Mare Nostrum (Our Sea): A Novel

by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

"In Europe there are too many kings…. If all the nations could be republics!… This calamity just had to come!"

And this time Ferragut did not venture to ridicule the single-mindedness of his second.

All the people of the Mare Nostrum showed great enthusiasm over the new business aspect of things. The seamen who in former voyages were taciturn, as though foreseeing the ruin or exhaustion of their captain, were now working as eagerly as though they were going to participate in the profits.

In the forward mess room many of them set themselves to work on commercial calculations. The first trip of the war would be equal to ten of their former ones; the second, perhaps, might bring in the profit of twenty. And recalling their former bad business ventures, they rejoiced for Ferragut, with the same disinterestedness as the first officer. The engineers were no longer called to the captain's cabin in order to contrive new economies in fuel. They had to take advantage of the time and opportunity; and the Mare Nostrum was now going at full steam, making fourteen knots an hour, like a passenger vessel, stopping only when its course was blocked at the entrance of the Mediterranean by an English destroyer, sending out an officer to make sure that they were not carrying on board enemy passengers.

Abundance reigned equally between bridge and forecastle where were the sailors' quarters and the galley,—the space respected by every one on the boat as the incontestable realm of Uncle Caragol.

This old man, nicknamed "Caracol" (snail), another old friend of Ferragut's, was the ship's cook, and, although he did not dare to talk as familiarly to the captain as in former times, the tone of his voice made it understood that mentally he was continuing to use the old, affectionate form. He had known Ulysses when he used to run away from the classrooms to row in the harbor and, on account of the bad state of his eyes, he had finally retired from the navigation of coast vessels, descending to be a simple bargeman. His gravity and corpulence had something almost priestly in character. He was the obese type of Mediterranean with a little head, voluminous neck and triple chin, seated on the stern of his fishing skiff like a Roman patrician on the throne of his trireme.

His culinary talent suffered eclipse whenever rice did not figure as the fundamental basis of his compositions. All that this food could give of itself, he knew perfectly. In the tropical ports, the crews surfeited with bananas, pineapples, and alligator-pears, would greet with enthusiasm the apparition of a great frying pan of rice with cod and potatoes, or a casserole of rice from the oven with its golden crust perforated by the ruddy faces of garbanzos and points of black sausage. At other times, under the leaden-colored sky of the northern seas, the cook made them recall their distant native land by giving them the monastic rice dish with beet roots, or buttery rice with turnips and beans.

On Sundays and the fiestas of the Valencian saints who for Uncle Caragol were the first in heaven,—San Vicente Mártir, San Vicente Ferrer, La Virgin de los Desamparados and the Cristo del Grao—would appear the smoking paella, a vast, circular dish of rice upon whose surface of white, swollen grains were lying bits of various fowls. The cook loved to surprise his following by distributing rotund, raw onions, with the whiteness of marble and an acrid surprise that brought tears to the eyes. They were a princely gift maintained in secret. One had only to break them with one blow and their sticky juices would gush forth and lose themselves in the palate like crisp mouthfuls of a sweet and spicy bread, alternating with knifefuls of rice. The boat was at times near Brazil in sight of Fernando de Noroña,—yet even while viewing the conical huts of the negroes installed on an island under an equatorial sun, the crews could almost believe—thanks to Uncle Caragol's magic—that they were eating in a cabin of the farmland of Valencia, as they passed from hand to hand the long-spouted jug filled with strong wine from Liria.

When they anchored in ports where fish was abundant, he achieved the great work of cooking a rice abanda. The cabin boys would bring to the captain's table the pot in which was boiled the rich sea food mixed with lobsters, mussels, and every kind of shell-fish available, but the chef invariably reserved for himself the honor of offering the accompanying great platter with its pyramid, of rice, every grain golden and distinct.

Boiled apart (abanda) each grain was full of the succulent broth of the stew-pot. It was a rice dish that contained within it the concentration of all the sustenance of the sea. As though he were performing a liturgical ceremony, the chef would go around delivering half a lemon to each one of those seated at the table. The rice should only be eaten after moistening it with this perfumed dew which called to mind the image of an oriental garden. Only the unfortunate beings who lived inland were ignorant of this exquisite confection, calling any mess of rice a Valencian rice dish.