FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96  
97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   >>   >|  
the actor who becomes a theatrical manager, of the author who branches out into publishing, of the engineer with a hobby for odd inventions who becomes the proprietor of a factory. His romantic love for the sea and its adventures was now overshadowed by the price and consumption of coal, by the maddening competition that lowered freight rates, and by the search for new ports with fast and remunerative freight. The _Fingal_ which had been rebaptized by its new proprietor with the name of _Mare Nostrum_, in memory of his uncle, turned out to be a dubious purchase in spite of its low price. As a navigator Ulysses had been most enthusiastic upon beholding its high and sharp prow disposed to confront the worst seas, the slenderness of the swift craft, its machinery, excessively powerful for a freight steamer,--all the conditions that had made it a mail packet for so many years. It consumed too much fuel to be a profitable investment as a transport of merchandise. The captain during his navigation could now think only of the ravenous appetite of the boilers. It always seemed to him that the _Mare Nostrum_ was speeding along with excess steam. "Half speed!" he would shout down the tube to his first engineer. But in spite of this and many other precautions, the expense for fuel was enormously disproportioned to the tonnage of the vessel. The boat was eating up all the profits. Its speed was insignificant compared with that of a transatlantic steamer, though absurd compared with that of the merchant vessels of great hulls and little machinery that were going around soliciting cargo at any price, from all points. A slave of the superiority of his vessel and in continual struggle with it, Ferragut had to make great efforts in order to continue sailing without actual heavy loss. All the waters of the planet now saw the _Mare Nostrum_ specializing in the rarest kind of transportation. Thanks to this expedient, the Spanish flag waved in ports that had never seen it before. Under this banner, he made trips through the solitary seas of Syria and Asia Minor, skirting coasts where the novelty of a ship with a smoke stack made the people of the Arabian villages run together in crowds. He disembarked in Phoenician and Greek ports choked up with sand that had left only a few huts at the foot of mountains of ruins, and where columns of marble were still sticking up like trunks of lopped-off palm trees. He anchored near to the terr
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96  
97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Nostrum
 

freight

 

machinery

 
steamer
 
compared
 
proprietor
 

vessel

 

engineer

 

sailing

 

actual


transatlantic
 
rarest
 

insignificant

 

specializing

 

waters

 

planet

 

continue

 

efforts

 

points

 

soliciting


superiority
 

continual

 

merchant

 
absurd
 

vessels

 
Ferragut
 
struggle
 

mountains

 

disembarked

 

crowds


Phoenician

 

choked

 
columns
 
marble
 

anchored

 
lopped
 

sticking

 

trunks

 

banner

 

expedient


Thanks

 

Spanish

 
solitary
 

people

 
Arabian
 
villages
 

novelty

 

profits

 
skirting
 

coasts