On the other hand the voice of prudence, always cautious and temperate, was now showing an heroic tranquillity, speaking like a man of peace who considers his obligations superior to his life.

“Be calm, Ferragut; you have sold your person with your boat, and they have given you millions for it.  You must carry through what you have promised even though it may send you out of existence....  The Mare Nostrum cannot sail without a Spanish captain.  If you abandon it, you will have to find another captain.  You will run away through fear and put in your place a man who has to face death in order to maintain his family.  Glorious achievement, that! ... while you would be on land, rich and safe!...  And what are you going to do on land, you coward?”

His egoism hardly knew how to reply to such a question.  He recalled with antipathy his bourgeois existence over there in Barcelona, before buying the steamer.  He was a man of action and could live only when occupied in risky enterprises.

He would be bored to death on land and at the same time would be considered belittled, degraded, like one who comes down to an inferior grade in a country of hierarchies.  The captain of a romantic, adventurous life would be converted into a real estate proprietor, knowing no other struggles than those which he might sustain with his tenants.  Perhaps, in order to avoid a commonplace existence, he might invest his capital in navigation, the only business that he knew well.  He might become a ship-owner acquiring new vessels and, little by little, because of the necessity of keeping a sharp watch over them, would eventually renew his voyages....  Well, then, why should he abandon the Mare Nostrum?

Upon asking himself anxiously what his life had so far amounted to, he underwent a profound moral revolution.

All his former existence appeared to him like a desert.  He had lived without knowing why nor wherefore, challenging countless dangers and adventures for the mere pleasure of coming out victorious.  Neither did he know with certainty what he had wanted until then.  If it was money, it had flowed into his hands in the last months with overwhelming abundance....  He had it to-spare and it had not made him happy.  As to professional glory, he could not desire anything greater than he already had.  His name was celebrated all over the Spanish Mediterranean.  Even the rudest and most ungovernable of sailors would admit his exceptional ability.

“Love remained!...”  But Ferragut made a wry face when thinking of that.  He had known it and did not wish to meet it again.  The gentle love of a good companion, capable of surrounding the latter part of his existence with congenial comfort, he had just lost forever.  The other, impassioned, fantastic, voluptuous, giving to life the crude interest of conflicts and contrasts, had left him with no desire of recommencing it.

Paternity, stronger and more enduring than love, might have filled the rest of his days had his son not died....  There only remained vengeance, the savage task of returning evil to those who had done him so much evil.  But he was so powerless to struggle against all of them!...  This final act appeared to be turning out so small and selfish in comparison with that other patriotic enthusiasm which was now dragging to sacrifice such great masses of men!...