Chapter XII: Amphitrite!... Amphitrite! (2)

Along the shore, the autumn sun was reddening the yellowing mountains, now dry and fragrant, covered with pasturage of strong odor which could be smelt at great distances. In all the windings of the coast,--little coves, beds of dry torrents or gorges between two peaks--were visible white groups of hamlets.

Ferragut contemplated carefully the native land of his grandparents. Toni must be there now: perhaps from the door of his dwelling he was seeing them pass by; perhaps he was recognizing the ship with surprise and emotion.

A French official, motionless near Ulysses on the bridge, was admiring the beauty of the day and the sea. Not a single cloud was in the sky. All was blue above and below, with no variation except where the bands of foam were combing themselves on the jutting points of the coast, and the restless gold of the sunlight was forming a broad roadway over the waters. A flock of dolphins frisked around the boat like a cortege of oceanic divinities.

"If the sea were always like this!" exclaimed the captain, "what delight to be a sailor!"

The crew could see the people on land running together and forming groups, attracted by the novelty of a steamer that was passing within reach of their voice. On each of the jutting points of the shore was a low and ruddy tower,--last vestige of the thousand-year war of the Mediterranean. Accustomed to the rugged shores of the ocean and its eternal surf, the Breton sailors were marveling at this easy navigation, almost touching the coast whose inhabitants looked like a swarm of bees. Had the boat been directed by another captain, so close a journey would have resulted most disastrously: but Ferragut was laughing, throwing out gloomy hints to the officers who were on the bridge, merely to accentuate his professional confidence. He pointed out the rocks hidden in the deeps. Here an Italian liner that was going to Buenos Ayres had been lost.... A little further on, a swift four-masted sailboat had run aground, losing its cargo.... He could tell by the fraction of an inch the amount of water permissible between the treacherous rocks and the keel of his boat.

He usually sought the roughest waters by preference, but they were in the danger-zone of the Mediterranean where the German submarines were lying in wait for the French and English convoys navigating in the shelter of the Spanish coast. The obstacles of the submerged coast were for him now the best defense against invisible attacks.

Behind him, the Ferrarian promontory was growing more and more shadowy, becoming a mere blur on the horizon. By nightfall the _Mare Nostrum_ was in front of Cape Palos and he had to sail in the outer waters in order to double it, leaving Cartagena in the distance. From there, he turned his course to the southwest, to the cape where the Mediterranean was beginning to grow narrow, forming the funnel of the strait. Soon they would pass before Almeria and Malaga, reaching Gibraltar the following day.

"Here is where the enemy is oftentimes waiting," said Ferragut to one of the officers. "If we have no bad luck before night, we shall have safely concluded our voyage."

The boat had withdrawn from the shore route, and it was no longer possible to distinguish the lower coast. Only from the prow could be seen the jutting hump of the cape, rising up like an island.

Caragol appeared with a tray on which were smoking two cups of coffee. He would not yield to any cabinboy the honor of serving the captain when on the bridge.

"Well, what do you think of the trip?" asked Ferragut gayly, before drinking. "Shall we arrive in good condition?..."

The cook made as scornful a gesture as though the Germans could see him.

"Nothing will befall us; I am sure of that.... We have One who is watching over us, and ..."

He was suddenly interrupted in his affirmations. The tray leaped from his hands and he went staggering about like a drunken man, even banging his abdomen against the balustrade of the bridge. "_Cristo del Grao!_..."

The cup that Ferragut was carrying to his mouth fell with a crash, and the French officer, seated on a bench, was almost thrown on his knees. The helmsman had to clutch the wheel with a jerk of surprise and terror.

The entire ship trembled from keel to masthead, from quarter-deck to forecastle, with a deadly shuddering as though invisible claws had just checked it at full speed.

The captain tried to account for this accident. "We must be aground," he said to himself, "a reef that I did not know, a shoal not marked on the charts...."

But a second had not passed before something else was added to the first shock, refuting Ferragut's suppositions. The blue and luminous air was rent with the thud of a thunderclap. Near the prow, appeared a column of smoke, of expanding gases of yellowish and fulminating steam and, coming up through its center in the form of a fan, a spout of black objects, broken wood, bits of metallic plates and flaming ropes turning to ashes.

Ulysses was no longer in doubt. They must have just been struck by a torpedo. His anxious look scanned the waters.

"There!... There!" he said, pointing with his hand.

His keen seaman's eyes had just discovered the light outline of a periscope that nobody else was able to see.

He ran down from the bridge or rather he slid down the midship ladder, running toward the stern.

"There!... There!"

The three gunners were near the cannon, calm and phlegmatic, putting a hand to their eyes, in order to see better the almost invisible speck which the captain was pointing out.

None of them noticed the slant that the deck was slowly beginning to take. They thrust the first projectile into the breech of the cannon while the gunner made an effort to distinguish that small black cane hardly perceptible among the tossing waves.

