edness as the
first officer. The engineers were no longer called to the captain's
cabin in order to contrive new economies in fuel. They had to take
advantage of the time and opportunity; and the _Mare Nostrum_ was now
going at full steam, making fourteen knots an hour, like a passenger
vessel, stopping only when its course was blocked at the entrance of
the Mediterranean by an English destroyer, sending out an officer to
make sure that they were not carrying on board enemy passengers.

Abundance reigned equally between bridge and forecastle where were the
sailors' quarters and the galley,--the space respected by every one on
the boat as the incontestable realm of Uncle Caragol.

This old man, nicknamed "Caracol" (snail), another old friend of
Ferragut's, was the ship's cook, and, although he did not dare to talk
as familiarly to the captain as in former times, the tone of his voice
made it understood that mentally he was continuing to use the old,
affectionate form. He had known Ulysses when he used to run away from
the classrooms to row in the harbor and, on account of the bad state of
his eyes, he had finally retired from the navigation of coast vessels,
descending to be a simple bargeman. His gravity and corpulence had
something almost priestly in character. He was the obese type of
Mediterranean with a little head, voluminous neck and triple chin,
seated on the stern of his fishing skiff like a Roman patrician on the
throne of his trireme.

His culinary talent suffered eclipse whenever rice did not figure as
the fundamental basis of his compositions. All that this food could
give of itself, he knew perfectly. In the tropical ports, the crews
surfeited with bananas, pineapples, and alligator-pears, would greet
with enthusiasm the apparition of a great frying pan of rice with cod
and potatoes, or a casserole of rice from the oven with its golden
crust perforated by the ruddy faces of garbanzos and points of black
sausage. At other times, under the leaden-colored sky of the northern
seas, the cook made them recall their distant native land by giving
them the monastic rice dish with beet roots, or buttery rice with
turnips and beans.

On Sundays and the fiestas of the Valencian saints who for Uncle
Caragol were the first in heaven,--_San Vicente Martir, San Vicente
Ferrer, La Virgin de los Desamparados_ and the _Cristo del Grao_--would
appear the smoking _paella_, a vast, circular dish of rice upon whose
surface o