An enormous edifice appeared facing the water. It was a palace in ruins, or rather a roofless palace never finished, with thick walls and huge windows. On the lower floor the waves entered gently through doors and windows which served as rooms of refuge for the fishermen's skiffs.

The two travelers were undoubtedly talking about this ruin, and the forgiving coachman forgot his snub in order to come to their aid.

"That is what many people call the Palace of Queen Joanna.... A mistake, sir. Ignorance of the uneducated people! That is the Palazzo di Donn' Anna, and Donna Anna Carafa was a great Neapolitan signora, wife of the Duke of Medina, the Spanish viceroy who constructed the palace for her and was not able to finish it."...

He was about to say more but stopped himself. Ah, no! By the Madonna!... Again they had begun to talk, without listening to him.... And he finally took refuge in offended silence, while they chattered continually behind his back.

Ferragut felt an interest in the remote love-affairs of the Neapolitan great lady with the prudent and aristocratic Spanish magnate. His passion had made the grave viceroy commit the folly of constructing a palace in the sea. The sailor was also in love with a woman of another race and felt equal desires to do whimsical things for her.

"I have read the mandates of Nietzsche," he said to her, by way of explaining his enthusiasm,—"'seek thy wife outside thy country.' That is the best thing."

Freya smiled sadly.

"Who knows?... That would complicate love with the prejudices of national antagonism. That would create children with a double country who would end by belonging to none, who would wander through the world like mendicants with no place of refuge.... I know something about that."

And again she smiled with sadness and skepticism.

Ferragut was reading the signs of the trattorias on both sides of the highway: "The Ledge of the Siren," "The Joy of Parthenope," "The Cluster of Flowers."... And meanwhile he was squeezing Freya's hand, putting his fingers upon the inner side of her wrist and caressing her skin that trembled at every touch.

The coachman let the horse slowly ascend the continuous ascent of Posilipo. He was now concerned in not turning around and not being troublesome. He knew well what they were talking about behind him. "Lovers,—people who do not wish to arrive too soon!" And he forgot to be offended, gloating over the probable generosity of a gentleman in such good company.

Ulysses made him stop on the heights of Posilipo. It was there where he had eaten a famous "sailor's soup," and where they sold the best oysters from Fusaro. At the right of the road, there arose a pretentious and modern edifice with the name of a restaurant in letters of gold. On the opposite side was the annex, a terraced garden that slipped away down to the sea, and on these terraces were tables in the open air or little low roofed cottages whose walls were covered with climbing vines. These latter constructions had discreet windows opening upon the gulf at a great height thus forestalling any outside curiosity.

Upon receiving Ferragut's generous tip, the coachman greeted him with a sly smile, that confidential gesture of comradeship which passes down through all the social strata, uniting them as simple men. He had brought many folk to this discreet garden with its locked dining-rooms overlooking the gulf. "A good appetite to you, Signore!"

The old waiter who came to meet them on the little sloping footpath made the identical grimace as soon as he spied Ferragut. "I have whatever the gentleman may need." And crossing a low, embowered terrace with various unoccupied tables, he opened a door and bade them enter a room having only one window.

Freya went instinctively toward it like an insect toward the light, leaving behind her the damp and gloomy room whose paper was hanging loose at intervals. "How beautiful!" The gulf pictured through the window appeared like an unframed canvas,—the original, alive and palpitating,—of the infinite copies throughout the world.

Meanwhile the captain, while informing himself of the available dishes, was secretly following the discreet sign language of the waiter. With one hand he was holding the door half open, his fingers fumbling with an enormous archaic bolt on the under side which had belonged to a much larger door and looked as though it were going to fall from the wood because of its excessive size.... Ferragut surmised that this bolt was going to count heavily, with all its weight, in the bill for dinner.

Freya interrupted her contemplation of the panorama on feeling Ferragut's lips trying to caress her neck.

"None of that, Captain!... You know well enough what we have agreed. Remember that I have accepted your invitation on the condition that you leave me in peace."

She permitted his kiss to pass across her cheek, even reaching her mouth. This caress was already an accepted thing. As it had the force of custom, she did not resist it, remembering the preceding ones, but fear of his abusing it made her withdraw from the window.

"Let us examine the enchanted palace which my true love has promised me," she said gayly in order to distract Ulysses from his insistence.

In the center there was a table made of planks badly planed and with rough legs. The covers and the dishes would hide this horror. Passing her eyes scrutinizingly over the old seats, the walls with their loose papering and the chromos in greenish frames, she spied something dark, rectangular and deep occupying one corner of the room. She did not know whether it was a divan, a bed or a funeral catafalque. The shabby covers that were spread over it reminded one of the beds of the barracks or of the prison.

"Ah, no!..." Freya made one bound toward the door. She would never be able to eat beside that filthy piece of furniture which had come from the scum of Naples. "Ah, no! How loathesome!"

Ulysses was standing near the door, fearing that Freya's discoveries might go further, and hiding with his back that bolt which was the waiter's pride. He stammered excuses but she mistook his insistence, thinking that he was trying to lock her in.

"Captain, let me pass!" she said in an angry voice. "You do not know me. That kind of thing is for others.... Back, if you do not wish me to consider you the lowest kind of fellow...."

And she pushed him as she went out, in spite of the fact that Ulysses was letting her pass freely, reiterating his excuses and laying all the responsibility on the stupidity of the servant.

She stopped under the arbor, suddenly tranquillized upon finding herself with her back to the room.

"What a den!"... she said. "Come over here, Ferragut. We shall be much more comfortable in the open air looking at the gulf. Come, now, and don't be babyish!... All is forgotten. You were not to blame."

The old waiter, who was returning with table-covers and dishes, did not betray the slightest astonishment at seeing the pair installed on the terrace. He was accustomed to these surprises and evaded the lady's eye like a convicted criminal, looking at the gentleman with the forlorn air which he always employed when announcing that there was no more of some dish on the bill of fare. His gestures of quiet protection were trying to console Ferragut for his failure. "Patience and tenacity!"... He had seen much greater difficulties overcome by his clientele.

Before serving dinner he placed upon the table, in the guise of an aperitive, a fat-bellied bottle of native wine, a nectar from the slopes of Vesuvius with a slight taste of sulphur. Freya was thirsty and was suspicious of the water of the trattoria. Ulysses must forget his recent mortification.... And the two made their libations to the gods, with an unmixed drink in which not a drop of water cut the jeweled transparency of the precious wine.

A group of singers and dancers now invaded the terrace. A coppery-hued girl, handsome and dirty, with wavy hair, great gold hoops in her ears and an apron of many colored stripes, was dancing under the arbor, waving on high a tambourine that was almost the size of a parasol. Two bow-legged youngsters, dressed like ancient lazzarones in red caps, were accompanying with shouts the agitated dance of the tarantella.

The gulf was taking on a pinkish light under the oblique rays of the sun, as though there were growing within it immense groves of coral. The blue of the sky had also turned rosy and the mountain seemed aflame in the afterglow. The plume of Vesuvius was less white than in the morning; its nebulous column, streaked with reddish flutings by the dying light, appeared to be reflecting its interior fire.

Ulysses felt the friendly placidity that a landscape contemplated in childhood always inspires. Many a time he had seen this same panorama with its dancing girls and its volcano there in his old home at Valencia; he had seen it on the fans called "Roman Style" that his father used to collect.

Freya felt as moved as her companion. The blue of the gulf was of an extreme intensity in the parts not reflected by the sun; the coast appeared of ochre; although the houses had tawdry facades, all these discordant elements were now blended and interfused in subdued and exquisite harmony. The shrubbery was trembling rhythmically under the breeze. The very air was musical, as though in its waves were vibrating the strings of invisible harps.

This was for Freya the true Greece imagined by the poets, not the island of burned-out rocks denuded of vegetation that she had seen and heard spoken of in her excursions through the Hellenic archipelago.

"To live here the rest of my life!" she murmured with misty eyes. "To die here, forgotten, alone, happy!..."

Ferragut also would like to die in Naples ... but with her!... And his quick and exuberant imagination described the delights of life for the two,—a life of love and mystery in some one of the little villas, with a garden peeping out over the sea on the slopes of Posilipo.

The dancers had passed down to the lower terrace where the crowd was greater. New customers were entering, almost all in pairs, as the day was fading. The waiter had ushered some highly-painted women with enormous hats, followed by some young men, into the locked dining-room. Through the half-open door came the noise of pursuit, collision and rebound with brutal roars of laughter.

Freya turned her back, as if the memory of her passage through that den offended her.

The old waiter now devoted himself to them, beginning to serve dinner. To the bottle of Vesuvian wine had succeeded another kind, gradually losing its contents.

The two ate little but felt a nervous thirst which made them frequently reach out their hands toward the glass. The wine was depressing to Freya. The sweetness of the twilight seemed to make it ferment, giving it the acrid perfume of sad memories.

The sailor felt arising within him the aggressive fever of temperate men when becoming intoxicated. Had he been with a man he would have started a violent discussion on any pretext whatever. He did not relish the oysters, the sailor's soup, the lobster, everything that another time, eaten alone or with a passing friend in the same site, would have appeared to him as delicacies.

