existence which had made her burst forth into lies and delirious protests. In vain the maitre held out hopes of pardon.

"It is useless: I must die.... I ought to be shot.... I have done so much mischief.... It horrifies even me to remember all the crimes named in that sentence.... And there are still others that they don't know!... Solitude has made me see myself just as I am. What shame!... I ought to perish; I have ruined everything.... What is there left for me to do in the world?..."

"And it was then, my dear sir," continued the attorney, in his letter, "that she spoke to me of you, of the way in which you had known each other, of the harm which she had done you unconsciously."

Convinced of the uselessness of his efforts to save her life, the maitre had solicited one last favor of the tribunal. Freya was very desirous that he should accompany her at the moment of her execution, as this would maintain her serenity. Those in the government had promised their colleague in the forum, to send opportune notice that he might be present at the fulfillment of the sentence.

It was at three o'clock in the morning and while he was in the deepest sleep that some messengers, sent by the prefecture of police, awakened him. The execution was to take place at daybreak: this was a decision reached at the last moment in order that the reporters might learn too late of the event.

An automobile took him with the messengers to the prison of St. Lazare, across silent and shadowy Paris. Only a few hooded street lamps were cutting with their sickly light the darkness of the streets. In the prison they were joined by other functionaries and many chiefs and officers who represented military justice. The condemned woman was still sleeping in her cell, ignorant of what was about to occur.

Those charged with awakening her, gloomy and timid, were marching in line through the corridors of the jail, bumping into one another in their nervous precipitation.

The door was opened. Under the regulation light Freya was on her bed, with closed eyes. Upon opening them and finding herself surrounded by men, her face was convulsed with terror.

"Courage, Freya!" said the prison warden. "The appeal for pardon has been denied."

"Courage, my daughter," added the priest of the establishment, starting the beginning of a discourse.

Her terror, due to the rude surprise of awakening with the brain still paralyzed, lasted but a few seconds. Upon collecting her thoughts, serenity returned to her face.

"I must die?" she asked. "The hour has already come?... Very well, then: let them shoot me. Here I am."

Some of the men turned their heads, and so averted their glance.... She had to get out of the bed in the presence of the two watchmen. This precaution was so that she might not attempt to take her life. She even asked the lawyer to remain in the cell as though in this way she wished to lessen the annoyance of dressing herself before strangers.

Upon reaching this passage in his letter, Ferragut realized the pity and admiration of the maitre who had seen her preparing the last toilet of her life.

"Adorable creature! So beautiful!... She was born for love and luxury, yet was going to die, torn by bullets like a rude soldier...."

The precautions adopted by her coquetry appeared to him admirable. She wanted to die as she had lived, placing on her person the best that she possessed. Therefore, suspecting the nearness of her execution, she had a few days before reclaimed the jewels and the gown that she was wearing when arrest prevented her returning to Brest.

Her defender described her "with a dress of pearl gray silk, bronze stockings and low shoes, a great-coat of furs, and a large hat with plumes. Besides, the necklace of pearls was on her bosom, emeralds in her ears and all her diamonds on her fingers."

A sad smile curled her lips upon trying to look at herself in the window panes, still black with the darkness of night, which served her as a mirror.

"I die in my uniform like a soldier," she said to her lawyer.

Then in the ante-chamber of the prison, under the crude artificial light, this plumed woman, covered with jewels, her clothing exhaling a subtle perfume, memory of happier days, turned without any embarrassment toward the men clad in black and in blue uniforms.

Two religious sisters who accompanied her appeared more moved than she. They were trying to exhort her and at the same time were struggling to keep back the tears.... The priest was no less touched. He had attended other criminals, but they were men.... To assist to a decent death a beautiful perfumed woman scintillating with precious stones, as though she were going to ride in an automobile to a fashionable tea!...

The week before she had been in doubt as to whether to receive a Calvinist pastor or a Catholic priest. In her cosmopolitan life of uncertain nationality she had never taken the time to decide about any religion for herself. Finally she had selected the latter on account of its being more simple intellectually, more liberal and approachable....

Several times when the priest was trying to console her, she interrupted him as though she were the one charged with inspiring courage.

