A	»	B	»	C	»	D	»	E
F	»	G	»	H	»	I	»	J
K	»	L	»	M	»	N	»	O
P	»		R	»	S	»		T
U	»		V	»	W	»		Z

Manuel Romero de Terreros, Marqu,s de San Francisco - "La Puerta de Bronce y Otros Cuentos"

John Paris - "Kimono"

W.W. Jacobs - "A Mixed Proposal"

Various - "Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917"

Nicholas Brealey Buys Davies-Black
Moreover Technologies - Premier purveyor of real-time news and RSS feeds from across the Web

Gray Gets New Ingram Role; Lovett Heading Ingram Digital
Ad - Get Info for Book Publishing from 14 search engines in 1.

PW Morning Report, January 6, 2009">The PW Morning Report, January 6, 2009
We have been looking for ways to fuel additional growth, said Chuck Dresner, v-p, associate publisher of NB North America, which has offices in Boston, Mass. Davies-Black has built up an excellent publishing program and a recognized brand in some of the

Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) by Vicente Blasco Ibanez

V >> Vicente Blasco Ibanez >> Mare Nostrum (Our Sea)




All the allied army of the Orient returning from the bloody and
mistaken adventure of the Dardanelles or proceeding from Marseilles and
Gibraltar were massing themselves around Salonica.

The _Mare Nostrum_ anchored at the wharves filled with boxes and bales.
War had given a much greater activity to this port than in times of
peace. Steamers of all the allied and neutral flags were unloading
eatables and military materials.

They were coming from every continent, from every ocean, drawn thither
by the tremendous necessities of a modern army. They were unloading
harvests from entire provinces, unending herds of oxen and horses, tons
upon tons of steel, prepared for deadly work, and human crowds lacking
only a tail of women and children to be like the great martial exoduses
of history. Then taking on board the residuum of war, arms needing
repair, wounded men, they would begin their return trip.

These cargoes quietly transported through the darkness in spite of bad
times and the submarine threats, were preparing the ultimate victory.
Many of these steamers were formerly luxurious vessels, but now
commandeered by military necessity, were dirty and greasy and used as
cargo boats. Lined up, drowsing along the docks, ready to begin their
work, were new hospital ships, the more fortunate transatlantic liners
that still retained a certain trace of their former condition, quite
clean with a red cross painted on their sides and another on their
smokestacks.

Some of the transports had reached Salonica most miraculously. Their
crews would relate with the fatalistic serenity of men of the sea how
the torpedo had passed at a short distance from their hulls. A damaged
steamer lay on its side, with only the keel submerged, all its red
exterior exposed to the air; on its water-line there had opened a
breach, angular in outline. Upon looking from the deck into the depths
of its hold filled with water, there might be seen a great gash in its
side like the mouth of a luminous cavern.

Ferragut, while his boat was discharging its cargo under Toni's
supervision, passed his days ashore, visiting the city.

From the very first moment he was attracted by the narrow lanes of the
Turkish quarters--their white houses with protruding balconies covered
with latticed blinds like cages painted red; the little mosques with
their patios of cypresses and fountains of melancholy tinkling; the
tombs of Mohammedan dervishes in kiosks which block the streets under
the pale reflection of a lamp; the women veiled with their black
_firadjes_; and the old men who, silent and thoughtful under their
scarlet caps, pass along swaying to the staggering of the ass on which
they are mounted.

The great Roman way between Rome and Byzantium, the ancient road of the
blue flagstones, passed through a street of modern Salonica. Still a
part of its pavement remained and appeared gloriously obstructed by an
arch of triumph near whose weatherbeaten stone base were working
barefooted bootblacks wearing the scarlet fez.

An endless variety of uniforms filed through the streets, and this
diversity in attire as well as the ethnical difference in the men who
wore it was very noticeable. The soldiers of France and the British
Isles touched elbows with the foreign troops. The allied governments
had sent out a call to the professional combatants and volunteers of
their colonies. The black sharpshooters from the center of Africa
showed their smiling teeth of marble to the bronze giants with huge
white turbans who had come from India. The hunters from the glacial
plains of Canada were fraternizing with the volunteers from Australia
and New Zealand.

