“You are to remain, Toni!” he said in a dull voice.  “There is nothing to say.  I will redeem my word as best I can....  To-morrow you shall know certainly what we are going to do.”

The solar face of Caragol was beaming beatifically without seeing anything, without hearing anything.  He had suspected something serious in the captain’s arrival, his long interview alone with the mate, and the departure of the latter passing silent and scowling before the door of his galley.  Now the same presentiment advised him that a reconciliation between the two men whose figures he could only distinguish confusedly, must have taken place.  Blessed be the Christ of the Grao!...  And upon learning that the captain would remain aboard until afternoon, he set himself to the confection of one of his masterly rice-dishes in order to solemnize the return of peace.

A little before sunset Ulysses again found himself with his mistress in the hotel.  He had returned to land, nervous and uneasy.  His uneasiness made him fear this interview while at the same time he wished it.

“Out with it!  I am not a child to feel such fears,” he said to himself upon entering his room and finding Freya awaiting him.

He spoke to her with the brusqueness of one who wishes to conclude everything quickly....  “I could not undertake the service that the doctor asked.  I take back my word.  The mate on board would not consent to it.”

Her wrath burst forth without any finesse, with the frankness of intimacy.  She always hated Toni.  “Hideous old faun!...”  From the very first moment she had suspected that he would prove an enemy.

“But you are master of your own boat,” she continued.  “You can do what you want to, and you don’t need his permission to sail.”

When Ulysses furthermore said that he was not sure of his crew either, and that the voyage was impossible, the woman again became furious at him.  She appeared to have grown suddenly ten years older.  To the sailor she seemed to have another face, of an ashy pallor, with furrowed brows, eyes filled with angry tears, and a light foam in the corners of her mouth.

“Braggart....  Fraud....  Southerner!  Meridional!”

Ulysses tried to calm her.  It might be possible to find another boat. 
He would try to help them find another.  He was going to send the Mare
Nostrum to await him in Barcelona, and he himself would stay in
Naples, just as long as she wished him to.

“Buffoon!...  And I believed in you!  And I yielded myself to you, believing you to be a hero, believing your offer of sacrifice to be the truth!...”

She marched off, furious, giving the door a spiteful slam.

“She is going to see the doctor,” thought Ferragut.  “It is all over.”

He regretted the loss of this woman, even after having seen her in her tragic and fleeting ugliness.  At the same time, the injurious word, the cutting insults with which she had accompanied her departure caused sharp pain.  He already was tired and sick of hearing himself called “meridional,” as though it were a stigma.