"Shall we arrive in good condition ?..." The cook made as scornful a gesture as though the Germans could see him.
"Nothing will befall us; I am sure of that....

We have One who is watching over us, and ..." He was suddenly interrupted in his affirmations.

The tray leaped from his hands and he went staggering about like a drunken man, even banging his abdomen against the balustrade of the bridge.

"_Cristo del Grao!_..." The cup that Ferragut was carrying to his mouth fell with a crash, and the French officer, seated on a bench, was almost thrown on his knees.
The helmsman had to clutch the wheel with a jerk of surprise and terror.
The entire ship trembled from keel to masthead, from quarter-deck to forecastle, with a deadly shuddering as though invisible claws had just checked it at full speed.
The captain tried to account for this accident.

"We must be aground," he said to himself, "a reef that I did not know, a shoal not marked on the charts...." But a second had not passed before something else was added to the first shock, refuting Ferragut's suppositions.