Such voyages were not at all to Ferragut’s taste.  Marching in line like a soldier, and having to conform to the speed of these miserable little boats irritated him greatly, and it made him still more wrathful to find himself obliged to obey the Commodore of a convoy who frequently was nobody but an old sailor of masterful character.

Because of all this he announced to the maritime authorities, on one of his arrivals at Marseilles, his firm intention of not sailing any more in this fashion.  He had had enough with four such expeditions which were all well enough for timid captains incapable of leaving a port unless they always had in sight an escort of torpedo-boats, and whose crews at the slightest occurrence would try to lower the lifeboats and take refuge on the coast.  He believed that he would be more secure going alone, trusting to his skill, with no other aid than his profound knowledge of the routes of the Mediterranean.

His petition was granted.  He was the owner of a vessel and they were afraid of losing his cooeperation when means of transportation were growing so very scarce.  Besides, the Mare Nostrum, on account of its high speed, deserved individual employment in extraordinary and rapid service.

He remained in Marseilles some weeks waiting for a cargo of howitzers, and meandered as usual around the Mediterranean capital.  He passed the evenings on the terrace of a cafe of the Cannebiere.  The recollection of von Kramer always loomed up in his mind at such times.  “I wonder if they have shot him!...”  He wished to know, but his investigations did not meet with much success.  War Councils avoid publicity regarding their acts of justice.  A Marseilles merchant, a friend of Ferragut, seemed to recall that some months before a German spy, surprised in the harbor, had been executed.  Three lines, no more, in the newspapers, gave an account of his death.  They said that he was an officer....  And his friend went on talking about the war news while Ulysses was thinking that the executed man could not have been any one else but von Kramer.

On that same afternoon he had an encounter.  While passing through the street of Saint-Ferreol, looking at the show windows, the cries of several conductors of cabs and automobiles who could not manage to drive their vehicles through the narrow and crowded streets, attracted his attention.  In one carriage he saw a blonde lady with her back to him, accompanied by two officers of the English navy.  Immediately he thought of Freya....  Her hat, her gown, everything about her personality, was so very distinctive.  And yet, when the coach had passed on without his being able to get a glimpse of the face of the stranger, the image of the adventuress persisted in his mind.

Finally he became very much irritated with himself, because of this absurd resemblance suspected without any reason whatever.  How could that English-woman with the two officers be Freya?...  How could a German refugee in Barcelona manage to slip into France where she was undoubtedly known by the military police?...  And still more exasperating was his suspicion that this resemblance might have awakened a remnant of the old love which made him see Freya in every blonde woman.