Mare Nostrum (Our Sea)

Blanes explained like a knight-errant the impulse that had called him to the war. He wanted to fight for the liberty of all oppressed nations, for the resurrection of all forgotten nationalities,—Poles, Czechs, Jugo-Slavs…. And very simply, as though he were saying something indisputable, he included Catalunia among the people who were weeping tears of blood under the lashes of the tyrant. Thereupon his companion, the Andalusian, burst forth indignantly. They passed their time arguing furiously, exchanging insults and continually seeking each other's company as though they couldn't live apart.

The Andalusian was not battling for the liberty of this or that people. He had a longer range of vision. He was not near-sighted and egoistic like his friend, "the Catalan." He was giving his blood in order that the whole world might be free and that all monarchies should disappear.

"I am battling for France because it is the country of the great Revolution. Its former history makes no difference to me, for we still have kings of our own, but dating from the 14th of July, whatever France is, I consider mine and the property of all mankind."

He stopped a few seconds, searching for a more concrete affirmation.

"I am fighting, Captain, because of Danton and Hoche."

Ferragut in his imagination saw the white, disheveled hair of Michelet and the romantic foretop of Lamartine upon a double pedestal of volumes which used to contain the story-poem of the Revolution.

"And I am also fighting for France," concluded the lad triumphantly, "because it is the country of Victor Hugo."

Ulysses suspected that this twenty-year-old Republican was probably hiding in his knapsack a blank book full of original verses written in lead pencil.

The South American, accustomed to the disputes of his two companions, looked at his black fingernails with the melancholy desperation of a prophet contemplating his country in ruins. Blanes, the son of a middle-class citizen, used to admire him for his more distinguished family. The day of the mobilization he had gone to Paris in an automobile of fifty horse-power to enroll as a volunteer; he and his chauffeur had enlisted together. Then he had donated his luxurious vehicle to the cause.

He had wished to be a soldier because all the young fellows in his club were leaving for the war. Furthermore, he felt greatly flattered that his latest sweetheart, seeing him in uniform, should devote a few tears of admiration and astonishment to him. He had felt the necessity of producing a touching effect upon all the ladies that had danced the tango with him up to the week before. Besides that, the millions of his grandfather, "the Galician," held rather tight by his father, the Creole, were slipping through his hands.

"This experience is lasting too long, Captain."

In the beginning he had believed in a six months' war. The shells didn't trouble him much; for him the terrible things were the vermin, the impossibility of changing his clothing, and being deprived of his daily bath. If he could ever have supposed!…

And he summed up his enthusiasm with this affirmation:

"I am fighting for France because it is a chic country. Only in Paris do the women know how to dress. Those Germans, no matter how much they try, will always be very ordinary."

It was not necessary to add anything to this. All had been said.

The three recalled the hellish months suffered recently in the Dardanelles, in a space of three miles conquered by the bayonet. A rain of projectiles had fallen incessantly upon them. They had had to live underground like moles and, even so, the explosion of the great shells sometimes reached them.

In this tongue of land opposite Troy through which had slipped the remote history of humanity, their shovels, on opening the trenches, had stumbled upon the rarest finds. One day Blanes and his companions had excavated pitchers, statuettes, and plates centuries old. At other times, when opening trenches that had served as cemeteries for Turks, they had hacked into repulsive bits of pulp exhaling an insufferable odor. Self-defense had obliged the legionaries to live with their faces on a level with the corpses that were piled up in the vertical yard of removed earth.

"The dead are like the truffles in a pie," said the South American. "An entire day I had to remain with my nose touching the intestines of a Turk who had died two weeks before…. No, war is not chic, Captain, no matter how much they talk of heroism and sublime things in the newspapers and books."

Ulysses wished to see the three musketeers again before leaving Salonica, but the battalion had broken camp and was now situated several kilometers further inland, opposite the first Bulgarian lines. The enthusiastic Blanes had already fired his gun against the assassins of Roger de Flor.

