with many old men of the village
who in their youth had been slaves in Algiers. On winter evenings the
oldest of them were still singing romances of captivity and speaking
with terror of the Berber brigantines. These thieves of the sea must
have had a pact with the devil, who notified them of opportune
occasions. If in a convent some beautiful novices had just made their
profession, the doors would give away at midnight under the
hatchet-blows of the bearded demons who were advancing inland from the
galleys prepared to receive their cargo of feminine freight. If a girl
of the coast, celebrated for her beauty, was going to be married, the
infidels, lying in wait, would surround the door of the church,
shooting their blunderbusses and knifing the unarmed men as they came
out, in order to carry away the women in their festal robes.

On all the coast, the pirates stood in awe only of the navigators from
the _Marina_, so fearless and warlike were they. If their villages were
ever attacked, it was because their seafaring defenders were on the
Mediterranean and, in their turn, had gone to sack and burn some
village on the coast of Africa.

The _Triton_ and his nephew used to eat their supper under the arbor in
the long summer twilights. After the cloth was removed Ulysses would
manipulate his grandfather's little frigates, learning the technical
parts and names of the different apparatus, and the management of the
sets of sails. Sometimes the two would stay out on the rustic porch
until a late hour gazing out over the luminous sea sparkling under the
splendor of the moon, or streaked with a slender wake of starry light
in the murky nights.

All that mankind had ever written or dreamed about the Mediterranean,
the doctor had in his library and could repeat to his eager little
listener. In Ferragut's estimation the _mare nostrum_ ["Mare Nostrum"
(Our Sea), the classic name for the Mediterranean.] was a species of
blue beast, powerful and of great intelligence--a sacred animal like
the dragons and serpents that certain religions adored, believing them
to be the source of life. The rivers that threw themselves impetuously
into its bosom in order to renew it were few and scanty. The Rhone and
the Nile appeared to be pitiful little rivulets compared with the river
courses of other continents that empty into the oceans.

Losing by evaporation three times more liquid than the rivers bring to
it, this sunburnt sea would soon have b