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Updated: June 20, 2025
"Farewell!" she continued in a low voice, her throat choked with sobs, "you will see me no more.... I am soon going to die; my heart tells me so.... To die because of you!... Perhaps some day you will weep on recalling that you might have saved me." Some one had intervened to force Freya from her rebellious standstill. It was Caragol, solicited by the mate's imploring eyes.
He liked these women: they were dressed in black with full skirts, and white, stiff caps which brought to his mind the wimples of the nuns.... Some tall, stout girls with blue and candid eyes laughed at the Spaniard without understanding a single word. The old women with faces as dark and wrinkled as winter apples touched glasses with Caragol in the low cafes near the port.
Even those who were not temperate avoided getting frankly drunk like the sailors of other seas, dissimulating the strength of their alcoholic beverage with coffee and sugar. Caragol was the understudy charged with drinking all which the captain refused, together with certain others which he dedicated to himself in the mystery of the galley.
He was capricious and intractable, complaining of Toni and the other two officials because they were not hastening repairs on the vessel. In the same breath he said it would be better not to hurry things too much, so that the job would be better done. Even Caragol was the victim of his bad humor which flamed forth in the form of cruel sermons against those addicted to the poison of alcohol.
"A refresco, Vicente?" The best seat was for him. Caragol had forgotten his name as not worth while. Since he came from Vannes, he could not have any other name but Vicente. The first day that they chatted together, the marine, in love with his country, described to the cook the beauties of Morbihan, a great interior sea surrounded with groves and with islands covered with pines.
"If we have no bad luck before night, we shall have safely concluded our voyage." The boat had withdrawn from the shore route, and it was no longer possible to distinguish the lower coast. Only from the prow could be seen the jutting hump of the cape, rising up like an island. Caragol appeared with a tray on which were smoking two cups of coffee.
They saw him approaching in a launch, and the word was passed along through staterooms and corridors, giving new force to their arms, and lighting up their sluggish countenances. The mate came up on deck and Caragol stuck his head out through the door of his kitchen. At the very first glance, Toni foresaw that something important was about to happen. The captain had a lively, happy air.
"The lady-bird!" he added. "That handsome, perfumed lady-bird that used to come to see you.... The one from Naples.... The one from Barcelona...." The captain turned pale, first with surprise and then with anger. Freya in Brest!... Her spy work was reaching even here?... Caragol went on with his story.
Even so, he wished to avoid his presence as though he feared some slip in talking with him, and so pretended that he had work in the hold. Then he left the boat going to visit a friend on a steamer some distance off. Esteban entered the galley, calling gayly to Uncle Caragol. He wasn't the same, either. His humid and reddish eyes were looking at the child with an extraordinary tenderness.
Toni, the mate, was the only one who slept aboard. Many of the seamen had begged permission to live in the city, and so the steamer had been entrusted to the guardianship of Uncle Caragol with half a dozen men for the daily cleaning.
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