He was looking at Freya with enigmatical eyes while, in his thought, wrath was beginning to bubble. He almost hated her on recalling the arrogance with which she had treated him, fleeing from that room. "Hypocrite!..." She was just amusing herself with him. She was a playful and ferocious cat prolonging the death-agony of the mouse caught in her claws. In his brain a brutal voice was saying, as though counseling a murder: "This will be her last day!... I'll finish her to-day!... No more after to-day!..." After several repetitions, he was disposed to the greatest violence in order to extricate himself from a situation which he thought ridiculous.

And she, ignorant of her companion's thought, deceived by the impassiveness of his countenance, continued chatting with her glance fixed on the horizon, talking in an undertone as though she were recounting to herself her illusions.

The momentary suggestion of living in a cottage of Posilipo, completely alone, an existence of monastic isolation with all the conveniences of modern life, was dominating her like an obsession.

"And yet, after all," she continued, "this atmosphere is not favorable to solitude; this landscape is for love. To grow old slowly, two who love each other, before the eternal beauty of the gulf!... What a pity that I have never been really loved!..."

This was an offense against Ulysses who expressed his annoyance with all the aggressiveness that was seething beneath his bad humor. How about him?... Was he not loving her and disposed to prove it to her by all manner of sacrifices?...

Sacrifices as proof of love always left this woman cold, accepting them with a skeptical gesture.

"All men have told me the same thing," she added; "they all promise to kill themselves if I do not love them.... And with the most of them it is nothing more than a phrase of passionate rhetoric. And what if they did kill themselves really? What does that prove?... To leave life on the spur of a moment that gives no opportunity for repentance;—a simple nervous flash, a posture many times assumed simply for what people will say, with the frivolous pride of an actor who likes to pose in graceful attitudes. I know what all that means. A man once killed himself for me...."

On hearing these last words Ferragut jerked himself out of his sullen silence. A malicious voice was chanting in his brain, "Now there are three!..."

"I saw him dying," she continued, "on a bed of the hotel. He had a red spot like a star on the bandage of his forehead,—the hole of the pistol shot. He died clutching my hands, swearing that he loved me and that he had killed himself for me ... a tiresome, horrible scene.... And nevertheless I am sure that he was deceiving himself, that he did not love me. He killed himself through wounded vanity on seeing that I would have nothing to do with him,—just for stubbornness, for theatrical effect, influenced by his readings.... He was a Roumanian tenor. That was in Russia.... I have been an actress a part of my life...."

The sailor wished to express the astonishment that the different changes of this mysterious wandering existence, always showing a new facet, were producing in him; but he contained himself in order to listen better to the cruel counsels of the malignant voice speaking within his thoughts.... He was not trying to kill himself for her. Quite the contrary! His moody aggressiveness was considering her as the next victim. There was in his eyes something of the dead Triton when in pursuit of a distant woman's skirt on the coast.

Freya continued speaking.

"To kill one's self is not a proof of love. They all promise me the sacrifice of their existence from the very first words. Men don't know any other song. Don't imitate them, Captain."

She remained pensive a long time. Twilight was rapidly falling; half the sky was of amber and the other half of a midnight blue in which the first stars were beginning to twinkle. The gulf was drowsing under the leaden coverlet of its water, exhaling a mysterious freshness that was spreading to the mountains and trees. All the landscape appeared to be acquiring the fragility of crystal. The silent air was trembling with exaggerated resonance, repeating the fall of an oar in the boats that, small as flies, were slipping along under the sky arching above the gulf, and prolonging the feminine and invisible voices passing through the groves on the heights.

The waiter went from table to table, distributing candles enclosed in paper shades. The mosquitoes and moths, revived by the twilight, were buzzing around these red and yellow flowers of light.

Her voice was again sounding in the twilight air with the vagueness of one speaking in a dream.

"There is a sacrifice greater than that of life,—the only one that can convince a woman that she is beloved. What does life signify to a man like you?... Your profession puts it in danger every day and I believe you capable of risking your life, when tired of land, for the slightest motive...."

She paused again and then continued.

"Honor is worth more than life for certain men,—respectability, the preservation of the place that they occupy. Only the man that would risk his honor and position for me, who would descend to the lowest depths without losing his will to live, would ever be able to convince me.... That indeed would be a sacrifice!"

Ferragut felt alarmed at such words. What kind of sacrifice was this woman about to propose to him?... But he grew calmer as he listened to her. It was all a fancy of her disordered imagination. "She is crazy," again affirmed the hidden counselor in his brain.

"I have dreamed many times," she continued, "of a man who would rob for me, who would kill if it was necessary and might have to pass the rest of his years in prison.... My poor thief!... I would live only for him, spending night and day near the walls of his prison, looking through the bars, working like a woman of the village in order to send a good dinner to my outlaw.... That is genuine love and not the cold lies, the theatrical vows of our world."

Ulysses repeated his mental comment, "She certainly is crazy"—and his thought was so clearly reflected in his eyes that she guessed it.

"Don't be afraid, Ferragut," she said, smiling. "I have no thought of exacting such a sacrifice of you. All this that I am talking about is merely fancy, a whimsy invented to fill the vacancy of my soul. 'Tis the fault of the wine, of our exaggerated libations,—that to-day have been without water,—to the gods.... Just look!"

And she pointed with comical gravity to the two empty bottles that were occupying the center of the table.

Night had fallen. In the dark sky twinkled infinite eyes of starry light. The immense bowl of the gulf was reflecting their sparkles like thousands of will o' the wisps. The candle shades in the restaurant were throwing purplish spots upon the table covers, casting upon the faces of those who were eating around them violent contrasts of light and shade. From the locked rooms were escaping sounds of kisses, pursuit and falling furniture.

"Let us go!" ordered Freya.

The noise of this vulgar orgy was annoying her as though it were dishonoring the majesty of the night. She needed to move about, to walk in the darkness, to breathe in the freshness of the mysterious shade.

At the garden gate they hesitated before the appeals of various coachmen. Freya was the one who refused their offers. She wished to return to Naples on foot, following the easy descent of the road of Posilipo after their long inaction in the restaurant. Her face was warm and flushed because of the excess of wine.

Ulysses gave her his arm and they began to move through the shadows, insensibly impelled in their march by the ease of the downward slope. Freya knew just what this trip would mean. At the very first step the sailor advised her with a kiss on the neck. He was going to take advantage of all the windings of the road, of the hills and terraces cut through in certain places to show the phosphorescent gulf across the foliage, and of the long shadowy stretch broken only now and then by the public echoes or the lanterns of carriages and tramways....

But these liberties were already an accepted thing. She had taken the first step in the Aquarium: besides, she was sure of her ability to keep her lover at whatever distance she might choose to fix.... And convinced of her power of checking herself in time, she gave herself up like a lost woman.

Never had Ferragut had such a propitious occasion. It was a trysting-place in the mystery of the night with plenty of time ahead of them. The only trouble was the necessity of walking on, of accompanying his embraces and protests of love with the incessant activity of walking. She protested, coming out from her rapture every time that the enamored man would propose that they sit down on the side of the road.

Hope made Ulysses very obedient to Freya, desirous of reaching Naples as soon as possible. Down there in the curve of the light near the gulf was the hotel, and the sailor looked upon it as a place of happiness.

"Say yes," he murmured in her ear, punctuating his words with kisses, "say that it will be to-night!..."

She did not reply, leaning on the arm that the captain had passed around her waist, letting herself be dragged along as if she were half-fainting, rolling her eyes and offering her lips.

While Ulysses was repeating his pleadings and caresses the voice in his brain was chanting victoriously, "Here it is!... It's settled now.... The thing now is to get her to the hotel."

They roamed on for nearly an hour, fancying that only a few minutes had passed by.

Approaching the gardens of the Villa Nazionale, near the Aquarium, they stopped an instant. There were fewer people and more life here than in the road to Posilipo. They avoided the electric lights of the Via Caracciolo reflected in the sea,—the two instinctively approaching a bench, and seeking the ebony shade of the trees.

Freya had suddenly become very composed. She appeared annoyed at herself for her languor during the walk. Finding herself near the hotel, she recovered her energy as though in the presence of danger.

"Good-by, Ulysses! We shall see each other again to-morrow.... I am going to pass the night in the doctor's home."

The sailor withdrew a little in the shock of surprise. "Was it a jest?..." But no, he could not think that. The very tone of her words displayed firm resolution.

He entreated her humbly with a thick and threatening voice not to go away. At the same time his mental counselor was rancorously chanting, "She's making a fool of you!... It's time to put an end to all this.... Make her feel your masculine authority." And this voice had the same ring as that of the dead Triton.

Suddenly occurred a violent, brutal, dishonorable thing. Ulysses threw himself upon her as though he Were going to kill her, holding her tightly in his arms, and the two fell upon the bench, panting and struggling. But this only lasted an instant.

