“See if you can’t bring him back with you,” repeated Blanes.  “Tell him that his mother is going to die of grief....  You can do so much!”

But all that Captain Ferragut could do was to obtain a permit and an old automobile with which to visit the encampment of the legionaries.

The arid plain around Salonica was crossed by numerous roads.  The trains of artillery, the rosaries of automobiles, were rolling over recently opened roads that the rain had converted into mire.  The mud was the worst calamity that could befall this plain, so extremely dusty in dry weather.

Ferragut passed two long hours, going from encampment to encampment, before reaching his destination.  His vehicle frequently had to stop in order to make way for interminable files of trucks.  At other times machine-guns, big guns dragged by tractors, and provision cars with pyramids of sacks and boxes, blocked their road.

On all sides were thousands and thousands of soldiers of different colors and races.  The captain recalled the great invasions of history—­Xerxes, Alexander, Genghis-Khan, all the leaders of men who had made their advance carrying villages en masse behind their horses, transforming the servants of the earth into fighters.  There lacked only the soldierly women, the swarms of children, to complete exactly the resemblance to the martial exoduses of the past.

In half an hour more he was able to embrace his nephew, who was with two other volunteers, an Andulasian and a South American,—­the three united by brotherhood of birth and by their continual familiarity with death.

Ferragut took them to the canteen of a trader established near the cantonment.  The customers were seated under a sail-cloth awning before boxes that had contained munitions and were converted into office tables.  This discomfort was surpassed by the prices.  In no Palace Hotel would drink have cost such an extraordinary sum.

In a few moments the sailor felt a fraternal affection for these three youths to whom he gave the nickname of the “Three Musketeers,” He wished to treat them to the very best which the canteen afforded, so the proprietor produced a bottle of champagne or rather ptisan from Rheims, presenting it as though it were an elixir fabricated of gold.

The amber liquid, bubbling in the glasses, seemed to bring the three youths back to their former existence.  Boiled by the sun and the inclemency of the weather, habituated to the hard life of war, they had almost forgotten the softness and luxuriant conveniences of former years.

Ulysses examined them attentively.  In the course of the campaign they had grown with youth’s last rapid growth.  Their arms were sticking out to an ungainly degree from the sleeves of their coats, already too short for them.  The rude gymnastic exercise of the marches, with the management of the shovel, had broadened their wrists and calloused their hands.