“Now then, your turn!” he ordered in an imperious tone.

All attempts at resistance were useless.  His uncle either insulted him with the harshest kind of words or coaxed him with promises of safety.  He never knew certainly whether he threw himself into the water or whether a tug from the doctor jerked him from the boat.  The first surprise having passed, he had the impression of remembering some long forgotten thing.  He was swimming instinctively, divining what he ought to do before his master told him.  Within him was awakening the ancestral experience of a race of sailors who had struggled with the sea and, sometimes, had remained forever in its bosom.

Recollection of what was existing beyond his feet suddenly made him lose his serenity,—­his lively imagination making him shriek,

“Uncle!...  Uncle!”

And he clutched convulsively at the hard island of bearded and smiling muscles.  His uncle came up immovable, as though his feet of stone were fastened to the bottom of the ocean.  He was like the nearby promontory that was darkening and chilling the water with its ebony shadow.

Thus would slip by the mornings devoted to fishing and swimming; then in the afternoons there were tramps over the steep shores of the coast.

The Dotor knew the heights of the promontory as well as its depths.  Up the pathways of the wild goat they clambered to its peaks in order to get a view of the Island of Ibiza.  At sunset the distant Balearic Islands appeared like a rose-colored flame rising out of the waves.  At other times the cronies made trips along the water’s edge, and the Triton would show his nephew hidden caves into which the Mediterranean was working its way with slow undulations.  These were like maritime roadsteads where boats might anchor completely concealed from view.  There the galleys of the Berbers had often hidden, in order to fall unexpectedly upon a nearby village.

In one of these caves, on a rocky pedestal, Ulysses often saw a heap of bundles.

“Well, now, what of it!” expostulated the doctor.  “Every man must gain his living as best he can.”

When they stumbled upon a solitary custom house officer resting upon his gun and looking out toward the sea, the doctor would offer him a cigar and give him medical advice if he were sick.  “Poor men! so badly paid!"...  But his sympathies were always going out to the others—­to the enemies of the law.  He was the son of his sea, and in the make-up of all Mediterranean heroes and sailors there had always been something of the pirate or smuggler.  The Phoenicians, who by their navigation spread abroad the first works of civilization, instituted this service, reaping their reward by filling their barks with stolen women, rich merchandise of easy transportation.