th of many that, crazy with desperation, had thrown
themselves into the sea, the tragic waiting huddled in barks that were
with great difficulty lowered to the water, fearing a second shipwreck
as soon as they touched the waves.

The steamer had disappeared in a few moments,--its prow sinking in the
waters and then its smokestacks taking on a vertical position almost
like the leaning tower of Pisa, and its rudders turning crazily as the
shuddering ship went down.

The narrator began to be left alone. Other shipwrecked folk, telling
their doleful tales at the same time, were now attracting the curious.

Ferragut looked at this young man. His physical type and his accent
made him surmise that he was a compatriot.

"You are Spanish?"

The shipwrecked man replied affirmatively.

"A Catalan?" continued Ulysses in the Catalan idiom.

A fresh oratorical vehemence galvanized the shipwrecked boy. "The
gentleman is a Catalan also?"... And smiling upon Ferragut as though he
were a celestial apparition, he again began the story of his
misfortunes.

He was a commercial traveler from Barcelona, and in Naples he had taken
the sea route because it had seemed to him the more rapid one, avoiding
the railroads congested by Italian mobilization.

"Were there other Spaniards traveling on your boat?" Ulysses continued
inquiring.

"Only one: my friend, that boy of whom I was just speaking. The
explosion of the torpedo blew him into bits. I saw him...."

The captain felt his remorse constantly increasing. A compatriot, a
poor young fellow, had perished through his fault!...

The salesman also seemed to be suffering a twinge of conscience. He was
holding himself responsible for his companion's death. He had only met
him in Naples a few days before, but they were united by the close
brotherhood of young compatriots who had run across each other far from
their country.

They had both been born in Barcelona. The poor lad, almost a child, had
wanted to return by land and he had carried him off with him at the
last hour, urging upon him the advantages of a trip by sea. Whoever
would have imagined that the German submarines were in the
Mediterranean! The traveling man persisted in his remorse. He could not
forget that half-grown lad who, in order to make the voyage in his
company, had gone to meet his death.

"I met him in Naples, hunting everywhere for his father."

"Ah!..."

Ulysses uttered this exclamation with his neck violen