ng.

Through the blue circle of the glasses Ferragut saw this tube climbing
up and up, growing larger and larger. It was no longer a stick, it was
a tower; and from beneath this tower was coming up on the sea a base of
steel spouting cascades of smoke,--a gray whale-back that appeared
little by little to be taking the form of a sailing vessel, long and
sharp-pointed.

A flag was suddenly run up upon the submarine. Ulysses recognized it.

"They are going to shell us!" he yelled to Toni. "It's useless to keep
up the zigzagging. The thing to do now is to outspeed them, to go
forward in a straight line."

The mate, skillful helmsman that he was, obeyed the captain. The hull
vibrated under the force of the engines taxed to their utmost. Their
prow was cutting the waters with increasing noise. The submersible upon
augmenting its volume by emersion appeared, nevertheless, to be falling
behind on the horizon. Two streaks of foam began to spring up on both
sides of its prow. It was running with all its possible surface speed;
but the _Mare Nostrum_ was also going at the utmost limit of its
engines and the distance was widening between the two boats.

"They are shooting!" said Ferragut with the glasses to his eyes.

A column of water spouted near the prow. That was the only thing that
Caragol was able to see clearly and he burst into applause with a
childish joy. Then he waved on high his palm-leaf hat. "_Viva el Santo
Cristo del Grao!_..."

Other projectiles were falling around the _Mare Nostrum_, spattering it
with jets of foam. Suddenly it trembled from poop to prow. Its plates
trembled with the vibration of an explosion.

"That's nothing!" yelled the captain, bending himself double over the
bridge in order to see better the hull of his ship. "A shell in the
stern. Steady, Toni!..."

The mate, always grasping the wheel, kept turning his head from time to
time to measure the distance separating them from the submarine. Every
time that he saw an aquatic column of spray, forced up by a projectile,
he would repeat the same counsel.

"Lie down, Ulysses!... They are going to fire at the bridge!"

This was a recollection of his far-away youth when, as a contrabandist,
he used to stretch himself flat on the deck of his bark, manipulating
the wheel and the sail under the fire of the custom-house officers on
watch. He feared for the life of his captain while he was standing,
constantly offering himself to the shots of the e