One morning up aloft he called something to the captain, pointing out a speck on the horizon. He must steer in that very direction. What he was seeking was over there.
Ferragut obeyed him, and half an hour later there appeared, one after the other, two long, low boats, moving with great velocity. They were like destroyers, but without mastheads, without smokestacks, skimming along almost on a level with the water, painted in a gray that made them seem a short distance away of the same color as the sea. They came around on both sides of the sailboat as though they were going to crush it with the meeting of their hulls. Various metallic cables came up from their decks and were thrown over the bitts of the schooner, fastening it to them, and forming the three vessels into a solid mass that, united, followed the slow undulation of the sea.
Ulysses examined curiously his two companions in this improvised float. Were these the famous submarines?… He saw on their steel decks round and protruding hatchways like chimneys through which groups of heads were sticking out. The officers and crews were dressed like fishermen from the northern coast with waterproof suits of one piece and oilskin hats. Many of them were swinging their tarpaulins over their heads, and the count replied to them by waving his cap. The blonde sailors of the schooner shouted in reply to the acclamations of their comrades on the submersibles, "Deutchsland über alles!…"
But this enthusiasm, equivalent to a song of triumph in the midst of the solitude of the sea, lasted but a very short time. Whistles sounded, men ran over the steel decks and Ferragut saw his vessel invaded by two files of seamen. In a moment the hatchways were opened; there sounded the crash of breaking pieces of wood, and the cases of petrol began to be carried off on both sides. The water all around the sailboat was filled with broken cases that were gently floating away.
The count on the poop deck was listening to an officer dressed in waterproof garments.
He was recounting their passage through the Strait of Gibraltar, completely submerged, seeing through the periscope the English torpedo-chasers on patrol.
"Nothing, Commandant," continued the officer. "Not even the slightest incident…. A magnificent voyage!"
"May God punish England!" said the count now called Commandant.
"May God punish her!" replied the official as though he were saying
"Amen."
Ferragut saw himself forgotten, ignored, by all the men aboard the schooner. Some of the sailors even pushed him to one side in the haste of their work. He was the mere master of a sailing vessel who counted for nothing in this hierarchy of warlike men.