embassies.

He then gave instructions for the return trip. Ferragut was to wait
opposite Palermo where a boat would come out after him and take him
ashore. Everything had been foreseen.... He must deliver the command to
the true owner of the schooner, a timorous man who had made them pay
very high for the hire of the boat without venturing to jeopardize his
own person. In the cabin were the customary papers for clearing the
vessel.

"Salute the ladies in my name. Tell them that they will soon have news
of us. We are going to make ourselves lords of the Mediterranean."

The unloading of combustibles still continued. Ferragut saw von Kramer
slipping through the openings of one of the submarines. Then he thought
he recognized on the submersible two of the sailors of the crew of the
schooner who, after being received with shouts and embraces by their
comrades, disappeared through a tubular hatchway.

The unloading lasted until mid-afternoon. Ulysses had not imagined that
the little boat could carry so many cases. When the hold was empty, the
last German sailors disappeared and with them the cables that had
lashed them to the sailboat. An officer shouted to him that he could
get under way.

The two submersibles with their cargo of oil and gasoline were nearer
the level of the sea than on their arrival and now began to disappear
in the distance.

Finding himself alone in the stern of the schooner, the Spaniard felt a
sudden disquietude.

"What have you done!... What have you done!" clamored a voice in his
brain.

But contemplating the three old men and the boy who had remained as the
only crew, he forgot his remorse. He would have to bestir himself
greatly in order to supply the lack of men. For two nights and a day he
scarcely rested, managing almost at the same time both helm and motor,
since he did not dare to let out all his sails with this scarcity of
sailors.

When he found himself opposite the port of Palermo, just as it was
beginning to extinguish its night lights, Ferragut was able to sleep
for the first time, leaving the watch of the boat in charge of one of
the seamen, who maintained it with sails furled. In the middle of the
morning he was awakened by some voices shouting from the sea:

"Where is the captain?"

He saw a skiff and various men leaping aboard the schooner. It was the
owner who had come to claim, his boat in order to bring it into port in
the customary legal form. The skiff was commissi