The captain attached no importance to this encounter.  He had already forgotten it when, taking the car but a few minutes later, it recurred to him in a new light.  The face of the Englishman presented itself to his imagination with the distinct relief of reality.  He could see it more clearly than in the dying splendor of the Cannebiere....  He passed with indifference over his features; in reality he had seen them for the first time.  But the eyes!...  He knew those eyes perfectly.  They had often exchanged glances with him.  Where?...  When?...

The memory of this man accompanied him as an obsession even to his ship without giving the slightest answer to his questioning.  Then, finding himself on board with Toni and the third officer, he again forgot it.

Upon going ashore on the following days, his memory invariably experienced the same phenomena.  The captain would be going through the city without any thought of that individual, but on entering the Cannebiere the same remembrance, followed by an inexplicable anxiety, would again surge up in his mind.

“I wonder where my Englishman is now,” he would think.  “Where have I seen him before?...  Because there is no doubt that we are acquainted with each other.”

From that time on, he would look curiously at all the passersby and sometimes would hasten his step in order to examine more closely some one whose back resembled the haunting unknown.  One afternoon he felt sure that he recognized him in a hired carriage whose horse was going at a lively trot through one of the avenues, but when he tried to follow it the vehicle had disappeared into a nearby street.

Some days passed by and the captain completely forgot the meeting.  Other affairs more real and immediate were demanding his attention.  His boat was ready; they were going to send it to England in order to load it with munitions destined for the army of the Orient.

The morning of its departure he went ashore without any thought of going to the center of the city.

In one of the wharf streets there was a barber shop frequented by Spanish captains.  The picturesque chatter of the barber, born in Cartagena, the gay, brilliant chromos on the walls representing bullfights, the newspapers from Madrid, forgotten on the divans, and a guitar in one corner made this shop a little bit of Spain for the rovers of the Mediterranean.

Before sailing, Ferragut wished to have his beard clipped by this verbose master.  When, an hour later, he left the barber-shop, tearing himself away from the interminable farewells of the proprietor, he passed down a broad street, lonely and silent, between two rows of docks.

The steel-barred gates were closed and locked.  The warehouses, empty and resounding as the naves of a cathedral, still exhaled the strong odors of the wares which they had kept in times of peace,—­vanilla, cinnamon, rolls of leather, nitrates and phosphates for chemical fertilizers.