able to be present at the interview but he
hung around the closed door and succeeded in hearing a few loud words
which slipped through the cracks. His mother was speaking with greater
frequency. Toni was reiterating in a dull voice the same excuse:--"I
don't know. The captain will come at any moment...." But when the mate
found himself outside the house, his wrath broke out against himself,
against his cursed character that did not know how to lie, against all
women bad and good. He believed he had said too much. That lady had the
skill of a judge in getting words out of him.

That night, at the supper hour, the mother scarcely opened her mouth.
Her fingers communicated a nervous trembling to the plates and forks,
and she looked at her son with tragic commiseration as though she
foresaw terrible troubles about to burst upon his head. She opposed a
desperate silence to Esteban's questions and finally exclaimed:

"Your father is deserting us!... Your father has forgotten us!..."

And she left the dining-room to hide her overflowing tears.

The boy slept rather restlessly, but he slept. The admiration which he
always felt for his father and a certain solidarity with the strong
examples of his sex made him take little account of these complaints.
Matters for women! His mother just didn't know how to be the wife of an
extraordinary man like Captain Ferragut. He who was really a man, in
spite of his few years, was going to intervene in this affair in order
to show up the truth.

When Toni, from the deck of the vessel, saw the lad coming along the
wharf the following morning, he was greatly tempted to hide himself....
"If Dona Cinta should call me again in order to question me!..." But he
calmed himself with the thought that the boy was probably coming of his
own free will to pass a few hours on the _Mare Nostrum_. Even so, he
wished to avoid his presence as though he feared some slip in talking
with him, and so pretended that he had work in the hold. Then he left
the boat going to visit a friend on a steamer some distance off.

Esteban entered the galley, calling gayly to Uncle Caragol. He wasn't
the same, either. His humid and reddish eyes were looking at the child
with an extraordinary tenderness. Suddenly he stopped his talk with an
expression of uneasiness on his face. He looked uncertainly around him,
as though fearing that a precipice might open at his feet.

Never forgetful of the respect due to every visitor in