In the middle of November the Mare Nostrum arrived at Marseilles. Its captain always felt a certain admiration upon doubling Cape Croisette, and noting the vast maritime curves opening out before the prow. In the center of it was an abrupt and bare hill, jutting into the sea, sustaining on its peak the basilica and square-sided tower of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde.

Marseilles was the metropolis of the Mediterranean, the terminal for all the navigators of the mare nostrum. In its bay with choppy waves were various yellowish islands fringed with foam and upon one of these the strong towers of the romantic Château d'If.

All the crew, from Ferragut down to the lowest seaman, used to look upon this city somewhat as their own when they saw, appearing in the background of the bay, its forests of masts and its conglomeration of gray edifices upon which sparkled the Byzantian domes of the new cathedral. Around Marseilles there opened out a semi-circle of dry and barren heights brightly colored by the sun of Provence and spotted by white cottages and hamlets, and the pleasure villas of the merchants of the city. On beyond this semi-circle the horizon was bounded by an amphitheater of rugged and gloomy mountains.

On former trips the sight of the gigantic gilded Virgin which glistened like a shaft of fire on the top of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde shed an atmosphere of joy over the bridge of the vessel.

"Marseilles, Toni," the captain used to say gayly. "I invite you to a bouillabaisse at Pascal's."

And Toni's hairy countenance would break into a greedy smile, seeing in anticipation the famous restaurant of the port, its twilight shadows smelling of shell-fish and spicy sauces, and upon the table the deep dish of fish with its succulent broth tinged with saffron.

But now Ulysses had lost his vigorous joy in living. He looked at the city with kindly but sad eyes. He could see himself disembarking there that last time, sick, without will-power, overwhelmed by the tragic disappearance of his son.

The Mare Nostrum approached the mouth of the old harbor having at its right the batteries of the Phare. This old port was the most interesting souvenir of ancient Marseilles, penetrating like an aquatic knife into the heart of its clustered homes. The city extended along the wharves. It was an enormous stretch of water into which all the streets flowed; but its area was now so insufficient for the maritime traffic that eight new harbors were gradually covering the north shore of the bay.

An interminable jetty, a breakwater longer than the city itself, was parallel to the coast, and in the space between the shore and this obstacle which made the waves foam and roar were eight roomy communicating harbors stretching from Joliette at the entrance to the one which, farthest away, is connected inland by the great subterranean canal, putting the city in communication with the Rhone.

Ferragut had seen anchored in this succession of harbors the navies of every land and even of every epoch. Near to the enormous transatlantic liners were some very ancient tartans and some Greek boats, heavy and of archaic form, which recalled the fleets described in the Iliad.

On the wharves swarmed all kinds of Mediterranean men,—Greeks from the continent and from the islands, Levantines from the coast of Asia, Spaniards, Italians, Algerians, Moroccans, Egyptians. Many had kept their original costume and to this varied picturesque garb was united a diversity of tongues, some of them mysterious and well-nigh extinct. As though infected by the oral confusion, the French themselves began to forget their native language, speaking the dialect of Marseilles, which preserves indelible traces of its Greek origin.

The Mare Nostrum crossed the outer port, the inner harbor of Joliette, and slipped slowly along past groups of pedestrians and carts that were waiting the closing of the steel drawbridge now opening before their prow. Then they cast anchor in the basin of Arenc near the docks.

When Ferragut could go ashore he noticed the great transformation which this port had undergone in war times.

The traffic of the times of peace with its infinite variety of wares no longer existed. On the wharves there were piled up only the monotonous and uniform loads of provisions and war material.

The legions of longshoremen had also disappeared. They were all in the trenches. The sidewalks were now swept by women, and squads of Senegalese sharpshooters were unloading the cargoes,—shivering with cold in the sunny winter days, and bent double as though dying under the rain or the breeze of the Mistral. They were working with red caps pulled down over their ears, and at the slightest suspension of their labor would hasten to put their hands in the pockets of their coats. Sometimes when formed in vociferating groups around a case that four men could have moved in ordinary times, the passing of a woman or a vehicle would make them neglect their work, their diabolical faces filled with childish curiosity.

