One winter morning, when he began to undress himself on the beach, the crowd gathered around him as though attracted by a phenomenon.

Even the fish of the Gulf had to him an insufferable slimy taste.
"I'm going back home," he would finally say to the notary and his wife.
"I can't understand how in the world you are able to live here!" In one of these retreats to the _Marina_ he insisted upon taking Ulysses home with him.

The summer season was beginning, the boy would be free from school for three months, and the notary, who was not able to go far away from the city, was going to pass the summer with his family on the beach at Cabanal checkered by bad-smelling irrigation canals near a forlorn sea.

The little fellow was looking very pale and weak on account of his studies and hectoring.

His uncle would make him as strong and agile as a dolphin.