The vigorous Ferragut, trembling with emotion, was only using half of his powers. He suddenly sprang back, raising his two hands to his shoulders. He felt a sharp pain, as though one of his bones had just broken. She had repelled him with a certain Japanese fencing trick that employs the hands as irresistible weapons.

"Ah!... Tal!..." he roared, hurling upon her the worst of feminine insults.

And he fell upon her again as though he were a man, uniting to his original purpose the desire of maltreating her, of degrading her, of making her his.

Freya awaited him firmly... Seeing the icy glitter of her eyes, Ulysses without knowing why recalled the "eye of the morning," the companionable reptile of her dances.

In this furious onslaught he was stopped by the simple contact on his forehead of a diminutive metal circle, a kind of frozen thimble that was resting on his skin.

He looked... It was a little revolver, a deadly toy of shining nickel. It had appeared in Freya's hand, drawn secretly from her clothes, or perhaps from that gold-mesh bag whose contents seemed inexhaustible.

She was looking at him fixedly with her finger on the trigger. He surmised her familiarity with the weapon that she had in her hand. It could not be the first time that she had had recourse to it.

The sailor's indecision was brief. With a man, he would have taken possession of the threatening hand, twisting it until he broke it, without the slightest fear of the revolver. But he had opposite him a woman ... and this woman was entirely capable of wounding him, and at the same time placing him in a ridiculous situation.

"Retire, sir!" ordered Freya with a ceremonious and threatening tone as though she were speaking to an utter stranger.

But it was she who retired finally, seeing that Ulysses stepped back, thoughtful and confused. She turned her back on him at the same time that the revolver disappeared from her hand.

Before departing, she murmured some words that Ferragut was not able to understand, looking at him for the last time with contemptuous eyes. They must be terrible insults, and just because she was uttering them in a mysterious language, he felt her scorn more deeply.

"It cannot be.... It is all ended. It is ended forever!..."

She said this repeatedly before returning to her hotel. And he thought of it during all the wakeful night between agonizing attacks of nightmare. When the morning was well advanced the bugles of the bersaglieri awakened him from a heavy sleep.

He paid his bill in the manager's office and gave a last tip to the porter, telling him that a few hours later a man from the ship would come for his baggage.

He was happy, with the forced happiness of one obliged to accommodate himself to circumstances. He congratulated himself upon his liberty as though he had gained this liberty of his own free will and it had not been imposed upon him by her scorn. Since the memory of the preceding day pained him, putting him in a ridiculous and gross light, it was better not to recall the past.

He stopped in the street to take a last look at the hotel. "Adieu, accursed albergo!... Never will I see you again. Would that you might burn down with all your occupants!"

Upon treading the deck of the Mare Nostrum, his enforced satisfaction became immeasurably increased. Here only could he live far from the complications and illusions of terrestrial life.

All those aboard who in previous weeks had feared the arrival of the ill-humored captain, now smiled as though they saw the sun coming out after a tempest. He distributed kindly words and affectionate grasps of the hand. The repairs were going to be finished the following day.... Very good! He was entirely content. Soon they would be on the sea again.

In the galley he greeted Uncle Caragol.... That man was a philosopher. All the women in the world were not in his estimation worth a good dish of rice. Ah, the great man!... He surely was going to live to be a hundred! And the cook flattered by such praises, whose origin he did not happen to comprehend, responded as always,—"That is so, my captain."

Toni, silent, disciplined and familiar, inspired him with no less admiration. His life was an upright life, firm and plain, as the road of duty. When the young officials used to talk in his presence of boisterous suppers on shore with women from distant countries, the pilot had always shrugged his shoulders. "Money and pleasure ought to be kept for the home," he would say sententiously.

Ferragut had laughed many times at the virtue of his mate who, timid and torpid, used to pass over a great part of the planet without permitting himself any distraction whatever, but would awake with an overpowering tension whenever the chances of their voyage brought him the opportunity of a few days' stay in his home in the Marina.

And with the tranquil grossness of the virtuous stay-at-home, he was accustomed to calculate the dates of his voyages by the age of his eight children. "This one was on returning from the Philippines.... This other one after I was in the coast trade in the Gulf of California...."

His methodical serenity, incapable of being perturbed by frivolous adventures, made him guess from the very first the secret of the captain's enthusiasm and wrath. "It must be a woman," he said to himself, upon seeing him installed in a hotel in Naples, and after feeling the effects of his bad humor in the fleeting appearances that he made on board.

Now, listening to Ferragut's jovial comments on his mate's tranquil life and philosophic sagacity, Toni again ejaculated mentally, without the captain's suspecting anything from his impassive countenance: "Now he has quarreled with the woman. He has tired of her. But better so!"

He was more than ever confirmed in this belief on hearing Ferragut's plans. As soon as the boat could be made ready, they were going to anchor in the commercial port. He had been told of a certain cargo for Barcelona,—some cheap freight,—but that was better than going empty.... If the cargo should be delayed, they would set sail merely with ballast. More than anything else, he wished to renew his trips. Boats were scarcer and more in demand all the time. It was high time to stop this enforced inertia.

"Yes, it's high time," responded Toni who, during the entire month, had only gone ashore twice.

The Mare Nostrum left the repair dock coming to anchor opposite the commercial wharf, shining and rejuvenated, with no imperfections recalling her recent injuries.

One morning when the captain and his second were in the saloon under the poop undecided whether to start that night—or wait four days longer, as the owners of the cargo were requesting,—the third officer, a young Andalusian, presented himself greatly excited by the piece of news of which he was the bearer. A most beautiful and elegant lady (the young man emphasized his admiration with these details) had just arrived in a launch and, without asking permission, had climbed the ladder, entering the vessel as though it were her own dwelling.

Toni felt his heart thump. His swarthy countenance became ashy pale. "Cristo!... The woman from Naples!" He did not really know whether she was from Naples; he had never seen her, but he was certain that she was coming as a fatal impediment, as an unexpected calamity.... Just when things were going so well, too!...

The captain whirled around in his arm chair, jumped up from the table, and in two bounds was out on deck.

Something extraordinary was perturbing the crew. They, too, were all on deck as though some powerful attraction had drawn them from the orlop, from the depths of the hold, from the metallic corridors of the engine rooms. Even Uncle Caragol was sticking his episcopal face out through the door of the kitchen, holding a hand closed in the form of a telescope to one of his eyes, without being able to distinguish clearly the announced marvel.

Freya was a few steps away in a blue suit somewhat like a sailor's, as though this visit to the ship necessitated the imitative elegance and bearing of the multi-millionaires who live on their yachts. The seamen, cleaning brass or polishing wood, were pretending extraordinary occupations in order to get near her. They felt the necessity of being in her atmosphere, of living in the perfumed air that enveloped her, following her steps.

Upon seeing the captain, she simply extended her hand, as though she might have seen him the day before.

"Do not object, Ferragut!... As I did not find you in the hotel, I felt obliged to visit you on your ship. I have always wanted to see your floating home. Everything about you interests me."

She appeared an entirely different woman. Ulysses noted the great change that had taken place in her person during the last days. Her eyes were bold, challenging, of a calm seductiveness. She appeared to be surrendering herself entirely. Her smiles, her words, her manner of crossing the deck toward the staterooms of the vessel proclaimed her determination to end her long resistance as quickly as possible, yielding to the sailor's desires.

In spite of former failures, he felt anew the joy of triumph. "Now it is going to be! My absence has conquered her...." And at the same time that he was foretasting the sweet satisfaction of love and triumphant pride, there arose in him a vague instinct of suspicion of this woman so suddenly transformed, perhaps loving her less than in former days when she resisted and advised him to be gone.

In the forward cabin he presented her to his mate. The crude Toni experienced the same hallucination that had perturbed all the others on the boat. What a woman!... At the very first glance he understood and excused the captain's conduct. Then he fixed his eyes upon her with an expression of alarm, as though her presence made him tremble for the fate of the steamer: but finally he succumbed, dominated by this lady who was examining the saloon as though she had come to remain in it forever.

For a few moments Freya was interested in the hairy ugliness of Toni. He was a true Mediterranean, just the kind she had imagined to herself,—a faun pursuing nymphs. Ulysses laughed at the eulogies which she passed on his mate.

"In his shoes," she continued, "he ought to have pretty little hoofs like a goat's. He must know how to play the flute. Don't you think so, Captain?..."

The faun, wrinkled and wrathful, took himself off, saluting her stolidly as he went away. Ferragut felt greatly relieved at his absence, since he was fearful of some rude speech from Toni.

Finding herself alone with Ulysses, she ran through the great room from one side to the other.

"Is here where you live, my dear shark?... Let me see everything. Let me poke around everywhere. Everything of yours interests me. You will not say now that I do not love you. What a boast for Captain Ferragut! The ladies come to seek him on his ship...."

She interrupted her ironic and affectionate chatter in order to defend herself gently from the sailor. He, forgetting the past, and wishing to take advantage of the happiness so suddenly presented to him, was kissing the nape of her neck.

"There,... there!" she sighed. "Now let me look around. I feel the curiosity of a child."

She opened the piano,—the poor piano of the Scotch captain—and some thin and plaintive chords, showing many years' lack of tuning, filled the saloon with the melancholy of resuscitated memories.