The unloaded cargoes piled up the same articles on the principal docks,—wheat, much wheat, sulphur and saltpeter for the composition of explosive material. On other piers were lined up, by the thousands, pairs of gray wheels, the support of cannons and trucks; boxes as big as dwellings that contained aeroplanes; huge pieces of steel that served as scaffolding for heavy artillery; great boxes of guns and cartridges; huge cases of preserved food and sanitary supplies,—all the provisioning of the army struggling in the extreme end of the Mediterranean.

Various squads of men, preceded and followed by bayonets, were marching with rhythmic tread from one port to another. They were German prisoners,—rosy and happy, in spite of their captivity, still wearing their uniforms of green cabbage color, with round caps on their shaved heads. They were going to work on the vessels, loading and unloading the material that was to serve for the extermination of their compatriots and friends.

The ships at the docks seemed to be increasing in size, for on arrival they had extended only a few yards above the wharf; but now that their cargo was piled up on land, they appeared like towering fortresses. Two-thirds of the hull, usually hidden in the water, were now in evidence, showing the bright red of their curved shell. Only the keel kept itself in the water. The upper third, that which remained visible above the line of flotation in ordinary times, was now a simple black cornice that capped the long purple walls. The masts and smokestacks diminished by this transformation appeared to belong to other smaller boats.

Each of these merchant and peaceful steamers carried a quickfirer at the stern in order to protect itself from the submarine corsairs. England and France had mobilized their tramp ships and were beginning to supply them with means of defense. Some of them had not been able to mount their cannon upon a fixed gun carriage, and so carried a field gun with its mouth sticking out between the wheels bolted to the deck.

The captain in all his strolls invariably felt attracted by the famous Cannebiere, that engulfing roadway which sucks in the entire activity of Marseilles.

Some days a fresh and violent wind would eddy through, littering it with dust and papers, and the waiters of the cafes would have to furl the great awnings as though they were the sails of a vessel. The Mistral was approaching and every owner of an establishment was ordering this maneuver in order to withstand the icy hurricane that overturns tables, snatches away chairs, and carries off everything which is not secured with marine cables.

To Ferragut this famous avenue of Marseilles was a reminder of the antechamber of Salonica. The same types from the army of the East crowded its sidewalks,—English dressed in khaki, Canadians and Australians in hats with up-turned brims, tall, slender Hindoos with coppery complexion and thick fan-shaped beards, Senegalese sharpshooters of a glistening black, and Anammite marksmen with round yellow countenance and eyes forming a triangle. There was a continual procession of dark trucks driven by soldiers, automobiles full of officers, droves of mules coming from Spain that were going to be shipped to the Orient, leaving behind their quick-trotting hoofs a pungent and penetrating smell of the stable.

The old harbor attracted Ferragut because of its antiquity which was almost as remote as that of the first Mediterranean navigations. On passing before the Palace of the Bourse he shot a glance at the statue of the two great Marseillaise navigators,—Eutymenes and Pytas,—the most remote ancestors of Mediterranean navigators. One had explored the coast of Senegambia, the other had gone further up to Ireland and the Orkney Islands.

The ancient Greek colony had been, during long centuries, supplanted by others,—Venice, Genoa and Barcelona having held it in humble subjection. But when those had fallen and its hour of prosperity returned, that prosperity was accompanied by all the advantages of the present day. Steam machinery had been invented and boats were easily able to overcome the obstacles of the Strait of Cadiz without being obliged to wait weeks until the violence of the current sent by the Atlantic should abate. Industrialism was born and inland factories sent forward, over the recently-installed railroads, a downpour of products that the fleets were transporting to all the Mediterranean towns. Finally, upon the opening of the Isthmus of Suez, the city unfolded in a prodigious way, becoming a world port, putting itself in touch with the entire earth, multiplying its harbors, which became gigantic marine sheepfolds where vessels of every flag were gathered together in herds.