"To die is not so terrible as it appears when seen afar off!... I feel ashamed when I think of the fears that I have passed through, of the tears that I have shed.... It turns out to be much more simple than I had believed.... We all have to die!"

They read to her the sentence refusing the appeal for pardon. Then they offered her a pen that she might sign it.

A colonel told her that there were still a few moments at her disposition in which to write to her family, her friends, or to make her last will....

"To whom shall I write?" said Freya. "I haven't a single friend in the world...."

"Then it was," continued the lawyer, "that she took the pen as if a recollection had occurred to her, and traced some few lines.... Then she tore up the paper and came toward me. She was thinking of you, Captain: her last letter was for you and she left it unfinished, fearing that it might never reach your hands. Besides, she wasn't equal to writing; her pulse was nervous: she preferred to talk.... She asked me to send you a long, very long letter, telling about her last moments, and I had to swear to her that I would carry out her request."

From that time on the maitre had seen things badly. Emotion was perturbing his sensibilities, but there yet lived in his mind Freya's last words on coming out of the jail.

"I am not a German," she said repeatedly to the men in uniform. "I am not German!"

For her the least important thing was to die. She was only worried for fear they might believe her of that odious nationality.

The attorney found himself in an automobile with many men whom he scarcely knew. Other vehicles were before and behind theirs. In one of them was Freya with the nuns and the priest.

A faint streak was whitening the sky, marking the points of the roofs. Below, in the deep blackness of the streets, the renewed life of daybreak was slowly beginning. The first laborers going to their work with their hands in their pockets, and the market women returning from market pushing their carts, turned their heads, following with interest this procession of swift vehicles almost all of them with men in the box seat beside the conductor. To the working-folk, this was perhaps a morning wedding.... Perhaps these were gay people coming from a nocturnal fiesta.... Several times the cortege slackened its speed, blocked by a row of heavy carts with mountains of garden-stuff.

The maitre, in spite of his emotions, recognized the road that the automobile was following. In the place de la Nation he caught glimpses of the sculptured group, le Triomphe de la Republique, piercing the dripping mistiness of dawn; then the grating of the enclosure; then the long cours de Vincennes and its historic fortress.

They went still further on until they reached the field of execution.

Upon getting down from the automobile, he saw an extensive plain covered with grass on which were drawn up two companies of soldiers. Other vehicles had arrived before them. Freya detached herself from the group of persons descending from the automobile, leaving behind the nuns and the officers who were escorting her.

The light of daybreak, blue and cold as the reflection of steel, threw into relief the two masses of armed men who formed a narrow passageway. At the end of this impromptu lane there was a post planted in the ground and beyond that, a dark van drawn by two horses, and various men clad in black.

The woman's approach was signalized by a voice of command, and immediately sounded the drums and trumpets at the head of the two formations. There was a rattle of guns; the soldiers were presenting arms. The martial instruments delivered the triumphal salute due to the presence of the head of a state, a general, a flag-raising.... It was an homage to Justice, majestic and severe,—a hymn to Patriotism, implacable in defense.

Recalling the white woman with deep bosom and hollow eyes that she had seen over the head of the President of the Council, the spy for a moment recognized that all this was in her honor; but afterwards, she wished to believe that the triumphal reception was for herself.... She was marching between guns, accompanied by bugle-call and drum-beat, like a queen.

To her defender, she appeared taller than ever. She seemed to have grown a palm higher because of her intense, emotional uplift. Her theatrical soul was moved just as when she used to present herself on the boards to receive applause. All these men had arisen in the middle of the night and were there on her account: the horns and the drums were sounding in order to greet her. Discipline was keeping their countenances grave and cold but she had the certain consciousness that they were finding her beautiful, and that back of many immovable eyes, desire was asserting itself.

If there remained a shred of fear of losing her life, it disappeared under the caress of this false glory.... To die contemplated by so many valiant men who were rendering her the greatest of honors! She felt the necessity of being adorable, of falling into an artistic pose as though she were on a stage.

She was passing between the two masses of men, head erect, stepping firmly with the high-spirited tread of a goddess-huntress, sometimes casting a glance on some of the hundreds of eyes fixed upon her. The illusion of her triumph made her advance as upright and serene as though passing the troops in review.

"Good heavens!... What poise!" exclaimed a young officer behind the lawyer, admiring Freya's serenity.

