And he extended his threatening fist toward a point in the horizon exactly opposite to the one upon which the periscope was appearing.

Through the blue circle of the glasses Ferragut saw this tube climbing up and up, growing larger and larger.  It was no longer a stick, it was a tower; and from beneath this tower was coming up on the sea a base of steel spouting cascades of smoke,—­a gray whale-back that appeared little by little to be taking the form of a sailing vessel, long and sharp-pointed.

A flag was suddenly run up upon the submarine.  Ulysses recognized it.

“They are going to shell us!” he yelled to Toni.  “It’s useless to keep up the zigzagging.  The thing to do now is to outspeed them, to go forward in a straight line.”

The mate, skillful helmsman that he was, obeyed the captain.  The hull vibrated under the force of the engines taxed to their utmost.  Their prow was cutting the waters with increasing noise.  The submersible upon augmenting its volume by emersion appeared, nevertheless, to be falling behind on the horizon.  Two streaks of foam began to spring up on both sides of its prow.  It was running with all its possible surface speed; but the Mare Nostrum was also going at the utmost limit of its engines and the distance was widening between the two boats.

“They are shooting!” said Ferragut with the glasses to his eyes.

A column of water spouted near the prow.  That was the only thing that Caragol was able to see clearly and he burst into applause with a childish joy.  Then he waved on high his palm-leaf hat. “Viva el Santo Cristo del Grao!...”

Other projectiles were falling around the Mare Nostrum, spattering it with jets of foam.  Suddenly it trembled from poop to prow.  Its plates trembled with the vibration of an explosion.

“That’s nothing!” yelled the captain, bending himself double over the bridge in order to see better the hull of his ship.  “A shell in the stern.  Steady, Toni!...”

The mate, always grasping the wheel, kept turning his head from time to time to measure the distance separating them from the submarine.  Every time that he saw an aquatic column of spray, forced up by a projectile, he would repeat the same counsel.

“Lie down, Ulysses!...  They are going to fire at the bridge!”

This was a recollection of his far-away youth when, as a contrabandist, he used to stretch himself flat on the deck of his bark, manipulating the wheel and the sail under the fire of the custom-house officers on watch.  He feared for the life of his captain while he was standing, constantly offering himself to the shots of the enemy.

Ferragut was storming from side to side, cursing his lack of means for returning the aggression.  “This will never happen another time!...  They won’t get another chance to amuse themselves chasing me!”