The only one who protested was Labarta. A sailor?... that might be a
very good thing, but a warlike sailor, an official of the Royal Armada.
And in his mind's eye the poet could see his godson clad in all the
splendors of naval elegance,--a blue jacket with gold buttons for every
day, and for holiday attire a coat trimmed with galloon and red
trappings, a pointed hat, a sword....

Ulysses shrugged his shoulders before such grandeur. He was too old now
to enter the naval school. Besides he wanted to sail over all oceans,
and the officers of the navy only had occasion to cruise from one port
to another like the people of the coast trade, or even passed years
seated in the cabinet of the naval executive. If he had to grow old in
an office, he would rather take up his father's profession of notary.

After seeing Dona Cristina well established in Barcelona, surrounded
with a cortege of nephews fawning upon the rich aunt from Valencia, her
son embarked as apprentice on a transatlantic boat which was making
regular trips to Cuba and the United States. Thus began the seafaring
life of Ulysses Ferragut, which terminated only with his death.

The pride of the family placed him on a luxurious steamer, a
mail-packet full of passengers, a floating hotel on which the officials
were something like the managers of the Palace Hotel, while the real
responsibility devolved upon the engineers, who were always going
below, and upon returning to the light, invariably remained modestly in
a second place, according to a hieratical law anterior to the progress
of mechanics.

He crossed the ocean several times, as do those making a land journey
at the full speed of an express train. The august calm of the sea was
lost in the throb of the screws and in the deafening roar of the
machinery. However blue the sky might be, it was always darkened by the
floating crepe band from the smokestacks. He envied the leisurely
sailboats that the liner was always leaving behind. They were like
reflective wayfarers who saturate themselves with the country
atmosphere and commune deeply with its soul. The people of the steamer
lived like terrestrial travelers who sleepily survey from the
car-windows a succession of indefinite and dizzying views streaked by
telegraph wires.

When his novitiate was ended he became second mate on a sailing vessel
bound for Argentina for a cargo of wheat. The slow day's run with
little wind and the long equatorial calms permit