The melody was like that of the musical boxes that we find forgotten in the depths of a wardrobe among the clothes of some deceased old lady. Freya declared that it smelled of withered roses.

Then, leaving the piano, she opened one after the other, all the doors of the staterooms surrounding the saloon. She stopped at the captain's sleeping room without wishing to pass the threshold, without loosening her hold on the brass doorknob in her right hand. Ferragut behind her, was pushing her with treacherous gentleness, at the same time repeating his caresses on her neck.

"No; here, no," she said. "Not for anything in the world!... I will be yours, I promise you; I give you my word of honor. But where I will and when it seems best to me.... Very soon, Ulysses!"

He felt complete gratification in all these affirmations made in a caressing and submissive voice, all possible pride in such spontaneous, affectionate address, equivalent to the first surrender.

The arrival of one of Uncle Caragol's acolytes made them recover their composure. He was bringing two enormous glasses filled with a ruddy and foamy cocktail,—an intoxicating and sweet mixture, a composite of all the knowledge acquired by the chef in his intercourse with the drunkards of the principal ports of the world.

She tested the liquid, rolling up her eyes like a greedy tabby. Then she broke forth into praises, lifting up the glass in a solemn manner. She was offering her libation to Eros, the god of Love, the most beautiful of the gods, and Ferragut who always had a certain terror of the infernal and agreeable concoctions of his cook, gulped the glass in one swallow, in order to join in the invocation.

All was arranged between the two. She was giving the orders. Ferragut would return ashore, lodging in the same albergo. They would continue their life as before, as though nothing had occurred.

"This evening you will await me in the gardens of the Villa Nazionale.... Yes, there where you wished to kill me, you highwayman!..."

Before he should clearly recall that night of violence, Freya continued her recollections with feminine astuteness.... It was Ulysses who had wanted to kill her; she reiterated it without admitting any reply.

"We shall visit the doctor," she continued. "The poor woman wants to see you and has asked me to bring you. She is very much interested in you because she knows that I love you, my pirate!"

After having arranged the hour of meeting, Freya wished to depart. But before returning to her launch, she felt curious to inspect the boat, just as she Had examined the saloon and the staterooms.

With the air of a reigning princess, preceded by the captain and followed by the officials, she went over the two decks, entered the galleries of the engine room and the four-sided abyss of the hatchways, sniffing the musty odor of the hold. On the bridge she touched with childish enthusiasm the large brass hood of the binnacle and other steering instruments glistening as though made of gold.

She wished to see the galley and invaded Uncle Caragol's dominions, putting his formal lines of casseroles into lamentable disorder, and poking the tip of her rosy little nose into the steam arising from the great stew in which was boiling the crew's mess.

The old man was able to see her close with his half-blind eyes. "Yes, indeed, she was pretty!" The frou-frou of her skirts and the frequent little clashes that he had with her in her comings and goings, perturbed the apostle. His chef-like, sense of smell made him feel annoyed by the perfume of this lady. "Pretty, but with the smell of ..." he repeated mentally. For him all feminine perfume merited this scandalous title. Good women smelled of fish and kitchen pots; he was sure of that.... In his faraway youth, the knowledge of poor Caragol had never gone beyond that.

As soon as he was alone, he snatched up a rag, waving it violently around, as though he were driving away flies. He wished to clear the atmosphere of bad odors. He felt as scandalized as though she had let a cake of soap fall into one of his delicious rice compounds.

The men of the crew crowded to the railings in order to follow the course of the little launch that was making toward shore.

Toni, standing on the bridge, also contemplated her with enigmatic eyes.

"You are handsome, but may the sea swallow you up before you come back!"

A handkerchief was waving from the stern of the little boat. "Good-by, Captain!" And the captain nodded his head, smiling and gratified by the feminine greeting while the sailors were envying him his good luck.

Again one of the men of the crew carried Ferragut's baggage to the albergo on the shore of S. Lucia. The porter, as though foreseeing the chance of getting an easy fee from his client, took it upon himself to select a room for him, an apartment on a floor lower than on his former stay, near that which the signora Talberg was occupying.

They met in mid-afternoon in the Villa Nazionale, and began their walk together through the streets of Chiaja. At last Ulysses was going to know where the doctor was hiding her majestic personality. He anticipated something extraordinary in this dwelling-place, but was disposed to hide his impressions for fear of losing the affection and support of the wise lady who seemed to be exercising so great a power over Freya.

They entered into the vestibule of an ancient palace. Many times the sailor had stopped before this door, but had gone on, misled by the little metal door plates announcing the offices and counting-houses installed on the different floors.

He beheld an arcaded court paved with great tiled slabs upon which opened the curving balconies of the four interior sides of the palace. They climbed up a stairway of resounding echoes, as large as one of the hill-side streets, with broad turnings which in former time permitted the passage of the litters and chairmen. As souvenirs of the white-wigged personages and ladies of voluminous farthingales who had passed through this palace, there were still some classic busts on the landing places, a hand-wrought iron railing, and various huge lanterns of dull gold and blurred glass.

They stopped on the first floor before a row of doors rather weather-beaten by the years.

"Here it is," said Freya.

And thereupon she pointed to the only door that was covered with a screen of green leather displaying a commercial sign,—enormous, gilded and pretentious. The doctor was lodging in an office.... How could he ever have found it!

The first room really was an office, a merchant's room with files for papers, maps, a safe for stocks, and various tables. One employee only was working here,—a man of uncertain age with a childish face and a clipped beard. His obsequious and smiling attitude was in striking contrast to his evasive glance,—a glance of alarm and distrust.

Upon seeing Freya he arose from his seat. She greeted him, calling him Karl, and passed on as though he were a mere porter. Ulysses upon following her, surmised that the suspicious glance of the writer was fixed upon his back.

"Is he a Pole, too?" he asked.

"Yes, a Pole.... He is a protege of the doctor's."

They entered a salon evidently furnished in great haste, with the happy-go-lucky and individual knack of those accustomed to traveling and improvising a dwelling place;—divans with cheap and showy chintzes, skins of the American llama, glaring imitation-Oriental rugs, and on the walls, prints from the periodicals between gilt moldings. On a table were displayed their marble ornaments and silver things, a great dressing-case with a cover of cut leather, and a few little Neapolitan statuettes which had been bought at the last moment in order to give a certain air of sedentary respectability to this room which could be dismantled suddenly and whose most valuable adornments were acquired en route.

Through a half-drawn portiere they descried the doctor writing in the nearby room. She was bending over an American desk, but she saw them immediately in a mirror which she kept always in front of her in order to spy on all that was passing behind her.

Ulysses surmised that the imposing dame had made certain additions to her toilette in order to receive him. A gown as close as a sheath molded the exuberance of her figure. The narrow skirt drawn tightly over the edge of her knees appeared like the handle of an enormous club. Over the green sea of her dress she was wearing a spangled white tulle draped like a shawl. The captain, in spite of his respect for this wise lady, could not help comparing her to a well-nourished mother-mermaid in the oceanic pasture lands.

With outstretched hands and a joyous expression on her countenance irradiating even her glasses, she advanced toward Ferragut. Her meeting was almost an embrace.... "My dear Captain! Such a long time since I have seen you!..." She had heard of him frequently through her young friend, but even so, she could not but consider it a misfortune that the sailor had never come to see her.

She appeared to have forgotten her coldness when bidding him farewell in Salerno and the care which she had taken to hide from him her home address.

Neither did Ferragut recall this fact now that he was so agreeably touched by the doctor's amiability. She had seated herself between the two as though wishing to protect them with all the majesty of her person and the affection of her eyes. She was a real mother for her young friend. While speaking, she was patting Freya's great locks of hair, which had just escaped from underneath her hat, and Freya, adapting herself to the tenderness of the situation, cuddled down against the doctor, assuming the air of a timid and devoted child while she fixed on Ulysses her eyes of sweet promise.

"You must love her very much, Captain," continued the matron. "Freya speaks only of you. She has been so unfortunate!... Life has been so cruel to her!..."

The sailor felt as though he were in the placid bosom of a family. That lady was discreetly taking everything for granted, speaking to him as to a son-in-law. Her kindly glance was somewhat melancholy. It was the sweet sadness of mature people who find the present monotonous, the future circumscribed, and taking refuge in memories of the past, envy the young who enjoy the reality of what they can taste only in memory.

"Happy you!... You love each other so much!... Life is worth living only because of love."

And Freya, as though irresistibly affected by these counsels, threw one arm around the doctor's globular, corseted figure, while convulsively clasping Ulysses' right hand.

The gold-rimmed spectacles, with their protecting gleam, appeared to incite them to even greater intimacy. "You may kiss each other...." And the imposing dame, trumping up an insignificant pretext, so as to facilitate their love-making was about to go out when the drapery of the door between the salon and office was raised.