Upon approaching the post, some one read a brief document, a summary of the sentence,—three lines to apprise her that justice was about to be fulfilled.

The only thing about this rapid notification that annoyed her was the fear that the trumpets and drums would cease. But they continued sounding and their martial music was as comforting to her ears as a very intoxicating wine slipping through her lips.

A platoon of corporals and soldiers (twelve rifles) detached themselves from the double military mass. A sub-officer with a blond beard, small, delicate, was commanding it with an unsheathed sword. Freya contemplated him a moment, finding him interesting, while the young man avoided her glance.

With the gesture of a tragedy queen, she repelled the white handkerchief that they were offering her to bandage her eyes. She did not need it. The nuns took leave of her forever. As soon as she was alone, two gendarmes commenced to tie her with the back supported against the post.

"They say," her defender continued writing, "that one of her hands waved to me for the last time just before it was fastened down by the rope.... I saw nothing. I could not see!... It was too much for me!..."

The rest of the execution he knew only by hearsay. The trumpets and drums continued sounding. Freya, bound and intensely pale, smiled as though she were drunk. The early morning breeze waved the plumes of her hat.

When the twelve fusileers advanced placing themselves in a horizontal line eight yards distant, all of them aiming toward her heart, she appeared to wake up. She shrieked, her eyes abnormally dilated by the horror of the reality that so soon was to take place. Her cheeks were covered with tears. She tugged at the ligatures with the vigor of an epileptic.

"Pardon!... Pardon! I do not want to die!"

The sub-lieutenant raised his sword, and lowered it again rapidly.... A shot.

Freya collapsed, her body slipping the entire length of the post until it fell forward on the ground. The bullets had cut the cords that bound her.

As though it had acquired sudden life, her hat leaped from her head, flying off to fall about four yards further on. A corporal with a revolver in his right hand came forward from the shooting picket:—"the death-blow." He checked his step before the puddle of blood that was forming around the victim, pressing his lips together and averting his eyes. He then bent over her, raising with the end of the barrel the ringlets which had fallen over one of her ears. She was still breathing.... A shot in the temple. Her body contracted with a final shudder, then remained immovable with the rigidity of a corpse.

Voices were heard. The firing-squad re-formed in line, and to the rhythm of their instruments went filing past the body of the dead. From the funeral wagon two black-robed men drew out a bier of white wood.

Turning their backs upon their work, the double military mass marched toward the encampment. The ends of Justice had been served. Trumpets and drums were lost on the horizon but their sounds were still magnified by the fresh echoes of the coming morn. The corpse was despoiled of its jewels and then deposited in that poor coffin which looked so like a packing-box. The two nuns took with timidity the gems which the dead woman had given them for their works of charity. Then the lid was fastened down, shutting away forever the one who a few moments before was a woman of sumptuous charm upon whom men could not look unmoved. The four planks now guarded merely bloody rags, mutilated flesh, broken bones.

The vehicle went to the cemetery of Vincennes, to the corner in which the executed were buried.... Not a flower, not an inscription, not a cross. The lawyer himself could not be sure of finding her burial place if at any time it was necessary to seek it.... Such was the last scene in the career of this luxurious and pleasure-loving creature!... Thus had that body gone to dissolution in an unknown hole in the ground like any abandoned beast of burden!...

"She was good," said her defender, "and yet at the same time, she was a criminal. Her education was to blame. Poor woman!... They had brought her up to live in riches, and riches had always fled before her."

Then in his last lines the old maitre said with melancholy, "She died thinking of you and a little of me.... We have been the last men of her existence."

This reading left Ulysses in a mournful state of stupefaction. Freya was no longer living!... He was no longer running the danger of seeing her appear on his ship at whatever port he might touch!...

The duality of his sentiments again surged up with violent contradiction.

"It was a good thing!" said the sailor, "how many men have died through her fault!... Her execution was inevitable. The sea must be cleared of such bandits."

And at the same time the remembrance of the delights of Naples, of that long imprisonment in a harem pervaded with unlimited sensuousness was reborn in his mind. He saw her in all the majesty of her marvelous body, just as when she was dancing or leaping from side to side of the old salon. And now this form, molded by nature in a moment of enthusiasm, was no longer in existence.... It was nothing but a mass of liquid flesh and pestilent pulp!...

