“If I’ve got to die by drowning,” they would always conclude, “it would be useless for me to try to avoid it.”

And they would hasten their departure in order to return a month later transporting a regular fortune in their vessel, completely alone, preferring free and wary navigation to the journey in convoy, slipping along from island to island and from coast to coast in order to outwit the submersibles.

They were far more concerned about the state of their ships, that for more than a year had not been cleaned, than about the dangers of navigation.  The captains of the great liners lamented their luxurious staterooms converted into dormitories for the troops, their polished decks that had been turned into stables, their dining-room where they used to sit among people in dress suits and low-neck gowns, which had now to be sprayed with every class of disinfectant in order to repel the invasion of vermin, and the animal odors of so many men and beasts crowded together.

The decline of the ships appeared to be reflected in the bearing of their captains, more careless than before, worse dressed, with the military slovenliness of the trench-fighter, and with calloused hands as badly cared for as those of a stevedore.

Among the naval men also there were some who had completely neglected their appearance.  These were the commanders of “chaluteros,” little ocean fishing steamers armed with a quickfirer, which had come into the Mediterranean to pursue the submersible.  They wore oilskins and tarpaulins, just like the North Sea fishermen, smacking of fuel and tempestuous water.  They would pass weeks and weeks on the sea whatever the weather, sleeping in the bottom of the hold that smelled offensively of rancid fish, keeping on patrol no matter how the tempest might roar, bounding from wave to wave like a cork from a bottle, in order to repeat the exploits of the ancient corsairs.

Ferragut had a relative in the army which was assembling at Salonica making ready for the inland march.  As he did not wish to go away without seeing the lad he passed several mornings making investigations in the offices of the general staff.

This relative was his nephew, a son of Blanes, the manufacturer of knit goods, who had fled from Barcelona at the outbreak of the war with other boys devoted to singing Los Segadores and perturbing the tranquillity of the “Consul of Spain” sent by Madrid.  The son of the pacific Catalan citizen had enlisted in the battalion of the Foreign Legion made up to a great extent of Spaniards and Spanish-Americans.

Blanes had asked the captain to see his son.  He was sad yet at the same time proud of this romantic adventure blossoming out so unexpectedly in the utilitarian and monotonous existence of the family.  A boy that had such a great future in his father’s factory!...  And then he had related to Ulysses with shaking voice and moist eyes the achievements of his son,—­wounded in Champagne, two citations and the Croix de Guerre.  Who would ever have imagined that he could be such a hero!...  Now his battalion was in Salonica after having fought in the Dardanelles.