hat he saw through the window upon
awaking was a Catalunian edifice, rich and monstrous, like the palaces
that the hypnotist evolves in his dreams,--an amalgamation of Persian
flowers, Gothic columns, trunks of trees, with quadrupeds, reptiles and
snails among the cement foliage. The paving wafted up to him through
its drains the fetidity of sewers dry for lack of water; the balconies
shed the dust of shaken rugs; the absurd palace appropriated, with the
insolence of the new-rich, all the heaven and sun that used to belong
to Ferragut.

One night he surprised his relatives by informing them that he was
about to return to the sea. Cinta assented to this resolution in
painful silence, as though she had foreseen it long before. It was
something inevitable and fatal that she must accept. The manufacturer,
Blanes, stammered with astonishment. Return to his life of adventures,
when the great gentlemen of the district were becoming interested in
his personality!... Perhaps in the next elections they might have made
him a member of the municipal council!

Ferragut laughed at his cousin's simplicity. He wanted to command a
vessel again, but one of his own, without being obliged to consider the
restrictions of the ship owners. He could permit himself this luxury.
It would be like an enormous yacht, ready to set forth according to his
tastes and convenience, yet at the same time bringing him in untold
profits. Perhaps his son might in time become director of a maritime
company, this first ship laying the foundation of an enormous fleet in
the years to come.

He knew every port in the world, every highway of traffic, and he would
be able to find the places where, lacking transportation facilities,
they paid the highest freight rates. Until now he had been a salaried
man, brave and care-free. He was going to begin an absolutely
independent life as a speculator of the sea.

Two months afterwards he wrote from England saying that he had bought
the _Fingal_, a mail packet of three thousand tons that had made trips
twice a week between London and a port of Scotland.

Ulysses appeared highly delighted with the cheapness of his
acquisition. The _Fingal_ had been the property of a Scotch captain
who, in spite of his long illness, had never wished to give up command,
dying aboard his vessel. His heirs, inland men tired by their long
wait, were anxious to get rid of it at any price.

When the new proprietor entered the aft saloon surr