tly outstretched,
as though he were trying to loosen his skull from the rest of his body.
His eyes were protruding from their sockets.

"The father," continued the youth, "commands a ship.... He is Captain
Ulysses Ferragut."

An outcry.... The people ran.... A man had just fallen heavily, his
body rebounding on the deck.

CHAPTER IX

THE ENCOUNTER AT MARSEILLES

Toni, who abominated railway journeys on account of his torpid
immovability, now had to abandon the _Mare Nostrum_ and suffer the
torture of remaining twelve hours crowded in with strange persons.

Ferragut was sick in a hotel in the harbor of Marseilles. They had
taken him off of a French boat coming from Naples, crushed with silent
melancholia. He wished to die. During the trip they had to keep sharp
watch so that he could not repeat his attempts at suicide. Several
times he had tried to throw himself into the water.

Toni learned of it from the captain of a Spanish vessel that had just
arrived from Marseilles exactly one day after the newspapers of
Barcelona had announced the death of Esteban Ferragut in the torpedoing
of the _Californian_. The commercial traveler was still relating
everywhere his version of the event, concluding it now with his
melodramatic meeting with the father, the latter's fatal fall on
receiving the news, and desperation upon recovering consciousness.

The first mate had hastened to present himself at his captain's home.
All the Blanes were there, surrounding Cinta and trying to console her.

"My son!... My son!..." the mother was groaning, writhing on the sofa.

And the family chorus drowned her laments, overwhelming her with a
flood of fantastic consolations and recommendations of resignation. She
ought to think of the father: she was not alone in the world as she was
affirming: besides her own family, she had her husband.

Toni entered just at that moment.

"His father!" she cried in desperation. "His father!..."

And she fastened her eyes on the mate as though trying to speak to him
with them. Toni knew better than anyone what that father was, and for
what reason he had remained in Naples. It was his fault that the boy
had undertaken the crazy journey at whose end death was awaiting
him..... The devout Cinta looked upon this misfortune as a chastisement
from God, always complicated and mysterious in His designs. Divinity,
in order to make the father expiate his crimes, had killed the son
without thinking of th