The captain, hooded like a friar and bowed before the wind that was striving to snatch him from the bridge, kept talking and talking to his mate, standing immovable near him and also covered with a waterproof coat that was spouting moisture from every fold.  The rain was streaking with light, cobwebby lines the slaty darkness, of the night.  The two sailors felt as though icy nettles were falling upon face and hands across the darkness.

Twice they anchored near the island of Tenedos, seeing the movable archipelago of ironclads enveloped in floating veils of smoke.  There came to their ears, like incessant thunderings, the echo of the cannons that were roaring at the entrance of the Dardanelles.

From afar off they perceived the sensation caused by the loss of some English and French ships.  The current of the Black Sea was the best armor for the defenders of this aquatic defile against the attacks of the fleets.  They had only to throw into the strait a quantity of floating mines and the blue river which slipped by the Dardanelles would drag these toward the boats, destroying them with an infernal explosion.  On the coast of Tenedos the Hellenic women with their floating hair were tossing flowers into the sea in memory of the victims, with a theatrical grief similar to that of the heroines of ancient Troy whose ramparts were buried in the hills opposite.

The third trip in mid-winter was a very hard one, and at the end of a rainy night, when the faint streaks of dawn were beginning to dissipate the sluggish shadows, the Mare Nostrum arrived at the roadstead of Salonica.

Only once had Ferragut been in this port, many years before, when it still belonged to the Turks.  At first he saw only some lowlands on which twinkled the last gleams from the lighthouses.  Then he recognized the roadstead, a vast aquatic extension with a frame of sandy bars and pools reflecting the uncertain life of daybreak.  The recently awakened sea-gulls were flying in groups over the immense marine bowl.  At the mouth of the Vardar the fresh-water fowls were starting up with noisy cries, or standing on the edge of the bank immovable upon their long legs.

Opposite the prow, a city was rising up out of the albuminous waves of fog.  In a bit of the clear, blue sky appeared various minarets, their peaks sparkling with the fires of Aurora.  As the vessel advanced, the morning clouds vanished, and Salonica became entirely visible from the cluster of huts at her wharves to the ancient castle topping the heights, a fortress of ruddy towers, low and strong.

Near the water’s edge, the entire length of the harbor, were the European constructions, commercial houses with gold-lettered signs, hotels, banks, moving-picture shows, concert halls, and a massive tower with another smaller one upon it,—­the so-called White Tower, a remnant of the Byzantine fortifications.

In this European conglomerate were dark gaps, open passageways, the mouths of sloping streets climbing to the hillock above, crossing the Grecian, Mohammedan and Jewish quarters until they reached a table-land covered with lofty edifices between dark points of cypress.