best things in the city. He had inquired among the consignees
of the _Mare Nostrum_, hunting everywhere for news of his father.
Finally convinced that the captain must already be returning to
Barcelona, he also had gone the day before.

"If you had only come twelve hours sooner, you would have found him
still here."

The porter knew nothing more. Occupied in doing errands for some South
American ladies, he had been unable to say good-bye to the young man
when he left the hotel, undecided whether to make the trip in an
English steamer to Marseilles or to go by railroad to Genoa, where he
would find boats direct to Barcelona.

Ferragut wished to know when he had arrived. And the porter, rolling
his eyes, gave himself up to long mental calculation.... Finally he
reached a date and the sailor, in his turn, concentrated his powers of
recollection.

He struck himself on the forehead with his clenched hand. It must have
been his son then, that youth whom he had seen entering the _albergo_
the very day that he was going to take charge of the schooner, to carry
combustibles to the German submarines!

CHAPTER VIII

THE YOUNG TELEMACHUS

Whenever the _Mare Nostrum_ returned to Barcelona, Esteban Ferragut had
always felt as dazzled as though a gorgeous stained glass window had
opened upon his obscure and monotonous life as the son of the family.

He now no longer wandered along the harbor admiring from afar the great
transatlantic liners in front of the monument of Christopher Columbus,
nor the cargo steamers that were lined up along the commercial docks.
An important boat was going to be his absolute property for some weeks,
while its captain and officers were passing the time on land with their
families. Toni, the mate, was the only one who slept aboard. Many of
the seamen had begged permission to live in the city, and so the
steamer had been entrusted to the guardianship of Uncle Caragol with
half a dozen men for the daily cleaning. The little Ferragut used to
play that he was the captain of the _Mare Nostrum_ and would pace the
bridge, pretending that a great tempest was coming up, and examine the
nautical instrument with the gravity of an expert. Sometimes he used to
race through all the habitable parts of the boat, climbing down to the
holds that, wide open, were being ventilated, waiting for their cargo;
and finally he would clamber into the ship's gig, untying it from the
landing in order to row in it for a