If a girl of the coast, celebrated for her beauty, was going to be married, the infidels, lying in wait, would surround the door of the church, shooting their blunderbusses and knifing the unarmed men as they came out, in order to carry away the women in their festal robes.
On all the coast, the pirates stood in awe only of the navigators from the _Marina_, so fearless and warlike were they.

If their villages were ever attacked, it was because their seafaring defenders were on the Mediterranean and, in their turn, had gone to sack and burn some village on the coast of Africa.
The _Triton_ and his nephew used to eat their supper under the arbor in the long summer twilights.

After the cloth was removed Ulysses would manipulate his grandfather's little frigates, learning the technical parts and names of the different apparatus, and the management of the sets of sails.

Sometimes the two would stay out on the rustic porch until a late hour gazing out over the luminous sea sparkling under the splendor of the moon, or streaked with a slender wake of starry light in the murky nights.
All that mankind had ever written or dreamed about the Mediterranean, the doctor had in his library and could repeat to his eager little listener.

In Ferragut's estimation the _mare nostrum_ ["Mare Nostrum" (Our Sea), the classic name for the Mediterranean.] was a species of blue beast, powerful and of great intelligence--a sacred animal like the dragons and serpents that certain religions adored, believing them to be the source of life.