He approached a group in the center of which was a young barefooted lad in trousers and shirt open at the breast who was talking and talking, wrapping himself from time to time in a shawl that some one had placed upon his shoulders.
He was describing in a mixture of French and Italian the loss of the Californian.
He had been awakened by hearing the first shot fired by the submersible against his steamer. The chase had lasted half an hour.
The most audacious and curious were on the decks and believed their salvation already sure as they saw their ship leaving its enemy behind. Suddenly a black line had cut the sea, something like a long thorn with splinters of foam which was advancing at a dizzying speed, in bold relief against the water…. Then came a blow on the hull of the vessel which had made it shudder from stem to stern, not a single plate nor screw escaping tremendous dislocation…. Then a volcanic explosion, a gigantic hatchet of smoke and flames, a yellowish cloud in which were flying dark objects:—fragments of metal and of wood, human bodies blown to bits…. The eyes of the narrator gleamed with an insane light as he recalled the tragic sight.
"A friend of mine, a boy from my own country," he continued, sighing, "had just left me in order to see the submersible better and he put himself exactly in the path of the explosion…. He disappeared as suddenly as if he had been blotted out. I saw him and I did not see him…. He exploded in a thousand bits, as though he had had a bomb within his body."
And the shipwrecked man, obsessed by this recollection, could hardly attach any importance to the scenes following,—the struggle of the crowds to gain the boats, the efforts of the officers to maintain order, the death 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?"