The old port, boxed in the city, changed its aspect according to the time and state of the atmosphere. On calm mornings it was a yellowish green and smelled slightly of stale water,—organic water, animal water. The oyster stands established on its wharfs appeared sprinkled with this water impregnated by shell fish.

On the days of a strong wind the waters turned a terrible dark green, forming choppy and continuous waves with a light yellowish foam. The boats would begin to dance, creaking and tugging at their hawsers. Between their hulls and the vertical surface of the wharfs would be formed mountains of restless rubbish eaten underneath by the fish and pecked above by the sea-gulls.

Ferragut saw the swift torpedo destroyers dancing at the slightest undulation upon their cables of twisted steel, and examined the improvised submarine-chasers, robust and short little steamers, constructed for fishing, that carried quickfirers on their prows. All these vessels were painted a metallic gray to make them indistinguishable from the color of the water, and were going in and out of the harbor like sentinels changing watch.

They mounted guard out on the high sea beyond the rocky and desert islands that closed the bay of Marseilles, accosting the incoming ships in order to recognize their nationality or running at full speed, with their wisps of horizontal smoke toward the point where they expected to surprise the periscope of the enemy hidden between two waters. There was no weather bad enough to terrify them or make them drowsy. In the wildest storms they kept the coast in view, leaping from wave to wave, and only when others came to relieve them would they return to the old port to rest a few hours at the entrance of the Cannebière.

The narrow passageways of the right bank attracted Ferragut. This was ancient Marseilles in which may still be seen some ruined palaces of the merchants and privateers of other centuries. On these narrow and filthy slopes lived the bedizened and dismal prostitutes of the entire maritime city.

In this district were huddled together the warriors of the French-African colonies, impelled by their ardor of race and by their desire to free themselves gluttonously from the restrictions of their Mahommedan country where the women live in jealous seclusion. On every corner were groups of Moroccan infantry, recently disembarked or convalescing from wounds, young soldiers with red caps and long cloaks of mustard yellow. The Zouaves of Algiers conversed with them in a Spanish spattered with Arabian and French. Negro youths who worked as stokers in the vessels, came up the steep, narrow streets with eyes sparkling restlessly as though contemplating wholesale rapine. Under the doorways disappeared grave Moorish horsemen, trailing long garments fastened at the head in a ball of whiteness, or garbed in purplish mantles, with sharp pointed hoods that gave them the aspect of bearded, crimson-clad monks.

The captain went through the upper end of these streets, stopping appreciatively to note the rude contrast which they made with their terminal vista. Almost all descended to the old harbor with a ditch of dirty water in the middle of the gutter that dribbled from stone to stone. They were dark as the tubes of a telescope, and at the end of these evil smelling ditches occupied by abandoned womanhood, there opened out a great space of light and blue color where could be seen little white sailboats, anchored at the foot of the hill, a sheet of sparkling water and the houses of the opposite wharf diminished by the distance. Through other gaps appeared the mountain of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde with its sharp pointed Basilica topped by its gleaming statue, like an immovable, twisted tongue of flame. Sometimes a torpedo destroyer entering the old harbor could be seen slipping by the mouth of one of these passageways as shadowy as though passing before the glass of a telescope.

Feeling fatigued by the bad smells and vicious misery of the old district, the sailor returned to the center of the city, strolling among the trees and flower stands of the avenues….

One evening while awaiting with others a street car in the Cannebiere, he turned his head with a presentiment that some one was looking at his back.

Sure enough! He saw behind him on the edge of the sidewalk an elegantly-dressed, clean-shaven gentleman whose aspect was that of an Englishman careful of his personal appearance. The dapper man had stopped in surprise as though he might have just recognized Ferragut.

The two exchanged glances without awakening the slightest echo in the captain's memory…. He could not recall this man. He was almost sure of never having seen him before. His shaven face, his eyes of a metallic gray, his elegant pomposity did not enlighten the Spaniard's memory. Perhaps the unknown had made a mistake.

This must have been the case, judging by the rapidity with which he withdrew his glance from Ferragut and went hastily away.

