“Only one: my friend, that boy of whom
I was just speaking. The explosion of the torpedo
blew him into bits. I saw him....”
The captain felt his remorse constantly increasing.
A compatriot, a poor young fellow, had perished through
his fault!...
The salesman also seemed to be suffering a twinge
of conscience. He was holding himself responsible
for his companion’s death. He had only met
him in Naples a few days before, but they were united
by the close brotherhood of young compatriots who
had run across each other far from their country.
They had both been born in Barcelona. The poor
lad, almost a child, had wanted to return by land
and he had carried him off with him at the last hour,
urging upon him the advantages of a trip by sea.
Whoever would have imagined that the German submarines
were in the Mediterranean! The traveling man
persisted in his remorse. He could not forget
that half-grown lad who, in order to make the voyage
in his company, had gone to meet his death.
“I met him in Naples, hunting everywhere for
his father.”
“Ah!...”
Ulysses uttered this exclamation with his neck violently
outstretched, as though he were trying to loosen his
skull from the rest of his body. His eyes were
protruding from their sockets.
“The father,” continued the youth, “commands
a ship.... He is Captain Ulysses Ferragut.”
An outcry.... The people ran.... A man had
just fallen heavily, his body rebounding on the deck.
THE ENCOUNTER AT MARSEILLES
Toni, who abominated railway journeys on account of
his torpid immovability, now had to abandon the Mare
Nostrum and suffer the torture of remaining twelve
hours crowded in with strange persons.
Ferragut was sick in a hotel in the harbor of Marseilles.
They had taken him off of a French boat coming from
Naples, crushed with silent melancholia. He wished
to die. During the trip they had to keep sharp
watch so that he could not repeat his attempts at suicide.
Several times he had tried to throw himself into the
water.
Toni learned of it from the captain of a Spanish vessel
that had just arrived from Marseilles exactly one
day after the newspapers of Barcelona had announced
the death of Esteban Ferragut in the torpedoing of
the Californian. The commercial traveler
was still relating everywhere his version of the event,
concluding it now with his melodramatic meeting with
the father, the latter’s fatal fall on receiving
the news, and desperation upon recovering consciousness.
The first mate had hastened to present himself at
his captain’s home. All the Blanes were
there, surrounding Cinta and trying to console her.
“My son!... My son!...” the mother
was groaning, writhing on the sofa.
And the family chorus drowned her laments, overwhelming
her with a flood of fantastic consolations and recommendations
of resignation. She ought to think of the father:
she was not alone in the world as she was affirming:
besides her own family, she had her husband.