He recalled her kiss, that kiss that had so electrified him, making him sink down and down through an ocean of ecstasy, like a castaway, content with his fate.... And he would never know her more!... And her mouth, with its perfume of cinnamon and incense, of Asiatic forests haunted with sensuousness and intrigue, was now ...! Ah, misery!

Suddenly he saw the profile of the dead woman with one eye turned toward him, graciously and malignly, just as the "eye of the morning" must have looked at its mistress while uncoiling her mysterious dances in her Asiatic dwelling.

Ulysses concentrated his attention on the Phantasm's pallid brow touched by the silky caress of her curls. There he had placed his best kisses, kisses of tenderness and gratitude.... But the smooth skin that had appeared made of petals of the camellia was growing dark before his eyes. It became a dark green and was oozing with blood.... Thus he had seen her that other time.... And he recalled with remorse his blow in Barcelona.... Then it opened, forming a deep hole, angular in shape like a star. Now it was the mark of the gunshot wound, the coup de grace that brought the death-agony of the executed girl to its end.

Poor Freya, implacable warrior, unnerved by the battle of the sexes!... She had passed her existence hating men yet needing them in order to live,—doing them all the harm possible and receiving it from them in sad reciprocity until finally she had perished at their hands.

It could not end in any other way. A masculine hand had opened the orifice through which was escaping the last bubble of her existence.... And the horrified captain, poring over her sad profile with its purpling temple, thought that he never would be able to blot that ghastly vision from his memory. The phantasm would diminish, becoming invisible in order to deceive him, but would surely come forth again in all his hours of pensive solitude; it was going to embitter his nights on watch, to follow him through the years like remorse.

Fortunately the exactions of real life kept repelling these sad memories.

"It was a good thing she was shot!" affirmed authoritatively within him the energetic official accustomed to command men. "What would you have done in forming a part of the tribunal that condemned her?... Just what the others did. Think of those who have died through her deviltry!... Remember what Toni said!"

A letter from his former mate, received in the same mail with the one from Freya's defender, spoke of the abominations that submarine aggression was committing in the Mediterranean.

News of some of the crimes was beginning to be received from shipwrecked sailors who had succeeded in reaching the coast after long hours of struggle, or when picked up by other boats. The most of the victims, however, would remain forever unknown in the mystery of the waves. Torpedoed boats had gone to the bottom with their crews and passengers, "without leaving any trace," and only months afterwards a part of the tragedy had become evident when the surge flung up on the coast numberless bodies impossible of identification, without even a recognizable human face.

Almost every week Toni contemplated some of these funereal gifts of the sea. At daybreak the fishermen used to find corpses tossed on the beach where the water swept the sand, resting there a few moments on the moist ground, only to be snatched back again by another and stronger wave. Finally their backs had become imbedded on land, holding them motionless—while, from their clothing and their flesh, swarms of little fishes came forth fleeing back to the sea in search of new pastures. The revenue guards had discovered among the rocks mutilated bodies in tragic positions, with glassy eyes protruding from their sockets.

Many of them were recognized as soldiers by the tatters that revealed an old uniform, or the metal identification tags on their wrists. The shore folks were always talking of a transport that had been torpedoed coming from Algiers.... And mixed with the men, they were constantly finding bodies of women so disfigured that it was almost impossible to judge of their age: mothers who had their arms arched as though putting forth their utmost efforts to guard the babe that had disappeared. Many whose virginal modesty had been violated by the sea, showed naked limbs swollen and greenish, with deep bites from flesh-eating fishes. The tide had even tossed ashore the headless body of a child a few years old.

It was more horrible, according to Toni, to contemplate this spectacle from land than when in a boat. Those on ships are not able to see the ultimate consequences of the torpedoings as vividly as do those who live on the shore, receiving as a gift of the waves this continual consignment of victims.

The pilot had ended his letter with his usual supplications:—"Why do you persist in following the sea?... You want a vengeance that is impossible. You are one man, and your enemies are millions.... You are going to die if you persist in disregarding them. You already know that they have been hunting you for a long time. And you will not always succeed in eluding their clutches. Remember what the people say, 'He who courts danger—!' Give up the sea; return to your wife or come to us. Such a rich life as you might lead ashore!..."

