Finding himself now under his orders, he wished to change his mode of address, but the captain would not permit it.  Perhaps he and Toni were distant relatives,—­all those living in that village of the Marina had become related through long centuries of isolated existence and common danger.  The entire crew, from the first engineer to the lowest seaman, showed an equal familiarity in this respect.  Some were from the same land as the captain, others had been sailing a long time under his orders.

As shipowner, Ulysses now underwent numberless experiences whose existence he had never before suspected.  He went through the anguishing transformation of the actor who becomes a theatrical manager, of the author who branches out into publishing, of the engineer with a hobby for odd inventions who becomes the proprietor of a factory.  His romantic love for the sea and its adventures was now overshadowed by the price and consumption of coal, by the maddening competition that lowered freight rates, and by the search for new ports with fast and remunerative freight.

The Fingal which had been rebaptized by its new proprietor with the name of Mare Nostrum, in memory of his uncle, turned out to be a dubious purchase in spite of its low price.  As a navigator Ulysses had been most enthusiastic upon beholding its high and sharp prow disposed to confront the worst seas, the slenderness of the swift craft, its machinery, excessively powerful for a freight steamer,—­all the conditions that had made it a mail packet for so many years.  It consumed too much fuel to be a profitable investment as a transport of merchandise.  The captain during his navigation could now think only of the ravenous appetite of the boilers.  It always seemed to him that the Mare Nostrum was speeding along with excess steam.

“Half speed!” he would shout down the tube to his first engineer.

But in spite of this and many other precautions, the expense for fuel was enormously disproportioned to the tonnage of the vessel.  The boat was eating up all the profits.  Its speed was insignificant compared with that of a transatlantic steamer, though absurd compared with that of the merchant vessels of great hulls and little machinery that were going around soliciting cargo at any price, from all points.

A slave of the superiority of his vessel and in continual struggle with it, Ferragut had to make great efforts in order to continue sailing without actual heavy loss.  All the waters of the planet now saw the Mare Nostrum specializing in the rarest kind of transportation.  Thanks to this expedient, the Spanish flag waved in ports that had never seen it before.