The cataclysm of the world war had dragged mankind from the antipodes
to this drowsy little corner of Greece where were again repeated the
invasions of remote centuries which had made ancient Thessalonica bow
to the conquest of Bulgarians, Byzantians, Saracens, and Turks.

The crews of the battleships in the roadstead had just added to this
medley of uniforms the monotonous note of their midnight blue, almost
like that of all the navies of the world.... And to the military
amalgamation was also added the picturesque variety of civil
dress,--the hybrid character of the neighborhood of Salonica, composed
of various races and religions that were mingled together without
confusing their individuality. Files of black tunics and hats with
brimless crowns passed through the streets, near the Catholic priests
or the rabbis with their long, loose gowns. In the outskirts might be
seen men almost naked, with no other clothing than a sheep-skin tunic,
guiding flocks of pigs, just like the shepherds in the Odyssey.
Dervishes, with their aspect of dementia, chanted motionless in a
crossway, enveloped in clouds of flies, awaiting the aid of the good
believers.

A great part of the population was composed of Israelitish descendants
of the Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal. The oldest and most
conservative were clad just like their remote ancestors with large
kaftans striped with striking colors. The women, when not imitating the
European fashions, usually wore a picturesque garment that recalled the
Spanish apparel of the Middle Ages. Here they were not mere brokers or
traders as in the rest of the world. The necessities of the city
dominated by them had made them pick up all the professions, becoming
artisans, fishermen, boatmen, porters and stevedores of the harbor.
They still kept the Castilian tongue as the language of the hearth like
an original flag whose waving reunited their scattered souls,--a
Castilian in the making, soft and without consistency like one
newly-born.

"Are you a Spaniard?" they said brokenly to Captain Ferragut. "My
ancestors were born there. It is a beautiful land."

But they did not wish to return to it. The country of their grandsires
inspired a certain amount of terror in them, and they feared that upon
seeing them return, the present-day Spaniards would banish the
bullfights and reestablish the Inquisition, organizing an _auto de fe_
every Sunday.

Hearing them speak his language, the captain recalled a certain
date--1492. In the very year that Christopher Columbus had made his
first voyage, discovering the Indies, the Jews were expelled from the
Spanish peninsula, and Nebrija brought out the first Castilian grammar.
These Spaniards had left their native land months before their idiom
had been codified for the first time.

A sailor of Genoa, an old friend of Ulysses, took him to one of the
harbor cafes, where the merchant captains used to gather together.
These were the only ones wearing civilian clothes among the crowds of
land and sea officers who crowded the divans, obstructed the tables,
and grouped themselves before the doorway.

These Mediterranean vagabonds who oftentimes could not converse
together because of the diversity of their native idiom, instinctively
sought each other out, keeping near together in a fraternal silence.
Their passive heroism was in many instances more admirable than that of
the men of war, who were able to return blow for blow. All the officers
of the different fleets, seated near them, had at their disposition
cannon, ram, torpedo, great speed and aerial telegraphy. These valorous
muleteers of the sea defied the enemy in defenseless boats without
wireless and without cannons. Sometimes when searching all the men of
the crew, not a single revolver would be found among them, and yet
these brave fellows were daring the greatest adventures with
professional fatalism, and trusting to luck.

In the social groups of the cafe the captains would sometimes relate
their encounters on the sea, the unexpected appearance of a submarine,
the torpedo missing aim a few yards away, the flight at full speed
while being shelled by their pursuers. They would flame up for an
instant upon recalling their danger, and then relapse into indifference
and fatalism.

"If I've got to die by drowning," they would always conclude, "it would
be useless for me to try to avoid it."

