A great part of the population was composed of Israelitish descendants of the Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal.  The oldest and most conservative were clad just like their remote ancestors with large kaftans striped with striking colors.  The women, when not imitating the European fashions, usually wore a picturesque garment that recalled the Spanish apparel of the Middle Ages.  Here they were not mere brokers or traders as in the rest of the world.  The necessities of the city dominated by them had made them pick up all the professions, becoming artisans, fishermen, boatmen, porters and stevedores of the harbor.  They still kept the Castilian tongue as the language of the hearth like an original flag whose waving reunited their scattered souls,—­a Castilian in the making, soft and without consistency like one newly-born.

“Are you a Spaniard?” they said brokenly to Captain Ferragut.  “My ancestors were born there.  It is a beautiful land.”

But they did not wish to return to it.  The country of their grandsires inspired a certain amount of terror in them, and they feared that upon seeing them return, the present-day Spaniards would banish the bullfights and reestablish the Inquisition, organizing an auto de fe every Sunday.

Hearing them speak his language, the captain recalled a certain date—­1492.  In the very year that Christopher Columbus had made his first voyage, discovering the Indies, the Jews were expelled from the Spanish peninsula, and Nebrija brought out the first Castilian grammar.  These Spaniards had left their native land months before their idiom had been codified for the first time.

A sailor of Genoa, an old friend of Ulysses, took him to one of the harbor cafes, where the merchant captains used to gather together.  These were the only ones wearing civilian clothes among the crowds of land and sea officers who crowded the divans, obstructed the tables, and grouped themselves before the doorway.

These Mediterranean vagabonds who oftentimes could not converse together because of the diversity of their native idiom, instinctively sought each other out, keeping near together in a fraternal silence.  Their passive heroism was in many instances more admirable than that of the men of war, who were able to return blow for blow.  All the officers of the different fleets, seated near them, had at their disposition cannon, ram, torpedo, great speed and aerial telegraphy.  These valorous muleteers of the sea defied the enemy in defenseless boats without wireless and without cannons.  Sometimes when searching all the men of the crew, not a single revolver would be found among them, and yet these brave fellows were daring the greatest adventures with professional fatalism, and trusting to luck.

In the social groups of the cafe the captains would sometimes relate their encounters on the sea, the unexpected appearance of a submarine, the torpedo missing aim a few yards away, the flight at full speed while being shelled by their pursuers.  They would flame up for an instant upon recalling their danger, and then relapse into indifference and fatalism.