Another shock as rude as the first one! Everything groaned with a dying shudder. The plates were trembling and falling apart, losing the cohesion that had made of them one single piece. The screws and rivets sprang out, moved by the general shaking-up. A second crater had opened in the middle of the ship, this time bearing in its fan-shaped explosion the limbs of human beings.

The captain saw that further resistance was useless. His feet warned him of the cataclysm that was developing beneath them--the liquid water-spout invading with a foamy bellowing the space between keel and deck, destroying the metal screens, knocking down the bulk-heads, upsetting every object, dragging them forth with all the violence of an inundation, with the ramming force of a breaking dyke. The hold was rapidly becoming converted into a watery and leaden coffin fast going to the bottom.

The aft gun hurled its first shot. To Ferragut its report seemed mere irony. No one knew as he did the ship's desperate condition.

"To the life boats!" he shouted. "Every one to the boats!"

The steamer was tipping up in an alarming way as the men calmly obeyed his orders without losing their self-control.

A desperate vibration was jarring the deck. It was the engines that were sending out death-rattles at the same time that a torrent of steam as thick as ink was pouring from the smokestack. The firemen were coming up to the light with eyes swollen with the terror stamping their blackened faces. The inundation had begun to invade their dominions, breaking their steel compartments.

"To the boats!... Lower the life boats!"

The captain repeated his shouts of command, anxious to see the crew embark, without thinking for one moment of his own safety.

It never even occurred to him that his fate might be different from that of his ship. Besides, hidden in the sea, was the enemy who would soon break the surface to survey its handiwork.... Perhaps they might hunt for Captain Ferragut among the boatloads of survivors, wishing to bear him off as their triumphant booty.... No, he would far rather give up his life!...

The seamen had unfastened the life boats and were beginning to lower them, when something brutal suddenly occurred with the annihilating rapidity of a cataclysm of Nature.

There sounded a great explosion as though the world had gone to pieces, and Ferragut felt the floor vanishing from beneath his feet. He looked around him. The prow no longer existed; it had disappeared under the water, and a bellowing wave was rolling over the deck crushing everything beneath its roller of foam. On the other hand, the poop was climbing higher and higher, becoming almost vertical. It was soon a cliff, a mountain steep, on whose peak the white flagstaff was sticking up like a weather-vane.

In order not to fall he had to grasp a rope, a bit of wood, any fixed object. But the effort was useless. He felt himself dragged down, overturned, lashed about in a moaning and whirling darkness. A deadly chill paralyzed his limbs. His closed eyes saw a red heaven, a sky of blood with black stars. His ear drums were buzzing with a roaring _glu-glu_, while his body was turning somersaults through the darkness. His confused brain imagined that an infinitely deep hole had opened in the depths of the sea, that all the waters of the ocean were passing through it, forming a gigantic vortex, and that he was swirling in the center of this revolving tempest.

"I am going to die!... I am already dead!" said his thoughts.

And in spite of the fact that he was resigned to death, he moved his legs desperately, wishing to bring himself up to the yielding, treacherous surface. Instead of continuing to descend, he noticed that he was going up, and in a little while he was able to open his eyes and to breathe, judging from the atmospheric contact that he had reached the top.

He was not sure of the length of time he had passed in the abyss,--surely not more than a few minutes, since his breathing capacity as a swimmer could not exceed that limit.... He, therefore, experienced great astonishment upon discovering the tremendous changes which had taken place in so short a parenthesis.

He thought it was already night. Perhaps in the upper strata of the atmosphere were still shining the last rays of the sun, but at the water's level, there was no more than a twilight gray, like the dim glimmer of a cellar.

The almost even surface seen a few minutes before from the height of the bridge was now moved by broad swells that plunged him in momentary darkness. Each one of these appeared a hillock interposed before his eyes, leaving free only a few yards of space. When he was raised upon their crests he could take in with rapid vision the solitary sea that lacked the gallant mass of the ship, astir with dark objects. These objects were slipping inertly by or moving along, waving pairs of black antennae. Perhaps they were imploring help, but the wet desert was absorbing the most furious cries, converting them into distant bleating.

Of the _Mare Nostrum_ there was no longer visible either the mouth of the smokestack nor the point of a mast; the abyss had swallowed it all.... Ferragut began to doubt if his ship had ever really existed.

He swam toward a plank that came floating near, resting his arms upon it. He used to be able to remain entire hours in the sea, when naked and within sight of the coast, with the assurance of returning to _terra firma_ whenever he might wish.... But now he had to keep himself up, completely dressed; his shoes were tugging at him with a constantly increasing force as though made of iron ... and water on all sides! Not a boat on the horizon that could come to his aid!... The wireless operator, surprised by the swiftness of the catastrophe, had not been able to send out the S.O.S.

