The greater part were mobilized by their governments for the enormous transportation of material that modern war exacts.

The German corsairs, craftily taking advantage of the situation, were increasing with their captures the panic of the merchant marine.
The price of freight leaped from thirteen shillings a ton to fifty, then to seventy, and a few days later to a hundred.

It couldn't climb any further, according to Captain Ferragut.
"It will climb higher yet," affirmed the first officer with cruel joy.
"We shall see tonnage at a hundred and fifty, at two hundred....

We are going to become rich!..." And Toni always used the plural in speaking of the future riches without its ever occurring to him to ask his captain a penny more than the forty-five dollars that he was receiving each month.

Ferragut's fortune and that of the ship, he invariably looked upon as his own, considering himself lucky if he was not out of tobacco, and could send his entire wages home to his wife and children living down there in the _Marina_.
His ambition was that of all modest sailors--to buy a plot of land and become an agriculturist in his old age.