And they would hasten their departure in order to return a month later
transporting a regular fortune in their vessel, completely alone,
preferring free and wary navigation to the journey in convoy, slipping
along from island to island and from coast to coast in order to outwit
the submersibles.

They were far more concerned about the state of their ships, that for
more than a year had not been cleaned, than about the dangers of
navigation. The captains of the great liners lamented their luxurious
staterooms converted into dormitories for the troops, their polished
decks that had been turned into stables, their dining-room where they
used to sit among people in dress suits and low-neck gowns, which had
now to be sprayed with every class of disinfectant in order to repel
the invasion of vermin, and the animal odors of so many men and beasts
crowded together.

The decline of the ships appeared to be reflected in the bearing of
their captains, more careless than before, worse dressed, with the
military slovenliness of the trench-fighter, and with calloused hands
as badly cared for as those of a stevedore.

Among the naval men also there were some who had completely neglected
their appearance. These were the commanders of "chaluteros," little
ocean fishing steamers armed with a quickfirer, which had come into the
Mediterranean to pursue the submersible. They wore oilskins and
tarpaulins, just like the North Sea fishermen, smacking of fuel and
tempestuous water. They would pass weeks and weeks on the sea whatever
the weather, sleeping in the bottom of the hold that smelled
offensively of rancid fish, keeping on patrol no matter how the tempest
might roar, bounding from wave to wave like a cork from a bottle, in
order to repeat the exploits of the ancient corsairs.

Ferragut had a relative in the army which was assembling at Salonica
making ready for the inland march. As he did not wish to go away
without seeing the lad he passed several mornings making investigations
in the offices of the general staff.

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.

The amber liquid, bubbling in the glasses, seemed to bring the three
youths back to their former existence. Boiled by the sun and the
inclemency of the weather, habituated to the hard life of war, they had
almost forgotten the softness and luxuriant conveniences of former
years.

Ulysses examined them attentively. In the course of the campaign they
had grown with youth's last rapid growth. Their arms were sticking out
to an ungainly degree from the sleeves of their coats, already too
short for them. The rude gymnastic exercise of the marches, with the
management of the shovel, had broadened their wrists and calloused
their hands.

The memory of his own son surged up in his memory. If only he could see
him thus, made into a soldier like his cousin! See him enduring all the
hardships of military existence ... but living!

In order not to be too greatly moved, he drank and paid close attention
to what the three youths were saying. Blanes, the legionary, as
romantic as the son of a merchant bent upon adventure should be, was
talking of the daring deeds of the troops of the Orient with all the
enthusiasm of his twenty-two years. There wasn't time to throw
themselves upon the Bulgarians with bayonets and arrive at
Adrianopolis. As a Catalan, this war in Macedonia was touching him very
close.

"We are going to avenge Roger de Flor," he said gravely.

And his uncle wanted to weep and to laugh before this simple faith
comparable only to the retrospective memory of the poet Labarta and
that village secretary who was always lamenting the remote defeat of
Ponza.

Blanes explained like a knight-errant the impulse that had called him
to the war. He wanted to fight for the liberty of all oppressed
nations, for the resurrection of all forgotten nationalities,--Poles,
Czechs, Jugo-Slavs.... And very simply, as though he were saying
something indisputable, he included Catalunia among the people who were
weeping tears of blood under the lashes of the tyrant. Thereupon his
companion, the Andalusian, burst forth indignantly. They passed their
time arguing furiously, exchanging insults and continually seeking each
other's company as though they couldn't live apart.

The Andalusian was not battling for the liberty of this or that people.
He had a longer range of vision. He was not near-sighted and egoistic
like his friend, "the Catalan." He was giving his blood in order that
the whole world might be free and that all monarchies should disappear.

"I am battling for France because it is the country of the great
Revolution. Its former history makes no difference to me, for we still
have kings of our own, but dating from the 14th of July, whatever
France is, I consider mine and the property of all mankind."

He stopped a few seconds, searching for a more concrete affirmation.

"I am fighting, Captain, because of Danton and Hoche."

