Finally he avoided the solitude of a stateroom that tormented him with desires of impotent revenge.  Near Toni on deck or on the bridge he felt better....  And with a humble condescension, such as his mate had never known before, he would talk and talk, enjoying the attention of his simple-hearted listener, just as though he were telling marvelous stories to a circle of children.

In the Strait of Gibraltar he explained to him the great currents sent by the ocean into the Mediterranean, at certain times aiding the screw-propeller in the propulsion of the vessel.

Without this Atlantic current the mare nostrum, which lost through atmospheric evaporation much more water than the rains and rivers could bring to it, would become dry in a few centuries.  It had been calculated that it might disappear in about four hundred and seventy years, leaving as evidence of its former existence a stratum, of salt fifty-two meters thick.

In its deep bosom were born great and numerous springs of fresh water, on the coast of Asia Minor, in Morea, Dalmatia and southern Italy; it received besides a considerable contribution from the Black Sea, which on returning to the Mediterranean accumulated from the rains and the discharge of its rivers, more water than it lost by evaporation, sending it across the Bosporous and the Dardenelles in the form of a superficial current.  But all these tributaries, enormous as they were, sank into insignificance when compared with the renovation of the oceanic currents.

The waters of the Atlantic poured into the Mediterranean so riotously that neither contrary winds nor reflex motion could stop them.  Sailboats sometimes had to wait entire months for a strong breeze that would enable them to conquer the impetuous mouth of the strait.

“I know that very well,” said Toni.  “Once going to Cuba we were in sight of Gibraltar more than fifty days, going backwards and forwards until a favorable wind enabled us to overcome the current and go out into the great sea.”

“Just such a current,” added Ferragut, “was one of the causes that hastened the decadence of the Mediterranean navies in the sixteenth century.  They had to go to the recently discovered Indies, and the Catalan or the Genoese ships would remain here in the strait weeks and weeks, struggling with the wind and the contrary current while the Galicians, the Basques, the French and the English who had left their ports at the same time were already nearing America....  Fortunately, navigation by steam has now equalized all that.”

Toni was silently admiring his captain.  What he must have learned in those books that filled the stateroom!...

It was in the Mediterranean that men had first entrusted themselves to the waves.  Civilization emanated from India, but the Asiatic peoples were not able to master the art of navigation in their few seas whose coasts were very far apart and where the monsoons of the Indian Ocean blew six months together in one direction and six months in another.