All his outer garments were sanctified by this contact.  In reality they weren’t very many, since he usually strolled about the boat very lightly clad, with the immodesty of a man who sees poorly and considers himself above human preoccupations.

A shirt with the tail always floating, and a pair of pantaloons of dirty cotton or yellow flannel, according to the season, constituted his entire outfit.  The bosom of the shirt was open on all occasions, leaving visible a thatch of white hair.  The pantaloons were fastened together with a single button.  A palm leaf hat always covered his head even when he was working among his cooking pots.

The Mare Nostrum could not be shipwrecked nor suffer any harm while it carried him aboard.  In the days of tempest, when waves were sweeping the deck from prow to poop, and the sailors were treading warily, fearing that a heavy sea might carry them overboard, Caragol would stick his head out through the door of the galley, scorning a danger which he could not see.

The great water-spouts would pass over him, even putting out his fires, but only increasing his faith.  “Courage, boys!  Courage, lads!” The Cristo del Grao had special charge of them and nothing bad could happen to the ship...  Some of the seamen were silent, while others said this and that about the image without arousing the indignation of the old devotee.  God, who sends dangers to the men of the sea, knows that their bad words lack malice.

His religiosity extended to the very deeps.  He did not wish to say anything about the ocean fish, for they inspired him with the same indifference as those cold and unperfumed boats that were ignorant of olive oil, and all that was cooked with “pomade.”  They must be heretics.

He was better acquainted with the fish of the Mediterranean and even came to believe that they must be good Catholics, since in their own way they proclaimed the glory of God.  Standing near the taffrail on torrid evenings in the tropics, he would recount, in honor of the inhabitants of his distant sea, the portentous miracle which had taken place in the glen of Alboraya.

A priest was one day fording on horseback the mouth of a river in order to carry the eucharist to a dying person, when his beast stumbled and the ciborium, falling open, the Hosts fell out and were carried off by the current.  From that time on, mysterious lights glowed every night on the water, and at sunrise a swarm of little fishes would come to range themselves opposite the glen, their heads emerging from the water, in order to show the Host which each one of them was carrying in his mouth.  In vain the fishermen wished to take them away from them.  They fled to the inland sea with their treasures.  Only when the clergy, with cross erect and with the same priest, fell on their knees in the glen did they decide to approach; and one after the other deposited his Host in the ciborium, retiring then from wave to wave, gracefully waggling their little tails.