This relative was his nephew, a son of Blanes, the manufacturer of knit goods, who had fled from Barcelona at the outbreak of the war with other boys devoted to singing Los Segadores and perturbing the tranquillity of the "Consul of Spain" sent by Madrid. The son of the pacific Catalan citizen had enlisted in the battalion of the Foreign Legion made up to a great extent of Spaniards and Spanish-Americans.
Blanes had asked the captain to see his son. He was sad yet at the same time proud of this romantic adventure blossoming out so unexpectedly in the utilitarian and monotonous existence of the family. A boy that had such a great future in his father's factory!… And then he had related to Ulysses with shaking voice and moist eyes the achievements of his son,—wounded in Champagne, two citations and the Croix de Guerre. Who would ever have imagined that he could be such a hero!… Now his battalion was in Salonica after having fought in the Dardanelles.
"See if you can't bring him back with you," repeated Blanes. "Tell him that his mother is going to die of grief…. You can do so much!"
But all that Captain Ferragut could do was to obtain a permit and an old automobile with which to visit the encampment of the legionaries.
The arid plain around Salonica was crossed by numerous roads. The trains of artillery, the rosaries of automobiles, were rolling over recently opened roads that the rain had converted into mire. The mud was the worst calamity that could befall this plain, so extremely dusty in dry weather.
Ferragut passed two long hours, going from encampment to encampment, before reaching his destination. His vehicle frequently had to stop in order to make way for interminable files of trucks. At other times machine-guns, big guns dragged by tractors, and provision cars with pyramids of sacks and boxes, blocked their road.
On all sides were thousands and thousands of soldiers of different colors and races. The captain recalled the great invasions of history—Xerxes, Alexander, Genghis-Khan, all the leaders of men who had made their advance carrying villages en masse behind their horses, transforming the servants of the earth into fighters. There lacked only the soldierly women, the swarms of children, to complete exactly the resemblance to the martial exoduses of the past.
In half an hour more he was able to embrace his nephew, who was with two other volunteers, an Andulasian and a South American,—the three united by brotherhood of birth and by their continual familiarity with death.
Ferragut took them to the canteen of a trader established near the cantonment. The customers were seated under a sail-cloth awning before boxes that had contained munitions and were converted into office tables. This discomfort was surpassed by the prices. In no Palace Hotel would drink have cost such an extraordinary sum.
In a few moments the sailor felt a fraternal affection for these three youths to whom he gave the nickname of the "Three Musketeers," He wished to treat them to the very best which the canteen afforded, so the proprietor produced a bottle of champagne or rather ptisan from Rheims, presenting it as though it were an elixir fabricated of gold.