He also had to defend himself from the débris of the shipwreck. After having grasped the raft as his last means of salvation, he had to avoid the floating casks, rolling toward him on the swelling billows, which might send him to the bottom with one of their blows.

Suddenly there loomed up between two waves a species of blind monster that was agitating the waters furiously with the strokes of its swimming. Upon coming close to it, he saw that it was a man; as it drifted away, he recognized Uncle Caragol.

He was swimming like a drunken man with a super-human force which made half of his body come out of the water at each stroke. He was looking before him as though he could see, as if he had a fixed destination, without hesitating a moment, yet going further out to sea when he imagined that he was heading toward the coast.

"_Padre San Vicente!_" he moaned. "_Cristo del Grao!_..."

In vain the captain shouted. The cook could not hear him, and continued swimming on with all the force of his faith, repeating his pious invocations between his noisy snortings.

A cask climbed the crest of a wave, rolling down on the opposite side. The head of the blind swimmer came in its way.... A thudding crash. _Padre San Vicente!_... And Caragol disappeared with bleeding head and a mouth full of salt.

Ferragut did not wish to imitate that kind of swimming. The land was very far off for a man's arms; it would be impossible to reach it. Not a single one of the ship's boats had remained afloat.... His only hope, a remote and whimsical one, was that some vessel might discover the shipwrecked men and save them.

In a little while this hope was almost realized. From the crest of a wave he could see a black bark, long and low, without smokestack or mast, that was nosing slowly among the débris. He recognized a submarine. The dark silhouettes of several men were so plainly visible that he believed he heard them shouting.----

"Ferragut!... Where is Captain Ferragut?..."

"Ah, no!... Better to die!"

And he clung to his raft, hanging his head as though drowning. Then as night closed down upon him he heard still other shouts, but these were cries of help, cries of anguish, cries of death. The rescuers were searching for him only, leaving the others to their fate.

He lost all notion of time. An agonizing cold was paralyzing his entire frame. His stiffened and swollen hands were loosening from the raft and grasping it again only by a supreme effort of his will.

The other shipwrecked men had taken the precaution to put on their life preservers when the ship began to sink. Thanks to this apparatus, their death agony was going to be prolonged a few hours more. Perhaps if they could hold out until daybreak, they might be discovered by some boat! But he!...

Suddenly he remembered the _Triton_.... His uncle also had died in the sea; all the most vigorous members of the family had finally perished in its bosom. For centuries and centuries it had been the tomb of the Ferraguts; with good reason they had called it "_mare nostrum_."

He fancied that the currents might possibly have dragged his uncle's dead body from the other promontory to the place over which he was floating. Perhaps he might be now beneath his feet.... An irresistible force was pulling at them; his paralyzed hands loosened their hold on the wood.

"Uncle!... Uncle!"

In his thoughts he was shrieking to his relative with the timorous plaint of the little fellow taking his first swimming lesson. But his agonized hands again encountered the cold and weak support of the raft instead of that island of hard muscles crowned with a hairy and smiling face.

He continued his tenacious floating, struggling against the drowsiness that was urging him to relax from his drifting support and let himself go to the bottom, to sleep ... to sleep forever! His shoes and clothing were continuing to pull and tug with even greater force. They became an undulating shroud, growing heavier and heavier, surging and dragging down and down to the uttermost depths. His desperation made him raise his eyes and look at the stars.... So high!... Only to be able to grasp one of them, as his hands were now clutching the wood!...

At the same time he made instinctively a movement of repulsion. His head had sunk in the water without his being conscious of it. A bitter liquid was beginning to filter through his mouth....

He made a mighty effort to keep himself in a vertical position, looking again at the sky, still black as ink, and all the stars as red as drops of blood.

Suddenly he felt a certain consciousness that he was not alone, and he closed his eyes.... Yes, somebody was near him. It was a woman!...

It was a woman white as the clouds, white as the sail, white as the foam. Her sea-green tresses were adorned with pearls and phosphorescent corals; her proud smile was that of a goddess, in keeping with the majesty of her diadem.

She stretched her pearly arms around him, pressing him close against her life-giving and eternally virginal bosom. A dense and greenish atmosphere was giving her whiteness a reflection like that of the light of the caves of the sea....

Her pale mouth then pressed against the sailor's, making him feel as though all the light of this white apparition had liquefied and was passing into his body by means of her impelling kiss.

He could no longer see, he could no longer speak.

His eyes had closed, never to open again; a bitter river of salt was flowing down his throat.

Nevertheless he continued looking at her,--more luminous, pressed closer and closer,--with a sad expression of love in his glassy eyes.... And thus he went down and down the infinite levels of the abyss, inert, and without volition, while a voice within him was crying, as though just recognizing her:

"_Amphitrite!_... _Amphitrite!_"

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's Mare Nostrum (Our Sea), by Vicente Blasco Ibañez