Ferragut did not wish to know more.  He must get away as soon as possible.  This inexplicable voyage of his son filled him with remorse and immeasurable alarm.  He wondered what could have occurred in his home....

The director of the offices pointed out to him a French steamer from Suez that was sailing that very afternoon to Marseilles, and took upon himself all the arrangements concerning his passage and recommendation to the captain.  There only remained four hours before the boat’s departure, and Ulysses, after collecting his valises and sending them aboard, took a last stroll through all the places where he had lived with Freya.  Adieu, gardens of the Villa Nazionale and white Aquarium!...  Farewell, albergo!...

His son’s mysterious presence in Naples had intensified his disgust at the German girl’s flight.  He thought sadly of lost love, but at the same time he thought with dolorous suspense of what might greet him when reentering his home.

A little before sunset the French steamer weighed anchor.  It had been many years since Ulysses had sailed as a simple passenger.  Entirely out of his element, he wandered over the decks and among the crowds of tourists.  Force of habit drew him to the bridge, talking with the captain and the officers, who from his very first words recognized his professional genius.

Realizing that he was no more than an intruder in this place, and annoyed at finding himself on a bridge from which he could not give a single order, he descended to the lower decks, examining the groups of passengers.  They were mostly French, coming from Indo-China.  On prow and poop there were quartered four companies of Asiatic sharpshooters,—­little, yellowish, with oblique eyes and voices like the miauling of cats.  They were going to the war.  Their officers lived in the staterooms in the center of the ship, taking with them their families who had required a foreign aspect during their long residence in the colonies.

Ulysses saw ladies clad in white stretched out on their steamer chairs, having themselves fanned by their little Chinese pages; he saw bronzed and weather-beaten soldiers who appeared disgusted yet galvanized by the war that was snatching them from their Asiatic siesta, and children,—­many children—­delighted to go to France, the country of their dreams, forgetting in their happiness that their fathers were probably going to their death.

The passage could not have been smoother.  The Mediterranean was like a silver plain in the moonlight.  From the invisible coast came warm puffs of garden perfumes.  The groups on deck reminded one another, with selfish satisfaction, of the great dangers that threatened the people embarking in the North Sea, harassed by German submarines.  Fortunately the Mediterranean was free from such calamity.  The English had so well guarded the port of Gibraltar that it was all a tranquil lake dominated by the Allies.