In the most difficult perils,—­days of storm and sinister shoals in the neighborhood of the treacherous coasts, Ferragut could decide to rest only when Toni replaced him on the bridge.  With him, he had no fear that, through carelessness, a wave would sweep across the deck and stop the machinery, or that an invisible ledge would drive its stony point into the vitals of the vessel.  He held the helm to the course indicated.  Silent and immovable he stood, as though sleeping on his feet; but at the right moment he always uttered the brief word of command.

He was very skinny, with the dried up leanness of the bronzed Mediterranean.  The salt wind more than his years had tanned his face, wrinkling it with deep crevices.  A capricious coloring had darkened the depths of these cracks while the part exposed to the sun appeared washed several shades lighter.  His short stiff beard extended over all the furrows and crests of his skin.  Furthermore, he had hair in his ears, hair in the nasal passages, coarse and vibrating growths, ready to tremble in moments of wrath or admiration....  But this ugliness disappeared under the light of his little eyes with pupils between green and olive color,—­mild eyes with a canine expression of resignation, when the captain made fun of his beliefs.

Toni was a “man of ideas.”  Ferragut only knew of his having four or five, but they were hard, crystallized, tenacious, like the mollusks that stick to the rocks and eventually become a part of the stony excrescence.  He had acquired them in twenty-five years of Mediterranean coast service by reading all the periodicals of lyric radicalism that were thrust upon him on entering the harbors.  Furthermore, at the end of every journey was Marseilles; and in one of its little side alleys was a red room adorned with symbolic columns where sailors of all races and tongues met together, fraternally understanding each other by means of mysterious signs and ritual words.

Whenever Toni entered a South American port after a long absence, he particularly admired the rapid progress of the new villages,—­enormous wharves constructed within the year, interminable streets that were not in existence on his former voyage, shady and elegant parks, replacing old, dried-up lakes.

“That’s only natural,” he would affirm roundly.  “With good reason they are republics!”

Upon entering the Spanish ports, the slightest deviation in the docking, a discussion with the official employees, the lack of space for a good anchorage would make him smile with bitterness.  “Unfortunate country!...  Everything here is the work of the altar and the throne!”

In the Thames, and before the docks of Hamburg, Captain Ferragut would chaff his subordinate.

“There’s no republic here, Toni!...  But, nevertheless this is rather worth while.”

But Toni never gave in.  He would contract his hairy visage, making a mental effort to formulate his vague ideas, clothing them with words.  In the very background of these grandeurs existed the confirmation of the idea he was so vainly trying to express.  Finally he admitted himself checkmated, but not convinced.