There entered a man of Ferragut's age, but shorter, with a weather-beaten face. He was dressed in the English style with scrupulous correctness. It was plain to be seen that he was accustomed to take the most excessive and childish interest in everything referring to the adornment of his person. The suit of gray wool appeared to have achieved its finishing touch in the harmony of cravat, socks, and handkerchief sticking out of his pocket,—all in the same tone. The three pieces were blue, without the slightest variation in shade, chosen with the exactitude of a man who would undoubtedly suffer cruel discomfort if obliged to go out into the street with his cravat of one color and his socks of another. His gloves had the same dark tan tone as his shoes.

Ferragut thought that this dandy, in order to be absolutely perfect, ought to be clean shaved. And yet, he was wearing a beard, close clipped on the cheeks and forming over the chin a short, sharp point. The captain suspected that he was a sailor. In the German fleet, in the Russian, in all the navies of the North where they are not shaved in the English style, they use this traditional little beard.

The newcomer bowed, or, more properly speaking, doubled himself over at right angles, with a brusque stiffness, upon kissing the hands of the two ladies. Then he raised his impertinent monocle and fixed it in one of his eyes while the doctor made the introduction.

"Count Kaledine ... Captain Ferragut."

The count gave the sailor his hand, a hard hand, well-cared for and vigorous, which for a long time enclosed that of Ulysses, wishing to dominate it with an ineffectual pressure.

The conversation continued in English which was the language employed by the doctor in her relations with Ulysses.

"The gentleman is a sailor?" asked Ferragut in order to clarify his doubts.

The monocle did not move from its orbit, but a light ripple of surprise appeared to cross its luminous convexity. The doctor hastened to reply.

"The count is an illustrious diplomat who is now on leave, regaining his health. He has traveled a great deal, but he is not a sailor."

And she continued her explanations.

The Kaledines were of a Russian family ennobled in the days of Catherine the Great. The doctor, being a Polish woman, had been connected with them for many years.... And she ceased speaking, giving Kaledine his cue in the conversation.

At the beginning the count appeared cold and rather disdainful in his words, as though he could not possibly lay aside his diplomatic haughtiness. But this hauteur gradually melted away.

Through his "distinguished friend,—Madame Talberg," he had heard of many of Ferragut's nautical adventures. Men of action, the heroes of the ocean, were always exceedingly interesting to him.

Ulysses suddenly noticed in his noble interlocutor a warm affection, a desire to make himself agreeable, just like the doctor's. What a lovely home this was in which everybody was making an effort to be gracious to Captain Ferragut!

The count, smiling amiably, ceased to avail himself of his English, and soon began talking to him in Spanish, as though he had reserved this final touch in order to captivate Ulysses' affection with this most irresistible of flatteries.

"I have lived in Mexico," he said, in order to explain his knowledge of the language. "I made a long trip through the Philippines when I was living in Japan."

The seas of the extreme Far East were those least frequented by Ulysses. Only twice had he entered the Chinese and Nipponese harbors, but he knew them sufficiently to keep up his end of the conversation with this traveler who was displaying in his tastes a certain artistic refinement. For half an hour, there filed through the vulgar atmosphere of this salon, images of enormous pagodas with superimposed roofs whose strings of bells vibrated in the breeze like an Aeolian harp, monstrous idols—carved in gold, in bronze, or in marble-houses made of paper, thrones of bamboo, furniture with mother-of-pearl inlay, screens with flocks of flying storks.

The doctor disappeared, bored by a dialogue of which she could only understand a few words. Freya, motionless, with drowsy eyes, and a knee between her crossed hands, held herself aloof, understanding the conversation, but without taking any part in it, as though she were offended at the forgetfulness in which the two men were leaving her. Finally she slipped discreetly away, responding to the call of a hand peeping through the portieres. The doctor was preparing tea and needed help.

The conversation continued on in no way affected by their absence. Kaledine had abandoned the Asiatic waters in order to pass to the Mediterranean, and there he anchored himself with admirable insistence. Another sign of affection for Ferragut who was finding him more and more charming in spite of his slightly glacial attitude.

He suddenly noticed that it was not as a Russian count that he was speaking since, with brief and exact questions, he was making Ferragut reply just as though he were undergoing an examination.

These signs of interest shown by the great traveler in the little mare nostrum, and especially in the details of its western bowl which he wished to know most minutely, pleased Ferragut greatly.

He might ask him whatever he wished. Ferragut knew mile for mile all its shores,—Spanish, French, and Italian, the surface and also its depths.

Perhaps because he was staying in Naples, Kaledine insisted upon learning especially about that part of the Mediterranean enclosed between Sardinia, southern Italy, and Sicily,—the part which the ancients had called the Tyrrhenian Sea.... Did the captain happen to know those little frequented and almost forgotten islands opposite Sicily?

"I know all about all of them," replied the sailor boastfully. And without realizing exactly whether it was curiosity on the part of the listener, or whether he was being submitted to an interesting examination, he talked on and on.

He was well acquainted with the archipelago of the Lipari Islands with their mines of sulphur and pumice-stone,—a group of volcanic peaks which rise up from the depths of the Mediterranean. In these the ancients had placed Aeolus, lord of the winds; in these was Stromboli, vomiting forth enormous balls of lava which exploded with the roar of thunder. Its volcanic slag fell again into the chimneys of the crater or rolled down the mountain slopes, falling into the waves.

More to the west, isolated and solitary in a sea free from shoals, was Ustica,—an abrupt and volcanic island that the Phoenicians had colonized and which had served as a refuge for Saracen pilots. Its population was scant and poor. There was nothing to see on it, apart from certain fossil shells interesting to men of science.

But the count showed himself wonderfully interested in this extinct and lonely crater in the midst of a sea frequented only by fishing smacks.

Ferragut had also seen, although far off, at the entrance of the harbor of Trapani, the archipelago of the Aegadian Islands where are the great fishing grounds of the tunny. Once he had disembarked in the island of Pantellaria, situated halfway between Sicily and Africa. It was a very high, volcanic cone that came up in the midst of the strait and had at its base alkaline lakes, sulphurous fumes, thermal waters, and prehistoric constructions of great stone blocks similar to those in Sardinia and the Balearic Islands. Boats bound for Tunis and Tripoli used to carry cargoes of raisins, the only export from this ancient Phoenician colony.

Between Pantellaria and Sicily the ocean floor was considerably elevated, having on its back an aquatic layer that in some points was only twelve yards thick. It was the great shoal called the Aventura, a volcanic swelling, a double submerged island, the submarine pedestal of Sicily.

The ledge of Aventura also appeared to interest the count greatly.

"You certainly know the sea well," he said in an approving tone.

Ferragut was about to go on talking when the two ladies entered with a tray which contained the tea service and various plates of cakes. The captain saw nothing strange in their lack of servants. The doctor and her friend were to him a pair of women of extraordinary customs, and so he thought all their acts were logical and natural. Freya served the tea with modest grace as though she were the daughter of the house.

They passed the rest of the afternoon conversing on distant voyages. Nobody alluded to the war, nor to Italy's problem at that moment as to whether she should maintain or break her neutrality. They appeared to be living in an inaccessible place thousands of leagues from all human bustle.

The two women were treating the count with the well-bred familiarity of persons in the same rank of life, but at times the sailor fancied that he noted that they were afraid of him.

At the end of the afternoon this personage arose and Ferragut did the same, understanding that he was expected to bring his visit to an end. The count offered to accompany him. While he was bidding the doctor good-by, thanking her with extreme courtesy for having introduced him to the captain, Ferragut felt that Freya was clasping his hand in a meaning way.

"Until to-night," she murmured lightly, hardly moving her lips. "I shall see you later.... Expect me."

Oh, what happiness!... The eyes, the smile, the pressure of her hand were telling him much more than that.

Never did he take such an agreeable stroll as when walking beside Kaledine through the streets of Chiaja toward the shore. What was that man saying?... Insignificant things in order to avoid silence, but to him they appeared to be observations of most profound wisdom. His voice sounded musical and affectionate. Everything about them seemed equally agreeable,—the people who were passing through the streets, the Neapolitan sounds at nightfall, the dark seas, the entire life.

They bade each other good-by before the door of the hotel. The count, in spite of his offers of friendship, went away without mentioning his address.

"It doesn't matter," thought Ferragut. "We shall meet again in the doctor's house."

He passed the rest of his watch agitated alternately by hope and impatience. He did not wish to eat; emotion had paralyzed his appetite.... And yet, once seated at the table, he ate more than ever with a mechanical and distraught avidity.

He needed to stroll around, to talk with somebody, in order that time might fly by with greater rapidity, beguiling his uneasy wait. She would not return to the hotel until very late.... And he therefore retired to his room earlier than usual, believing with illogical superstition that by so doing Freya might arrive earlier.

His first movement upon finding himself alone in his room, was one of pride. He looked up at the ceiling, pitying the enamored sailor that a week before had been dwelling on the floor above. Poor man! How they must have made fun of him!... Ulysses admired himself as though he were an entirely new personality, happy and triumphant, completely separated from that other creature by dolorous periods of humiliations and failures that he did not wish to recall.

