strength. Labarta found
in him a great resemblance to the marine divinities. He was Neptune
before his head had silvered, or Poseidon as the primitive Greek poets
had seen him with hair black and curly, features tanned by the salt
air, and with a ringleted beard whose two spiral ends seemed formed by
the dripping of the water of the sea. The nose somewhat flattened by a
blow received in his youth, and the little eyes, oblique and tenacious,
gave to his countenance an expression of Asiatic ferocity, but this
impression melted away when his mouth parted in a smile, showing his
even, glistening teeth, the teeth of a man of the sea accustomed to
live upon salt food.

During the first few days of his visit he would wander through the
streets wavering and bewildered. He was afraid of the carriages; the
patter of the passers-by on the pavements annoyed him; he, who had seen
the most important ports of both hemispheres, complained of the bustle
in the capital of a province. Finally he would instinctively take the
road from the harbor in search of the sea, his eternal friend, the
first to salute him every morning upon opening the door of his own home
down there on the _Marina_.

On these excursions he would oftentimes be accompanied by his little
nephew. The bustle on the docks,--(the creaking of the cranes, the dull
rumble of the carts, the deafening cries of the freighters),--always
had for him a certain music reminiscent of his youth when he was
traveling as a doctor on a transatlantic steamer.

His eyes also received a caress from the past upon taking in the
panorama of the port--steamers smoking, sailboats with their canvas
spread out in the sunlight, bulwarks of orange crates, pyramids of
onions, walls of sacks of rice and compact rows of wine casks paunch to
paunch. And coming to meet the outgoing cargo were long lines of
unloaded goods being lined up as they arrived--hills of coal coming
from England, sacks of cereal from the Black Sea, dried codfish from
Newfoundland sounding like parchment skins as they thudded down on the
dock, impregnating the atmosphere with their salty dust, and yellow
lumber from Norway that still held a perfume of the pine woods.

Oranges and onions fallen from the crates were rotting in the sun,
scattering their sweet and acrid juices. The sparrows were hopping
around the mountains of wheat, flitting timidly away when hearing
approaching footsteps. Over the blue surface of the harbor waters