"Ah!…"
Ulysses uttered this exclamation with his neck violently outstretched, as though he were trying to loosen his skull from the rest of his body. His eyes were protruding from their sockets.
"The father," continued the youth, "commands a ship…. He is Captain
Ulysses Ferragut."
An outcry…. The people ran…. A man had just fallen heavily, his body rebounding on the deck.
CHAPTER IX
THE ENCOUNTER AT MARSEILLES
Toni, who abominated railway journeys on account of his torpid immovability, now had to abandon the Mare Nostrum and suffer the torture of remaining twelve hours crowded in with strange persons.
Ferragut was sick in a hotel in the harbor of Marseilles. They had taken him off of a French boat coming from Naples, crushed with silent melancholia. He wished to die. During the trip they had to keep sharp watch so that he could not repeat his attempts at suicide. Several times he had tried to throw himself into the water.
Toni learned of it from the captain of a Spanish vessel that had just arrived from Marseilles exactly one day after the newspapers of Barcelona had announced the death of Esteban Ferragut in the torpedoing of the Californian. The commercial traveler was still relating everywhere his version of the event, concluding it now with his melodramatic meeting with the father, the latter's fatal fall on receiving the news, and desperation upon recovering consciousness.
The first mate had hastened to present himself at his captain's home.
All the Blanes were there, surrounding Cinta and trying to console her.