The long, long hours in which he waited with such anxiety!... He strolled about smoking, lighting one cigar with the remnant of the preceding one. Then he opened the window, wishing to get rid of the perfume of strong tobacco. She only liked Oriental cigarettes.... And as the acrid odor of the strong, succulent Havana cigar persisted in the room, he searched in his dressing-case and sprinkled around the contents of various perfumed essences which he had long ago forgotten.

A sudden uneasiness disturbed his waiting. Perhaps she who was going to come did not know which was his room. He was not sure that he had given her the directions with sufficient clearness. It was possible that she might make a mistake.... He began to believe that really she had made a mistake.

Fear and impatience made him open his door, taking his stand in the corridor in order to look down toward Freya's closed room. Every time that footsteps sounded on the stairway or the grating of the elevator creaked, the bearded sailor trembled with a childish uneasiness. He wanted to hide himself and yet at the same time he wanted to look to see if she was the one who was coming.

The guests occupying the same floor kept seeing him withdraw into his room in the most inexplicable attitudes. Sometimes he would remain firmly in the corridor as though, worn out with useless calling, he were looking for the domestics; and at other times they surprised him with his head poking out of the half-open door or hastily withdrawing it. An old Italian count, passing by, gave him a smile of intelligence and comradeship.... He was in the secret! The man was undoubtedly waiting for one of the maids of the hotel.

He ended by settling himself in his room, but leaving his door ajar. The rectangle of bright light that it marked on the floor and wall opposite would guide Freya, showing her the way....

But he was not able to keep up this signal very long. Scantily clad dames in kimonos and gentlemen in pyjamas were slipping discreetly down the passage way in soft, slipper-clad silence, all going in the same direction, and casting wrathful glances toward the lighted doorway.

Finally he had to close the door. He opened a book, but it was impossible to read two paragraphs consecutively. His watch said twelve o'clock.

"She will not come!... She will not come!" he cried in desperation.

A new idea revived his drooping spirits. It was ridiculous that so discreet a person as Freya should venture to come to his room while there was a light under the door. Love needed obscurity and mystery. And besides, this visible hope might attract the notice of some curious person.

He snapped off the electric light and in the darkness found his bed, throwing himself down with an exaggerated noise, in order that nobody might doubt that he had retired for the night. The darkness reanimated his hope.

"She's going to come.... She will come at any moment."

Again he arose cautiously, noiselessly, going on tiptoe. He must overcome any possible difficulty at the entrance. He put the door slightly ajar so as to avoid the swinging noise of the door-fastening. A chair in the frame of the doorway easily held it unlatched.

He got up several times more, arranging things to his satisfaction and then threw himself upon the bed, disposed to keep his watch all night, if it was necessary. He did not wish to sleep. No, he ought not to drowse.... And half an hour later he was slumbering profoundly without knowing at what moment he had slid down the soft slopes of sleep.

Suddenly he awoke as if some one had hit his head with a club. His ears were buzzing.... It was the rude impression of one who sleeps without wishing to and feels himself shaken by reviving restlessness. Some moments passed without his taking in the situation. Then he suddenly recalled it all.... Alone! She had not come!... He did not know whether minutes or hours had passed by.

Something besides his uneasiness had brought him back to life. He suspected that in the dark silence some real thing was approaching. A little mouse appeared to be moving down the corridor. The shoes placed outside one of the doors were moved with a slight creaking. Ferragut had the vague impression of air that is displaced by the slow advance of a body.

The door trembled. The chair was pushed back, little by little, very gently pushed. In the darkness he descried a moving shadow, dark and dense. He made a movement.

"Shhhh-h!" sighed a ghostly voice, a voice from the other world. "It is I."

Instinctively he raised his right hand to the wall and turned on the light.

Under the electric light it was she,—a different Freya from any that he had ever seen, with her wealth of hair falling in golden serpents over her shoulders covered with an Asiatic tunic that enveloped her like a cloud.

It was not the Japanese kimono, vulgarized by commerce. It was made in one piece of Hindustanic cloth, embroidered with fantastic flowers and capriciously draped. Through its fine texture could be perceived the flesh as though it were a wrapping of multicolored air.

She uttered a protest. Then, imitating Ulysses' gesture, she reached her hand toward the wall ... and all was darkness.

* * * * *

Upon awakening, he felt the sunlight on his face. The window, whose curtains he had forgotten to draw, was blue,—blue sky above and the blue of the sea in its lower panes.

He looked around him.... Nobody! For a moment he believed he must have been dreaming, but the sweet perfume of her hair still scented the pillow. The reality of awakening was as joyous for Ulysses, as sweet as had been the night hours in the mystery of the darkness. He had never felt so strong and so happy.

In the window sounded a baritone voice singing one of the songs of Naples,—"Oh, sweet land, sweet gulf!..." That certainly was the most beautiful spot in the world. Proud and satisfied with his fate, he would have liked to embrace the waves, the islands, the city, Vesuvius.

A bell jangled impatiently in the corridor. Captain Ferragut was hungry. He surveyed with the glance of an ogre the cafe au lait, the abundant bread, and the small pat of butter that the waiter brought him. A very small portion for him!... And while he was attacking all this with avidity, the door opened and Freya, rosy and fresh from a recent bath and clad like a man, entered the room.

The Hindu tunic had been replaced with masculine pyjamas of violet silk. The pantaloons had the edges turned up over a pair of white Turkish slippers into which were tucked her bare feet. Over her heart there was embroidered a design whose letters Ulysses was not able to decipher. Above this device the point of her handkerchief was sticking out of the pocket. Her opulent hair, twisted on top of her head and the voluptuous curves that the silk was taking in certain parts of her masculine attire were the only things that announced the woman.

The captain forgot his breakfast, enthusiastic over this novelty. She was a second Freya,—a page, an adorable, freakish novelty.... But she repelled his caresses, obliging him to seat himself.

She had entered with a questioning expression in her eyes. She was feeling the disquietude of every woman on her second amorous interview. She was trying to guess his impressions, to convince herself of his gratitude, to be certain that the fascinations of the first hours had not been dissipated during her absence.

While the sailor was again attacking his breakfast with the familiarity of a lover who has achieved his ends and no longer needs to hide and poetize his grosser necessities, she seated herself on an old chaise longue, lighting a cigarette.

She cuddled into this seat, her crossed legs forming an angle within the circle of one of her arms. Then she leaned her head on her knees, and in this position smoked a long time, with her glance fixed on the sea. He guessed that she was about to say something interesting, something that was puckering her mental interior, struggling to come out.

Finally she spoke with deliberation, without taking her eyes off the gulf. From time to time she would stop this contemplation in order to fasten her eyes on Ulysses, measuring the effect of her words. He stopped occupying himself definitely with the breakfast tray, foreseeing that something very important was coming.

"You have sworn that you will do for me whatever I ask you to do.... You do not wish to lose me forever."

Ulysses protested. Lose her?... He could not live without her.

"I know your former life; you have told me all about it.... You know nothing about me and you ought to know about me—now that I am really yours."

The sailor nodded his head; nothing could be more just.

"I have deceived you, Ulysses. I am not Italian."

Ferragut smiled. If that was all the deception consisted of!... From the day in which they had spoken together for the first time going to Paestum, he had guessed that what she had told him about her nationality was false.

"My mother was an Italian. I swear it.... But my father was not...."

She stopped a moment. The sailor listened to her with interest, with his back turned to the table.

"I am a German woman and ..."



CHAPTER VII

THE SIN OF ULYSSES

Every morning on awaking at the first streak of dawn, Toni felt a sensation of surprise and discouragement.

"Still in Naples!" he would say, looking through the port-hole of his cabin.

Then he would count over the days. Ten had passed by since the Mare Nostrum, entirely repaired, had anchored in the commercial harbor.

"Twenty-four hours more," the mate would add mentally.

And he would again take up his monotonous life, strolling over the empty and silent deck of the vessel, without knowing what to do, looking despondently at the other steamers which were moving their freighting antennae, swallowing up boxes and bundles and beginning to send out through their chimneys the smoke announcing departure.

He suffered great remorse in calculating what the boat might have gained were it now under way. The advantage was all for the captain, but he could not avoid despairing over the money lost.

The necessity of communicating his impressions to somebody, of protesting in chorus against this lamentable inertia, used to impel him toward Caragol's dominions. In spite of their difference in rank, the first officer always treated the cook with affectionate familiarity.

"An abyss is separating us!" Toni would say gravely.

This "abyss" was a metaphor extracted from his reading of radical papers and alluded to the old man's fervid and simple beliefs. But their common affection for the captain, all being from the same land, and the employment of the Valencian dialect as the language of intimacy, made the two seek each other's company instinctively. For Toni, Caragol was the most congenial spirit aboard ... after himself.

As soon as he stopped at the door of the galley, supporting his elbow in the doorway and obstructing the sunlight with his body, the old cook would reach out for his bottle of brandy, preparing a "refresco" or a "caliente" in honor of his visitor.

They would drink slowly, interrupting their relish of the liquor to lament together the immovability of the Mare Nostrum. They would count up the cost as though the boat were theirs. While it was being repaired, they had been able to tolerate the captain's conduct.

"The English always pay," Toni would say. "But now nobody is paying and the ship isn't earning anything, and we are spending every day.... About how much are we spending?"

