“There’s nothing to worry about,” affirmed Caragol.  “We have good protectors.  Whoever presents himself before us is lost.”

And he showed his captain the religious engravings and postal cards which he had tacked on the walls of the galley.

One morning Ferragut received his sailing orders.  For the moment they were going to Gibraltar, to pick up the cargo of a steamer that had not been able to continue its voyage.  From the strait they might turn their course to Salonica once more.

The captain of the Mare Nostrum had never undertaken a journey with so much joy.  He believed that he was going to leave on land forever the recollection of that executed woman whose corpse he was seeing so many nights in his dreams.  From all the past, the only thing that he wished to transplant to his new existence was the image of his son.  Henceforth he was going to live, concentrating all his enthusiasm and ideals on the mission which he had imposed on himself.

He took the boat directly from Marseilles to the Cape of San Antonio far from the coast, keeping to the mid-Mediterranean, without passing the Gulf of Lyons.  One twilight evening the crew saw some bluish mountains in the hazy distance,—­the island of Mallorca.  During the night the lighthouses of Ibiza and Formentera slipped past the dark horizon.  When the sun arose a vertical spot of rose color like a tongue of flame, appeared above the sea line.  It was the high mountain of Mongo, the Ferrarian promontory of the ancients.  At the foot of its abrupt steeps was the village of Ulysses’ grandparents, the house in which he had passed the best part of his childhood.  Thus it must have looked in the distance to the Greeks of Massalia, exploring the desert Mediterranean in ships which were leaping the foam like wooden horses.

All the rest of the day, the Mare Nostrum sailed very close to the shore.  The captain knew this sea as though it were a lake on his own property.  He took the steamer through shallow depths, seeing the reefs so near to the surface that it appeared almost a miracle that the boat did not crash upon them.  Sometimes the space between the keel and the sunken rocks was hardly two yards wide.  Then the gilded water would take on a dark tone and the steamer would continue its advance over the greater depths.

Along the shore, the autumn sun was reddening the yellowing mountains, now dry and fragrant, covered with pasturage of strong odor which could be smelt at great distances.  In all the windings of the coast,—­little coves, beds of dry torrents or gorges between two peaks—­were visible white groups of hamlets.

Ferragut contemplated carefully the native land of his grandparents.  Toni must be there now:  perhaps from the door of his dwelling he was seeing them pass by; perhaps he was recognizing the ship with surprise and emotion.

A French official, motionless near Ulysses on the bridge, was admiring the beauty of the day and the sea.  Not a single cloud was in the sky.  All was blue above and below, with no variation except where the bands of foam were combing themselves on the jutting points of the coast, and the restless gold of the sunlight was forming a broad roadway over the waters.  A flock of dolphins frisked around the boat like a cortege of oceanic divinities.