he _Californian_ and had fired several shells at it. The
English boat was trying to escape, relying on its superior speed. Then
the submarine had fired a torpedo....

All this had occurred in twenty minutes. Suddenly the echoes of the
distant tragedy were extinguished as the communication was cut off. A
prolonged, intense, sibilant buzzing in the apparatus, and--nothing!...
Absolute silence.

The operator now on duty responded with negative movements to his
companion's inquiring glances. He could hear nothing but the dialogue
between the boats that had received the same warning. They too were
alarmed by the sudden silence, and were changing their course going,
like the French steamer, toward the place where the _Californian_ had
met the submersible.

"Can it be that they are already in the Mediterranean!" the operator
exclaimed with astonishment on finishing his report. "How could the
submarines possibly get 'way down here?..."

Ferragut did not dare to go up on the bridge. He was afraid that the
glances of those men of the sea might fasten themselves accusingly upon
him. He believed that they could read his thoughts.

A passenger ship had just been sunk at a relatively short distance from
the boat on which he was traveling. Perhaps von Kramer was the author
of the crime. With good reason he had charged Ulysses to tell his
compatriots that they would soon hear of his exploits. And Ferragut had
aided in the preparation of this maritime barbarity!...

"What have you done? What have you done?" wrathfully demanded his
mental voice of good counsel.

An hour afterward he felt ashamed to remain on deck. In spite of the
captain's orders, the news had got out and was circulating among the
staterooms. Entire families were rushing up on deck, frightened out of
the calmness usually reigning on the boat, arranging their clothes with
precipitation, and struggling to adjust to their bodies the
life-preservers which they were trying on for the first time. The
children were howling, terrified by the alarm of their parents. Some
nervous women were shedding tears without any apparent cause. The boat
was going toward the place where the other one had been torpedoed, and
that was enough to make the alarmists imagine that the enemy would
remain absolutely motionless in the same place, awaiting their arrival
in order to repeat their attack.

Hundreds of eyes were fixed on the sea, scrutinizing the surface of the
waves, believing eve