The captain attached no importance to this encounter. He had already forgotten it when, taking the car but a few minutes later, it recurred to him in a new light. The face of the Englishman presented itself to his imagination with the distinct relief of reality. He could see it more clearly than in the dying splendor of the Cannebière…. He passed with indifference over his features; in reality he had seen them for the first time. But the eyes!… He knew those eyes perfectly. They had often exchanged glances with him. Where?… When?…

The memory of this man accompanied him as an obsession even to his ship without giving the slightest answer to his questioning. Then, finding himself on board with Toni and the third officer, he again forgot it.

Upon going ashore on the following days, his memory invariably experienced the same phenomena. The captain would be going through the city without any thought of that individual, but on entering the Cannebière the same remembrance, followed by an inexplicable anxiety, would again surge up in his mind.

"I wonder where my Englishman is now," he would think. "Where have I seen him before?… Because there is no doubt that we are acquainted with each other."

From that time on, he would look curiously at all the passersby and sometimes would hasten his step in order to examine more closely some one whose back resembled the haunting unknown. One afternoon he felt sure that he recognized him in a hired carriage whose horse was going at a lively trot through one of the avenues, but when he tried to follow it the vehicle had disappeared into a nearby street.

Some days passed by and the captain completely forgot the meeting. Other affairs more real and immediate were demanding his attention. His boat was ready; they were going to send it to England in order to load it with munitions destined for the army of the Orient.

The morning of its departure he went ashore without any thought of going to the center of the city.

In one of the wharf streets there was a barber shop frequented by Spanish captains. The picturesque chatter of the barber, born in Cartagena, the gay, brilliant chromos on the walls representing bullfights, the newspapers from Madrid, forgotten on the divans, and a guitar in one corner made this shop a little bit of Spain for the rovers of the Mediterranean.

Before sailing, Ferragut wished to have his beard clipped by this verbose master. When, an hour later, he left the barber-shop, tearing himself away from the interminable farewells of the proprietor, he passed down a broad street, lonely and silent, between two rows of docks.

The steel-barred gates were closed and locked. The warehouses, empty and resounding as the naves of a cathedral, still exhaled the strong odors of the wares which they had kept in times of peace,—vanilla, cinnamon, rolls of leather, nitrates and phosphates for chemical fertilizers.

In all the long street he saw only one man, coming toward him with his back to the inner harbor. Between the two long walls of brick appeared in the background the wharf with its mountains of merchandise, its squadrons of black stevedores, wagons and carts. On beyond were the hulls of the ships sustaining their grove of masts and smokestacks and, at the extreme end, the yellow breakwater and the sky recently washed by the rain, with flocks of little clouds as white and placid as silky sheep.

The man who was returning from the dock and walking along with his eyes fixed on Ferragut suddenly stopped and, turning upon his tracks, returned again to the quay…. This movement awakened the captain's curiosity, sharpening his senses. Suddenly he had a presentiment that this pedestrian was his Englishman, though dressed differently and with less elegance. He could only see his rapidly disappearing back, but his instinct in this moment was superior to his eyes…. He did not need to look further…. It was the Englishman.

And without knowing why, he hastened his steps in order to catch up with him. Then he broke into a run, finding that he was alone in the street, and that the other one had disappeared around the corner.

When Ferragut reached the harbor he could see him hastening away with an elastic step which amounted almost to flight. Before him was a ridge of bundles piled up in uneven rows. He was going to lose sight of him; a minute later it would be impossible to find him.

The captain hesitated. "What motive have I for pursuing this unknown person?…" And just as he was formulating this question, the other one slowed down a little in order to turn his head and see if he were still being followed.

Suddenly a rapid phenomenal transformation took place in Ferragut. He had not recognized this man's glance when he had almost run into him on the sidewalk of the Cannebiere, and now that there was between the two a distance of some fifty yards, now that the other was fleeing and showing only a fugitive profile, the captain identified him despite the fact that he could not distinguish him clearly at such a distance.