Ferragut in his imagination saw the white, disheveled hair of Michelet
and the romantic foretop of Lamartine upon a double pedestal of volumes
which used to contain the story-poem of the Revolution.

"And I am also fighting for France," concluded the lad triumphantly,
"because it is the country of Victor Hugo."

Ulysses suspected that this twenty-year-old Republican was probably
hiding in his knapsack a blank book full of original verses written in
lead pencil.

The South American, accustomed to the disputes of his two companions,
looked at his black fingernails with the melancholy desperation of a
prophet contemplating his country in ruins. Blanes, the son of a
middle-class citizen, used to admire him for his more distinguished
family. The day of the mobilization he had gone to Paris in an
automobile of fifty horse-power to enroll as a volunteer; he and his
chauffeur had enlisted together. Then he had donated his luxurious
vehicle to the cause.

He had wished to be a soldier because all the young fellows in his club
were leaving for the war. Furthermore, he felt greatly flattered that
his latest sweetheart, seeing him in uniform, should devote a few tears
of admiration and astonishment to him. He had felt the necessity of
producing a touching effect upon all the ladies that had danced the
tango with him up to the week before. Besides that, the millions of his
grandfather, "the Galician," held rather tight by his father, the
Creole, were slipping through his hands.

"This experience is lasting too long, Captain."

In the beginning he had believed in a six months' war. The shells
didn't trouble him much; for him the terrible things were the vermin,
the impossibility of changing his clothing, and being deprived of his
daily bath. If he could ever have supposed!...

And he summed up his enthusiasm with this affirmation:

"I am fighting for France because it is a _chic_ country. Only in Paris
do the women know how to dress. Those Germans, no matter how much they
try, will always be very ordinary."

It was not necessary to add anything to this. All had been said.

The three recalled the hellish months suffered recently in the
Dardanelles, in a space of three miles conquered by the bayonet. A rain
of projectiles had fallen incessantly upon them. They had had to live
underground like moles and, even so, the explosion of the great shells
sometimes reached them.

In this tongue of land opposite Troy through which had slipped the
remote history of humanity, their shovels, on opening the trenches, had
stumbled upon the rarest finds. One day Blanes and his companions had
excavated pitchers, statuettes, and plates centuries old. At other
times, when opening trenches that had served as cemeteries for Turks,
they had hacked into repulsive bits of pulp exhaling an insufferable
odor. Self-defense had obliged the legionaries to live with their faces
on a level with the corpses that were piled up in the vertical yard of
removed earth.

"The dead are like the truffles in a pie," said the South American. "An
entire day I had to remain with my nose touching the intestines of a
Turk who had died two weeks before.... No, war is not _chic_, Captain,
no matter how much they talk of heroism and sublime things in the
newspapers and books."

Ulysses wished to see the three musketeers again before leaving
Salonica, but the battalion had broken camp and was now situated
several kilometers further inland, opposite the first Bulgarian lines.
The enthusiastic Blanes had already fired his gun against the assassins
of Roger de Flor.

In the middle of November the _Mare Nostrum_ arrived at Marseilles. Its
captain always felt a certain admiration upon doubling Cape Croisette,
and noting the vast maritime curves opening out before the prow. In the
center of it was an abrupt and bare hill, jutting into the sea,
sustaining on its peak the basilica and square-sided tower of
_Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde._

Marseilles was the metropolis of the Mediterranean, the terminal for
all the navigators of the _mare nostrum_. In its bay with choppy waves
were various yellowish islands fringed with foam and upon one of these
the strong towers of the romantic _Chateau d'If_.

All the crew, from Ferragut down to the lowest seaman, used to look
upon this city somewhat as their own when they saw, appearing in the
background of the bay, its forests of masts and its conglomeration of
gray edifices upon which sparkled the Byzantian domes of the new
cathedral. Around Marseilles there opened out a semi-circle of dry and
barren heights brightly colored by the sun of Provence and spotted by
white cottages and hamlets, and the pleasure villas of the merchants of
the city. On beyond this semi-circle the horizon was bounded by an
amphitheater of rugged and gloomy mountains.