And he and the cook would again calculate in detail the cost of keeping up the steamer, becoming terrified on reaching the total. One day without moving was costing more than the two men could earn in a month.

"This can't go on!" Toni would protest.

His indignation took him ashore several times in search of the captain. He was afraid to speak to him, considering it a lack of discipline to meddle in the management of the boat, so he invented the most absurd pretext in order to run afoul of Ferragut.

He looked with antipathy at the porter of the albergo because he always told him that the captain had just gone out. This individual with the air of a procurer must be greatly to blame for the immovability of the steamer; his heart told him so.

Because he couldn't come to blows with the man, and because he could not stand seeing him laugh deceitfully while watching him wait hour after hour in the vestibule, he took up his station in the street, spying on Ferragut's entrances and exits.

The three times that he did succeed in speaking with the captain, the result was always the same. The captain was as greatly delighted to see him as if he were an apparition from the past with whom he could communicate the joy of his overflowing happiness.

He would listen to his mate, congratulating himself that all was going so well on the ship, and when Toni, in stuttering tones, would venture to ask the date of departure, Ulysses would hide his uncertainty under a tone of prudence. He was awaiting a most valuable cargo; the longer they waited for it, the more money they were going to gain.... But his words were not convincing to Toni. He remembered the captain's protests fifteen days before over the lack of good cargo in Naples, and his desire to leave without loss of time.

Upon returning aboard, the mate would at once hunt Caragol, and both would comment on the changes in their chief. Toni had found him an entirely different man, with beard shaved, wearing his best clothes, and displaying in the arrangement of his person a most minute nicety, a decided wish to please. The rude pilot had even come to believe that he had detected, while talking to him, a certain feminine perfume like that of their blonde visitor.

This news was the most unbelievable of all for Caragol.

"Captain Ferragut perfumed!... The captain scented!... The wretch!" And he threw up his arms, his blind eyes seeking the brandy bottles and the oil flasks, in order to make them witnesses of his indignation.

The two men were entirely agreed as to the cause of their despair. She was to blame for it all; she who was going to hold the boat spellbound in this port until she knew when, with the irresistible power of a witch.

"Ah, these females!... The devil always follows after petticoats like a lap-dog.... They are the ruination of our life."

And the wrathful chastity of the cook continued hurling against womankind insults and curses equal to those of the first fathers of the church.

One morning the men washing down the deck sent a cry passing from stem to stern,—"The captain!" They saw him approaching in a launch, and the word was passed along through staterooms and corridors, giving new force to their arms, and lighting up their sluggish countenances. The mate came up on deck and Caragol stuck his head out through the door of his kitchen.

At the very first glance, Toni foresaw that something important was about to happen. The captain had a lively, happy air. At the same time, he saw in the exaggerated amiability of his smile a desire to conciliate them, to bring sweetly before them something which he considered of doubtful acceptation.

"Now you'll be satisfied," said Ferragut, giving his hand, "we are going to weigh anchor soon."

They entered the saloon. Ulysses looked around his boat with a certain strangeness as though returning to it after a long voyage. It looked different to him; certain details rose up before his eyes that had never attracted his attention before.

He recapitulated in a lightning cerebral flash all that had occurred in less than two weeks. For the first time he realized the great change in his life since Freya had come to the steamer in search of him.

He saw himself in his room in the hotel opposite her, dressed like a man, and looking out over the gulf while smoking.

"I am a German woman, and ..."

Her mysterious life, even its most incomprehensible details, was soon to be explained.

She was a German woman in the service of her country. Modern war had aroused the nations en masse; it was not as in other centuries, a clash of diminutive, professional minorities that have to fight as a business. All vigorous men were now going to the battlefield, and the others were working in industrial centers which had been converted into workshops of war. And this general activity was also taking in the women who were devoting their labor to factories and hospitals, or their intelligence on the other side of the frontiers, to the service of their country.

Ferragut, surprised by this outright revelation, remained silent, but finally ventured to formulate his thought.

"According to that, you are a spy?"...

She heard the word with contempt. That was an antiquated term which had lost its primitive significance. Spies were those who in other times,—when only the professional soldiers took part in war,—had mixed themselves in the operations voluntarily or for money, surprising the preparations of the enemy. Nowadays, with the mobilization of the nations en masse, the old official spy—a contemptible and villainous creature, daring death for money—had practically disappeared. Nowadays there only existed patriots—anxious to work for their country, some with weapons in their hands, others availing themselves of their astuteness, or exploiting the qualities of their sex.

Ulysses was greatly disconcerted by this theory.

"Then the doctor?..." he again questioned, guessing; what the imposing dame must be.

Freya responded with an expression of enthusiasm and respect. Her friend was an illustrious patriot, a very learned woman, who was placing all her faculties at the service of her country. She adored her. She was her protector; she had rescued her in the most difficult moment of her existence.

"And the count?" Ferragut continued asking.

Here the woman made a gesture of reserve.

"He also is a great patriot, but do not let us talk about him."

In her words there were both respect and fear. He suspected that she did not wish to have anything to do with this haughty personage.

A long silence. Freya, as if fearing the effects of the captain's meditations, suddenly cut them short with her headlong chatter.

The doctor and she had come from Rome to take refuge in Naples, fleeing from the intrigues and mutterings of the capital. The Italians were squabbling among themselves; some were partisans of the war, others of neutrality; none of them wished to aid Germany, their former ally.

"We, who have protected them so much!" she exclaimed. "False and ungrateful race!..."

Her gestures and her words recalled to Ulysses' mind the image of the doctor, execrating the Italian country from a little window of the coach, the first day that they had talked together.

The two women were in Naples, whiling away their tedious waiting with trips to neighboring places of interest, when they met the sailor.

"I have a very pleasant recollection of you," continued Freya. "I guessed from the very first instant that our friendship was going to terminate as it has terminated."

She read a question in his glance.

"I know what you are going to say to me. You wonder that I have made you wait so long, that I should have made you suffer so with my caprices.... It was because while I was loving you, at the same time I wished to separate myself from you. You represented an attraction and a hindrance. I feared to mix you up in my affairs.... Besides, I need to be free in order to dedicate myself wholly to the fulfillment of my mission."

There was another long pause. Freya's eyes were fixed on those of her lover with scrutinizing tenacity. She wished to sound the depths of his thoughts, to study the ripeness of her preparation—before risking the decisive blow. Her examination was satisfactory.

"And now that you know me," she said with painful slowness, "begone!... You cannot love me. I am a spy, just as you say,—a contemptible being.... I know that you will not be able to continue loving me after what I have revealed to you. Take yourself away in your boat, like the heroes of the legends; we shall not see each other more. All our intercourse will have been a beautiful dream.... Leave me alone. I am ignorant of what my own fate may be, but what is more important to me is your tranquillity."

Her eyes filled with tears. She threw herself face downward on the divan, hiding her face in her arms, while a sobbing outburst set all the adorable curves of her back a-tremble.

Touched by her grief, Ulysses at the same time admired Freya's shrewdness in divining all his thoughts. The voice of good counsel,—that prudent voice that always spoke in one-half of his brain whenever the captain found himself in difficult situations,—had begun to cry out, scandalized at the first revelations made by this woman:

"Flee, Ferragut!... Flee! You are in a bad fix. Do not agree to any relations with such people. What have you to do with the country of this adventuress? Why should you encounter dangers for a cause that is of no importance to you? What you wanted of her, you already have gotten. Be an egoist, my son!"

But the voice in his other mental hemisphere, that boasting and idiotic voice which always impelled him to embark on vessels bound to be shipwrecked, to be reckless of danger for the mere pleasure of putting his vigor to the proof, also gave him counsel. It was a villainous thing to abandon a woman. Only a coward would do such a thing.... And this German woman appeared to love him so much!...

And with his ardent, meridional exuberance, he embraced her and lifted her up, patting the loosened ringlets on her forehead, petting her like a sick child, and drinking in her tears with interminable kisses.

No; he would not abandon her.... He was more disposed to defend her from all her enemies. He did not know who her enemies were, but if she needed a man,—there he was....

In vain his inner monitor reviled him while he was making such offers; he was compromising himself blindly; perhaps this adventure was going to be the most terrible in his history.... But in order to quiet his scruples, the other voice kept crying, "You are a gentleman; and a gentleman does not desert a lady, through fear, a few hours after having won her affection. Forward, Captain!"

An excuse of cowardly selfishness arose in his thoughts, fabricated from one single piece. He was a Spaniard, a neutral, in no way involved in the conflict of the Central Powers. His second had often spoken to him of solidarity of race, of Latin nations, of the necessity of putting an end to militarism, of going to war in order that there might be no more wars.... Mere vaporings of a credulous reader! He was neither English nor French. Neither was he German; but the woman he loved was, and he was not going to give her up for any antagonisms in which he was not concerned.

Freya must not weep. Her lover affirmed repeatedly that he wished to live forever at her side, that he was not thinking of abandoning her because of what she had said: and he even pledged his word of honor that he would aid her in everything that she might consider possible and worthy of him.

