Under this banner, he made trips through the solitary seas of Syria and Asia Minor, skirting coasts where the novelty of a ship with a smoke stack made the people of the Arabian villages run together in crowds.  He disembarked in Phoenician and Greek ports choked up with sand that had left only a few huts at the foot of mountains of ruins, and where columns of marble were still sticking up like trunks of lopped-off palm trees.  He anchored near to the terrible breakers of the western coast of Africa under a sun which scorched the deck, in order to take on board india-rubber, ostrich feathers, and elephants’ tusks, brought out in long pirogues by negro oarsmen, from a river filled with crocodiles and hippopotamuses, and bordered by groups of huts with straw cones for roofs.

When there were no more of these extraordinary voyages, the Mare Nostrum turned its course towards South America, resigning itself to competition in rates with the English and Scandinavians who are the muleteers of the ocean.  His tonnage and draught permitted him to sail up the great rivers of North America, even reaching the cities of the remote interior where rows of factory chimneys smoked on the border of a fresh-water lake converted into a port.

He sailed up the ruddy Parana to Rosario and Colastine, in order to load Argentine wheat; he anchored in the amber waters of Uruguay opposite Paysandu and Fray Ventos, taking on board hides destined to Europe and salt for the Antilles.  From the Pacific he sailed up the Guayas bordered with an equatorial vegetation, in search of cocoa from Guayaquil.  His prow cut the infinite sheet of the Amazon,—­dislodging gigantic tree-trunks dragged down by the inundations of the virgin forest—­in order to anchor opposite Para or Manaos, taking on cargoes of tobacco and coffee.  He even carried from Germany implements of war for the revolutionists of a little republic.

These trips that in other times would have awakened Ferragut’s enthusiasm now resulted disastrously.  After having paid all expenses and lived with maddening economy, there was scarcely anything left for the owner.  Each time the freight boats were more numerous and the transportation rates cheaper.  Ulysses with his elegant Mare Nostrum could not compete with the southern captains, drunken and taciturn, eager to accept freight at any price in order to fill their miserable transports crawling across the ocean at the speed of a tortoise.

“I can do no more,” he said sadly to his mate.  “I shall simply ruin my son.  If anybody will buy the Mare Nostrum, I’m going to sell it.”

On one of his fruitless expeditions, just when he was most discouraged, some unexpected news changed the situation for him.  They had just arrived at Teneriffe with maize and bales of dry alfalfa from Argentina.

When Toni returned aboard after having cleared the vessel, he shouted in Valencian, the language of intimacy, “War, Che!”