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 ship with a crew of men of a different nationality. Aside from the few who had always loved him, nobody 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 ship, 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 ship-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, impassioned, 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 masses 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 assented. 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 pass 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 multitudes 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 astonishing 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 clashing with the other half on the battlefields. Both sides had a mystic ideal, affirming it with violence and slaughter just as the multitudes 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 masses struggling at the present day. One was placing its ideal in the past, wishing 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 assurances 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 assist 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 ship'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 Marseilles to the Cape of San Antonio far from the coast, keeping to the mid-Mediterranean, without passing 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 passed the best part of his childhood. Thus it must have looked in the distance to the Greeks of Massalia, exploring the desert Mediterranean in ships which were leaping the foam like wooden horses.

All the rest of the day, the Mare Nostrum sailed very close to the shore. 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 space 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 shore, 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 pass by; perhaps he was recognizing the ship 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 passing within reach of their voice. On each of the jutting points of the shore was a low and ruddy tower,—last vestige of the thousand-year war of the Mediterranean. Accustomed to the rugged shores 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 pass 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 shore 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.

"Well, what do you think of the trip?" asked Ferragut gayly, before drinking. "Shall we arrive in good condition?..."

The cook made as scornful a gesture as though the Germans could see him.

"Nothing will befall us; I am sure of that.... We have One who is watching over us, and ..."

He was suddenly interrupted in his affirmations. The tray leaped from his hands and he went staggering about like a drunken man, even banging his abdomen against the balustrade of the bridge. "Cristo del Grao!..."

The cup that Ferragut was carrying to his mouth fell with a crash, and the French officer, seated on a bench, was almost thrown on his knees. The helmsman had to clutch the wheel with a jerk of surprise and terror.

The entire ship trembled from keel to masthead, from quarter-deck to forecastle, with a deadly shuddering as though invisible claws had just checked it at full speed.

The captain tried to account for this accident. "We must be aground," he said to himself, "a reef that I did not know, a shoal not marked on the charts...."

But a second had not passed before something else was added to the first shock, refuting Ferragut's suppositions. The blue and luminous air was rent with the thud of a thunderclap. Near the prow, appeared a column of smoke, of expanding gases of yellowish and fulminating steam and, coming up through its center in the form of a fan, a spout of black objects, broken wood, bits of metallic plates and flaming ropes turning to ashes.

Ulysses was no longer in doubt. They must have just been struck by a torpedo. His anxious look scanned the waters.

"There!... There!" he said, pointing with his hand.

His keen seaman's eyes had just discovered the light outline of a periscope that nobody else was able to see.

He ran down from the bridge or rather he slid down the midship ladder, running toward the stern.

"There!... There!"

The three gunners were near the cannon, calm and phlegmatic, putting a hand to their eyes, in order to see better the almost invisible speck which the captain was pointing out.

None of them noticed the slant that the deck was slowly beginning to take. They thrust the first projectile into the breech of the cannon while the gunner made an effort to distinguish that small black cane hardly perceptible among the tossing waves.

Another shock as rude as the first one! Everything groaned with a dying shudder. The plates were trembling and falling apart, losing the cohesion that had made of them one single piece. The screws and rivets sprang out, moved by the general shaking-up. A second crater had opened in the middle of the ship, this time bearing in its fan-shaped explosion the limbs of human beings.

The captain saw that further resistance was useless. His feet warned him of the cataclysm that was developing beneath them—the liquid water-spout invading with a foamy bellowing the space between keel and deck, destroying the metal screens, knocking down the bulk-heads, upsetting every object, dragging them forth with all the violence of an inundation, with the ramming force of a breaking dyke. The hold was rapidly becoming converted into a watery and leaden coffin fast going to the bottom.

The aft gun hurled its first shot. To Ferragut its report seemed mere irony. No one knew as he did the ship's desperate condition.

"To the life boats!" he shouted. "Every one to the boats!"

The steamer was tipping up in an alarming way as the men calmly obeyed his orders without losing their self-control.