Thus Captain Ulysses Ferragut impetuously decided his destiny.

When his beloved again took him to the doctor's home, he was received by her just as though he really belonged to the family. She no longer had to hide her nationality. Freya simply called her Frau Doktor and she, with the glib enthusiasm of the professor, finally succeeded in converting the sailor, explaining to him the right and reason of her country's entrance into war with half of Europe.

Poor Germany had to defend herself. The Kaiser was a man of peace in spite of the fact that for many years he had been methodically preparing a military force capable of crushing all humanity. All the other nations had driven him to it; they had all been the first in aggression. The insolent French, long before the war, had been sending clouds of aeroplanes over German cities, bombarding them.

Ferragut blinked with surprise. This was news to him. It must have occurred while he was on the high seas. The verbose positiveness of the doctor did not permit any doubt whatever.... Besides, that lady ought to know better than those who lived on the ocean.

Then had arisen the English provocation.... Like a traitor of melodrama, the British government had been preparing the war for a long time, not wishing to show its hand until the last moment; and Germany, lover of peace, had had to defend herself from this enemy, the worst one of all.

"God will punish England!" affirmed the doctor, looking at Ulysses.

And he not wishing to defraud her of her expectations, gallantly nodded his head.... For all he cared, God might punish England.

But in expressing himself in such a way, he felt himself agitated by a new duality. The English had been good comrades; he remembered agreeably his voyages as an official aboard the British boats. At the same time, their increasing power, invisible to the men on shore, monstrous for those who were living on the sea, had been producing in him a certain irritation. He was accustomed to find them either as dominators of all the seas, or else solidly installed on all the strategic and commercial coasts.

The Doctor, as though guessing the necessity of arousing his hatred of the great enemy, appealed to his historical memories: Gibraltar, stolen by the English; the piracies of Drake; the galleons of America seized with methodical regularity by the British fleets; the landings on the coast of Spain that in other centuries had perturbed the life of the peninsula. England at the beginning of her greatness in the reign of Elizabeth, was the size of Belgium; if she had made herself one of the great powers, it was at the cost of the Spaniards and then of Holland, even dominating the entire world. And the doctor spoke in English and with so much vehemence about England's evil deeds against Spain that the impressionable sailor ended by saying spontaneously:

"May God punish her!"

But just here reappeared the Mediterranean navigator, the complicated and contradictory Ulysses. He suddenly remembered the repairs on his vessel that must be paid for by England.

"May God punish them ... but may He wait a little bit!" he murmured in his thoughts.

The imposing professor became greatly exasperated when speaking of the land in which she was living.

"Mandolin players! Bandits!" she always cried when referring to the Italians.

How much they owed to Germany! The Emperor Wilhelm had been a father to them. All the world knew that!... And yet when the war was breaking out, they were going to refuse to follow their old friends. Now German diplomacy must busy itself, not to keep them at her side, but to prevent their going with the adversary. Every day she was receiving news from Rome. She had hoped that Italy might keep herself neutral, but who could trust the word of such people?... And she repeated her wrathful insults.

The sailor immediately adapted himself to this home, as though it were his own. On the few occasions that Freya separated herself from him, he used to go in search of her in the salon of the imposing dame who was now assuming toward Ulysses the air of a good-natured mother-in-law.

In various visits he met the count. This taciturn personage would offer his hand instinctively though keeping a certain distance between them. Ulysses now knew his real nationality, and he knew that he knew it. But the two kept up the fiction of Count Kaledine, Russian diplomat, and this man exacted respect from every one in the doctor's dwelling. Ferragut, devoted to his amorous selfishness, was not permitting himself any investigation, adjusting himself to the hints dropped by the two women.

He had never known such happiness. He was experiencing the great sensuousness of one who finds himself seated at table in a well-warmed dining-room and sees through the window the tempestuous sea tossing a bark that is struggling against the waves.

The newsboys were crying through the streets terrible battles in the center of Europe; cities were burning under bombardment; every twenty-four hours thousands upon thousands of human beings were dying.... And he was not reading anything, not wishing to know anything. He was continuing his existence as though he were living in a paradisiacal felicity. Sometimes, while waiting for Freya, his memory would gloat over her wonderful physical charm, the refinements and fresh sensations which his passion was enjoying; at other times, the actual embrace with its ecstasy blotted out and suppressed all unpleasant possibilities.

Something, nevertheless, suddenly jerked him from his amorous egoism, something that was overshadowing his visage, furrowing his forehead with wrinkles of preoccupation, and making him go aboard his vessel.

When seated in the large cabin of his ship opposite his mate, he leaned his elbows on the table and commenced to chew on a great cigar that had just gone out.

"We're going to start very soon," he repeated with visible abstraction. "You will be glad, Toni; I believe that you will be delighted."

Toni remained impassive. He was waiting for something more. The captain in starting on a voyage had always told him the port of destiny and the special nature of the cargo. Therefore, noting that Ferragut did not want to add anything more, he ventured to ask:

"Is it to Barcelona that we are going?"

Ulysses hesitated, looking toward the door, as though fearing to be overheard. Then he leaned over toward Toni.

The voyage was going to be one without any danger, but one which must be shrouded in mystery.

"I am counting on you, because you know all my affairs, because I consider you as one of my family."

The pilot did not appear to be touched with this sample of confidence. He still remained impassive, though within him all the uneasiness that had been agitating him in former days was reawakening.

The captain continued talking. These were war times and it was necessary to take advantage of them. For those two it would not be any novelty to transport cargoes of military material. Once he had carried from Europe arms and munitions for a revolution in South America. Toni had recounted to him his adventures in the Gulf of California, in command of a little schooner which had served as a transport to the insurrectionists of the southern provinces in the revolt against the Mexican government.

But the mate, while nodding his head affirmatively, was at the same time looking at him with questioning eyes. What were they going to transport on this trip?...

"Toni, it is not a matter of artillery nor of guns. Neither is it an affair of munitions.... It is a short and well-paid job that will make us go very little out of our way on our return to Barcelona."

He stopped himself in his confidences, feeling a curious hesitation and finally he added, lowering his voice:

"The Germans are paying for it!... We are going to supply their Mediterranean submarines with petrol."

Contrary to all Ferragut's expectations, his second did not make any gesture of surprise. He remained as impassive as if this news were actually incomprehensible to him. Then he smiled lightly, shrugging his shoulders as though he had heard something absurd.... The Germans, perhaps, had submarines in the Mediterranean? It was likely, was it, that one of these navigating machines would be able to make the long crossing from the North Sea to the Strait of Gibraltar?...

He knew all about the great atrocities that the submarines were causing in the vicinity of England, but in a greatly reduced zone in the limited radius of action of which they were capable. The Mediterranean, fortunately for the merchant vessels, was quite beyond the range of their treacherous lying-in-wait.

Ferragut interrupted with his meridional vehemence. Beside himself with passion, he was already beginning to express himself as though the doctor were speaking through his mouth.

"You are referring to the submarines, Toni, to the little submarines that were in existence at the beginning of the war—little grasshoppers of fragile steel that moved with great difficulty when on a level with the water and might be overwhelmed at the slightest shock.... But to-day there is something more: there is a submersible that is like a submarine protected by a ship's hull which is able to go hidden between the two waters and, at the same time, can navigate over the surface better than a torpedo-boat.... You have no idea what these Germans are capable of! They are a great nation, the finest in the world!..."

And with impulsive exaggeration, he insisted in proclaiming German greatness and its inventive spirit as though he had some share in this mechanical and destructive glory.

Then he added confidentially, placing his hand on Toni's arm:

"I'm going to tell it only to you: you are the only person who knows the secret, aside from those who have told it to me.... The German submersibles are going to enter the Mediterranean. We are going to meet them in order to renew their supplies of oil and combustibles."

He became silent, looking fixedly at his subordinate, and smiling in order to conquer his scruples.

For two seconds he did not know what to expect. Toni was remaining pensive with downcast eyes. Then, little by little, he drew himself erect, abandoned his seat, and said simply:

"No!"

Ulysses also left his revolving chair with the impulsiveness of surprise. "No?... And why not?"

He was the captain and they all ought to obey him. For that reason he was responsible for the boat, for the life of its crew, for the fate of the cargo. Besides, he was the proprietor; no one exceeded him in command; his power was unlimited. Through friendly affection and custom, he had consulted his mate, making him share in his secrets and here Toni, with an ingratitude never seen before, was daring to rebel.... What did this mean?...

But the mate, instead of giving any explanation, merely confined himself to answering, each time more obstinately and wrathfully:

"No!... No!"

"But why not?" insisted Ferragut, waxing impatient and in a voice trembling with anger.

Toni, without losing energy in his negatives, was hesitating,—confused, bewildered, scratching his beard, and lowering his eyes in order to reflect better.

He did not know just how to explain himself. He envied his captain's facility in finding just the right word. The simplest of his ideas suffered terribly before coming anxiously from his mouth.... But, finally, little by little, between his stutterings, he managed to express his hatred of those monsters of modern industry which were dishonoring the sea with their crimes.