On former trips the sight of the gigantic gilded Virgin which glistened
like a shaft of fire on the top of _Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde_ shed an
atmosphere of joy over the bridge of the vessel.

"Marseilles, Toni," the captain used to say gayly. "I invite you to a
_bouillabaisse_ at Pascal's."

And Toni's hairy countenance would break into a greedy smile, seeing in
anticipation the famous restaurant of the port, its twilight shadows
smelling of shell-fish and spicy sauces, and upon the table the deep
dish of fish with its succulent broth tinged with saffron.

But now Ulysses had lost his vigorous joy in living. He looked at the
city with kindly but sad eyes. He could see himself disembarking there
that last time, sick, without will-power, overwhelmed by the tragic
disappearance of his son.

The _Mare Nostrum_ approached the mouth of the old harbor having at its
right the batteries of the _Phare_. This old port was the most
interesting souvenir of ancient Marseilles, penetrating like an aquatic
knife into the heart of its clustered homes. The city extended along
the wharves. It was an enormous stretch of water into which all the
streets flowed; but its area was now so insufficient for the maritime
traffic that eight new harbors were gradually covering the north shore
of the bay.

An interminable jetty, a breakwater longer than the city itself, was
parallel to the coast, and in the space between the shore and this
obstacle which made the waves foam and roar were eight roomy
communicating harbors stretching from Joliette at the entrance to the
one which, farthest away, is connected inland by the great subterranean
canal, putting the city in communication with the Rhone.

Ferragut had seen anchored in this succession of harbors the navies of
every land and even of every epoch. Near to the enormous transatlantic
liners were some very ancient tartans and some Greek boats, heavy and
of archaic form, which recalled the fleets described in the Iliad.

On the wharves swarmed all kinds of Mediterranean men,--Greeks from the
continent and from the islands, Levantines from the coast of Asia,
Spaniards, Italians, Algerians, Moroccans, Egyptians. Many had kept
their original costume and to this varied picturesque garb was united a
diversity of tongues, some of them mysterious and well-nigh extinct. As
though infected by the oral confusion, the French themselves began to
forget their native language, speaking the dialect of Marseilles, which
preserves indelible traces of its Greek origin.

The _Mare Nostrum_ crossed the outer port, the inner harbor of
Joliette, and slipped slowly along past groups of pedestrians and carts
that were waiting the closing of the steel drawbridge now opening
before their prow. Then they cast anchor in the basin of Arenc near the
docks.

When Ferragut could go ashore he noticed the great transformation which
this port had undergone in war times.

The traffic of the times of peace with its infinite variety of wares no
longer existed. On the wharves there were piled up only the monotonous
and uniform loads of provisions and war material.

The legions of longshoremen had also disappeared. They were all in the
trenches. The sidewalks were now swept by women, and squads of
Senegalese sharpshooters were unloading the cargoes,--shivering with
cold in the sunny winter days, and bent double as though dying under
the rain or the breeze of the Mistral. They were working with red caps
pulled down over their ears, and at the slightest suspension of their
labor would hasten to put their hands in the pockets of their coats.
Sometimes when formed in vociferating groups around a case that four
men could have moved in ordinary times, the passing of a woman or a
vehicle would make them neglect their work, their diabolical faces
filled with childish curiosity.

The unloaded cargoes piled up the same articles on the principal
docks,--wheat, much wheat, sulphur and saltpeter for the composition of
explosive material. On other piers were lined up, by the thousands,
pairs of gray wheels, the support of cannons and trucks; boxes as big
as dwellings that contained aeroplanes; huge pieces of steel that
served as scaffolding for heavy artillery; great boxes of guns and
cartridges; huge cases of preserved food and sanitary supplies,--all
the provisioning of the army struggling in the extreme end of the
Mediterranean.