A desperate vibration was jarring the deck. It was the engines that were sending out death-rattles at the same time that a torrent of steam as thick as ink was pouring from the smokestack. The firemen were coming up to the light with eyes swollen with the terror stamping their blackened faces. The inundation had begun to invade their dominions, breaking their steel compartments.

"To the boats!... Lower the life boats!"

The captain repeated his shouts of command, anxious to see the crew embark, without thinking for one moment of his own safety.

It never even occurred to him that his fate might be different from that of his ship. Besides, hidden in the sea, was the enemy who would soon break the surface to survey its handiwork.... Perhaps they might hunt for Captain Ferragut among the boatloads of survivors, wishing to bear him off as their triumphant booty.... No, he would far rather give up his life!...

The seamen had unfastened the life boats and were beginning to lower them, when something brutal suddenly occurred with the annihilating rapidity of a cataclysm of Nature.

There sounded a great explosion as though the world had gone to pieces, and Ferragut felt the floor vanishing from beneath his feet. He looked around him. The prow no longer existed; it had disappeared under the water, and a bellowing wave was rolling over the deck crushing everything beneath its roller of foam. On the other hand, the poop was climbing higher and higher, becoming almost vertical. It was soon a cliff, a mountain steep, on whose peak the white flagstaff was sticking up like a weather-vane.

In order not to fall he had to grasp a rope, a bit of wood, any fixed object. But the effort was useless. He felt himself dragged down, overturned, lashed about in a moaning and whirling darkness. A deadly chill paralyzed his limbs. His closed eyes saw a red heaven, a sky of blood with black stars. His ear drums were buzzing with a roaring glu-glu, while his body was turning somersaults through the darkness. His confused brain imagined that an infinitely deep hole had opened in the depths of the sea, that all the waters of the ocean were passing through it, forming a gigantic vortex, and that he was swirling in the center of this revolving tempest.

"I am going to die!... I am already dead!" said his thoughts.

And in spite of the fact that he was resigned to death, he moved his legs desperately, wishing to bring himself up to the yielding, treacherous surface. Instead of continuing to descend, he noticed that he was going up, and in a little while he was able to open his eyes and to breathe, judging from the atmospheric contact that he had reached the top.

He was not sure of the length of time he had passed in the abyss,—surely not more than a few minutes, since his breathing capacity as a swimmer could not exceed that limit.... He, therefore, experienced great astonishment upon discovering the tremendous changes which had taken place in so short a parenthesis.

He thought it was already night. Perhaps in the upper strata of the atmosphere were still shining the last rays of the sun, but at the water's level, there was no more than a twilight gray, like the dim glimmer of a cellar.

The almost even surface seen a few minutes before from the height of the bridge was now moved by broad swells that plunged him in momentary darkness. Each one of these appeared a hillock interposed before his eyes, leaving free only a few yards of space. When he was raised upon their crests he could take in with rapid vision the solitary sea that lacked the gallant mass of the ship, astir with dark objects. These objects were slipping inertly by or moving along, waving pairs of black antennae. Perhaps they were imploring help, but the wet desert was absorbing the most furious cries, converting them into distant bleating.

Of the Mare Nostrum there was no longer visible either the mouth of the smokestack nor the point of a mast; the abyss had swallowed it all.... Ferragut began to doubt if his ship had ever really existed.

He swam toward a plank that came floating near, resting his arms upon it. He used to be able to remain entire hours in the sea, when naked and within sight of the coast, with the assurance of returning to terra firma whenever he might wish.... But now he had to keep himself up, completely dressed; his shoes were tugging at him with a constantly increasing force as though made of iron ... and water on all sides! Not a boat on the horizon that could come to his aid!... The wireless operator, surprised by the swiftness of the catastrophe, had not been able to send out the S.O.S.

He also had to defend himself from the debris of the shipwreck. After having grasped the raft as his last means of salvation, he had to avoid the floating casks, rolling toward him on the swelling billows, which might send him to the bottom with one of their blows.

Suddenly there loomed up between two waves a species of blind monster that was agitating the waters furiously with the strokes of its swimming. Upon coming close to it, he saw that it was a man; as it drifted away, he recognized Uncle Caragol.

He was swimming like a drunken man with a super-human force which made half of his body come out of the water at each stroke. He was looking before him as though he could see, as if he had a fixed destination, without hesitating a moment, yet going further out to sea when he imagined that he was heading toward the coast.

