Nevertheless, after passing the Straits of Gibraltar, at the first sight
of the Atlantic Ocean he recovered his spirits a little, and his hope.
But it was only a brief respite. That vast but always smooth sea, the
increasing heat, the misery of all those poor people who surrounded him,
the consciousness of his own solitude, overwhelmed him once more. The
empty and monotonous days which succeeded each other became confounded
in his memory, as is the case with sick people. It seemed to him that he
had been at sea a year. And every morning, on waking, he felt surprised
afresh at finding himself there alone on that vast watery expanse, on
his way to America. The beautiful flying fish which fell on deck every
now and then, the marvellous sunsets of the tropics, with their enormous
clouds colored like flame and blood, and those nocturnal
phosphorescences which make the ocean seem all on fire like a sea of
lava, did not produce on him the effect of real things, but of marvels
beheld in a dream. There were days of bad weather, during which he
remained constantly in the dormitory, where everything was rolling and
crashing, in the midst of a terrible chorus of lamentations and
imprecations, and he thought that his last hour had come. There were
other days, when the sea was calm and yellowish, of insupportable heat,
of infinite tediousness; interminable and wretched hours, during which
the enervated passengers, stretched motionless on the planks, seemed all
dead. And the voyage was endless: sea and sky, sky and sea; to-day the
same as yesterday, to-morrow like to-day, and so on, always, eternally.

And for long hours he stood leaning on the bulwarks, gazing at that
interminable sea in amazement, thinking vaguely of his mother, until his
eyes closed and his head was drooping with sleep; and then again he
beheld that unknown face which gazed upon him with an air of compassion,
and repeated in his ear, "Your mother is dead!" and at the sound of that
voice he awoke with a start, to resume his dreaming with wide-open eyes,
and to gaze at the unchanging horizon.

The voyage lasted twenty-seven days. But the last days were the best.
The weather was fine, and the air cool. He had made the acquaintance of
a good old man, a Lombard, who was going to America to find his son, an
agriculturist in the vicinity of the town of Rosario; he had told him
his whole story, and the old man kept repeating every little while, as
he tapped him on the n