Over the blue surface of the harbor waters the sea gulls of the Mediterranean, small, fine and white as doves, twined in and out in their interminable contra-dances.
The _Triton_ went on enumerating to his nephew the class and specialty of every kind of vessel; and upon discovering that Ulysses was capable of confusing a brigantine with a frigate, he would roar in scandalized amazement.
"Heavens! Then what in the devil do they teach your in school ?..." Upon passing near the citizens of Valencia seated on the wharves, fishing rod in hand, he would shoot a glance of commiseration toward their empty baskets.

Over there by his house on the coast, before the sun would be up, he would already have covered the bottom of his boat with enough to eat for a week.

The misery of the cities! Standing on the last points of the rocky ledge, his glance would sweep the immense plain, describing to his nephew the mysteries hidden beyond the horizon.

At their left, beyond the blue mountains of Oropesa, which bound the Valencian gulf, he could see in imagination Barcelona, where he had numerous friends, Marseilles, that prolongation of the Orient fastened on the European coast, and Genoa with its terraced palaces on hills covered with gardens.

Then his vision would lose itself on the horizon stretching out in front of him.