Passing by the wireless office, he obtained an explanation of the matter.  The youth of the night before was near the door and his companion was now wearing the head phone and tapping the keys of the apparatus, listening and replying to invisible boats.

An half hour before, just as the English operator was going off guard and giving place to his just awakened companion, a signal had kept him in his seat.  The Californian was sending out by wireless the danger call, the S.O.S., that is only employed when a ship needs help.  Then in the space of a few seconds a mysterious voice had spread its tragic story over hundreds of miles.  A submersible had just appeared a short distance from the Californian and had fired several shells at it.  The English boat was trying to escape, relying on its superior speed.  Then the submarine had fired a torpedo....

All this had occurred in twenty minutes.  Suddenly the echoes of the distant tragedy were extinguished as the communication was cut off.  A prolonged, intense, sibilant buzzing in the apparatus, and—­nothing!...  Absolute silence.

The operator now on duty responded with negative movements to his companion’s inquiring glances.  He could hear nothing but the dialogue between the boats that had received the same warning.  They too were alarmed by the sudden silence, and were changing their course going, like the French steamer, toward the place where the Californian had met the submersible.

“Can it be that they are already in the Mediterranean!” the operator exclaimed with astonishment on finishing his report.  “How could the submarines possibly get ’way down here?...”

Ferragut did not dare to go up on the bridge.  He was afraid that the glances of those men of the sea might fasten themselves accusingly upon him.  He believed that they could read his thoughts.

A passenger ship had just been sunk at a relatively short distance from the boat on which he was traveling.  Perhaps von Kramer was the author of the crime.  With good reason he had charged Ulysses to tell his compatriots that they would soon hear of his exploits.  And Ferragut had aided in the preparation of this maritime barbarity!...

“What have you done?  What have you done?” wrathfully demanded his mental voice of good counsel.

An hour afterward he felt ashamed to remain on deck.  In spite of the captain’s orders, the news had got out and was circulating among the staterooms.  Entire families were rushing up on deck, frightened out of the calmness usually reigning on the boat, arranging their clothes with precipitation, and struggling to adjust to their bodies the life-preservers which they were trying on for the first time.  The children were howling, terrified by the alarm of their parents.  Some nervous women were shedding tears without any apparent cause.  The boat was going toward the place where the other one had been torpedoed, and that was enough to make the alarmists imagine that the enemy would remain absolutely motionless in the same place, awaiting their arrival in order to repeat their attack.