"Padre San Vicente!" he moaned. "Cristo del Grao!..."

In vain the captain shouted. The cook could not hear him, and continued swimming on with all the force of his faith, repeating his pious invocations between his noisy snortings.

A cask climbed the crest of a wave, rolling down on the opposite side. The head of the blind swimmer came in its way.... A thudding crash. Padre San Vicente!... And Caragol disappeared with bleeding head and a mouth full of salt.

Ferragut did not wish to imitate that kind of swimming. The land was very far off for a man's arms; it would be impossible to reach it. Not a single one of the ship's boats had remained afloat.... His only hope, a remote and whimsical one, was that some vessel might discover the shipwrecked men and save them.

In a little while this hope was almost realized. From the crest of a wave he could see a black bark, long and low, without smokestack or mast, that was nosing slowly among the debris. He recognized a submarine. The dark silhouettes of several men were so plainly visible that he believed he heard them shouting.——

"Ferragut!... Where is Captain Ferragut?..."

"Ah, no!... Better to die!"

And he clung to his raft, hanging his head as though drowning. Then as night closed down upon him he heard still other shouts, but these were cries of help, cries of anguish, cries of death. The rescuers were searching for him only, leaving the others to their fate.

He lost all notion of time. An agonizing cold was paralyzing his entire frame. His stiffened and swollen hands were loosening from the raft and grasping it again only by a supreme effort of his will.

The other shipwrecked men had taken the precaution to put on their life preservers when the ship began to sink. Thanks to this apparatus, their death agony was going to be prolonged a few hours more. Perhaps if they could hold out until daybreak, they might be discovered by some boat! But he!...

Suddenly he remembered the Triton.... His uncle also had died in the sea; all the most vigorous members of the family had finally perished in its bosom. For centuries and centuries it had been the tomb of the Ferraguts; with good reason they had called it "mare nostrum."

He fancied that the currents might possibly have dragged his uncle's dead body from the other promontory to the place over which he was floating. Perhaps he might be now beneath his feet.... An irresistible force was pulling at them; his paralyzed hands loosened their hold on the wood.

"Uncle!... Uncle!"

In his thoughts he was shrieking to his relative with the timorous plaint of the little fellow taking his first swimming lesson. But his agonized hands again encountered the cold and weak support of the raft instead of that island of hard muscles crowned with a hairy and smiling face.

He continued his tenacious floating, struggling against the drowsiness that was urging him to relax from his drifting support and let himself go to the bottom, to sleep ... to sleep forever! His shoes and clothing were continuing to pull and tug with even greater force. They became an undulating shroud, growing heavier and heavier, surging and dragging down and down to the uttermost depths. His desperation made him raise his eyes and look at the stars.... So high!... Only to be able to grasp one of them, as his hands were now clutching the wood!...

At the same time he made instinctively a movement of repulsion. His head had sunk in the water without his being conscious of it. A bitter liquid was beginning to filter through his mouth....

He made a mighty effort to keep himself in a vertical position, looking again at the sky, still black as ink, and all the stars as red as drops of blood.

Suddenly he felt a certain consciousness that he was not alone, and he closed his eyes.... Yes, somebody was near him. It was a woman!...

It was a woman white as the clouds, white as the sail, white as the foam. Her sea-green tresses were adorned with pearls and phosphorescent corals; her proud smile was that of a goddess, in keeping with the majesty of her diadem.

She stretched her pearly arms around him, pressing him close against her life-giving and eternally virginal bosom. A dense and greenish atmosphere was giving her whiteness a reflection like that of the light of the caves of the sea....

Her pale mouth then pressed against the sailor's, making him feel as though all the light of this white apparition had liquefied and was passing into his body by means of her impelling kiss.

He could no longer see, he could no longer speak.

His eyes had closed, never to open again; a bitter river of salt was flowing down his throat.

Nevertheless he continued looking at her,—more luminous, pressed closer and closer,—with a sad expression of love in his glassy eyes.... And thus he went down and down the infinite levels of the abyss, inert, and without volition, while a voice within him was crying, as though just recognizing her:

"Amphitrite!... Amphitrite!"



THE END