f the Mediterranean was overwhelming him.
To kill!... He did not know how he was going to do it, but he must
kill.

The first thing was to prevent the escape of his enemy. He was going to
fall upon him with his fists, with his teeth, staging a prehistoric
struggle,--the animal fight before mankind had invented the club.
Perhaps that other man was hiding firearms and might kill him; but he,
in his superb vengeance, could see only the death of the enemy,
repelling all fear.

In order that his victim might not get out of his sight, he ran toward
him without any dissimulation whatever, as though he might have been in
the desert, at full speed. The instinct of attack made him stoop, grasp
a piece of wood lying on the ground,--a kind of rustic handspike,--and
armed in this primitive fashion he continued his race.

All this had lasted but a few seconds. The other one, perceiving the
hostile pursuit, was also running frankly, disappearing among the hills
of packages.

The captain saw confusedly that some shadows were leaping around him,
preventing his progress. His eyes that were seeing everything red
finally managed to distinguish a few black faces and some white
ones.... They were the soldiers and civilian stevedores, alarmed by the
aspect of this man who was running like a lunatic.

He uttered a curse upon finding himself stopped. With the instinct of
the multitude, these people were only concerned with the aggressor,
letting the one who was fleeing go free. Ferragut could not keep his
wrath bottled up on that account. He had to reveal his secret.

"He is a spy!... A _Boche_ spy!..."

He said this in a dull, disjointed voice and never did his word of
command obtain such a noisy echo.

"A spy!..."

The cry made men rise up as though vomited forth by the earth; from
mouth to mouth it leaped, repeating itself incessantly, penetrating
through the docks and the boats, vibrating even beyond the reach of the
eye, permeating everywhere with the confusion and rapidity of sound
waves. "A spy!..." Men came running with redoubled agility; the
stevedores were abandoning their loads in order to join the pursuit;
people were leaping from the steamers in order to unite in the human
hunt.

The author of the noisy alarm, he who had given the cry, saw himself
outdistanced and ignored by the pursuing streams of people which he had
just called forth. Ferragut, always running, remained behind the negro
sharpshooters, the stevedores,