The shipwrecked man replied affirmatively.
"A Catalan?" continued Ulysses in the Catalan idiom.
A fresh oratorical vehemence galvanized the shipwrecked boy. "The gentleman is a Catalan also?"… And smiling upon Ferragut as though he were a celestial apparition, he again began the story of his misfortunes.
He was a commercial traveler from Barcelona, and in Naples he had taken the sea route because it had seemed to him the more rapid one, avoiding the railroads congested by Italian mobilization.
"Were there other Spaniards traveling on your boat?" Ulysses continued inquiring.
"Only one: my friend, that boy of whom I was just speaking. The explosion of the torpedo blew him into bits. I saw him…."
The captain felt his remorse constantly increasing. A compatriot, a poor young fellow, had perished through his fault!…
The salesman also seemed to be suffering a twinge of conscience. He was holding himself responsible for his companion's death. He had only met him in Naples a few days before, but they were united by the close brotherhood of young compatriots who had run across each other far from their country.
They had both been born in Barcelona. The poor lad, almost a child, had wanted to return by land and he had carried him off with him at the last hour, urging upon him the advantages of a trip by sea. Whoever would have imagined that the German submarines were in the Mediterranean! The traveling man persisted in his remorse. He could not forget that half-grown lad who, in order to make the voyage in his company, had gone to meet his death.
"I met him in Naples, hunting everywhere for his father."