The Basque pilots used to dream of prairies and apple orchards, a little cottage on a peak and many cows.

He pictured to himself a vineyard on the coast, a little white dwelling with an arbor under whose shade he could smoke his pipe while all his family, children and grandchildren, were spreading out the harvest of raisins on the frame-hurdles.
A familiar admiration like that of an ancient squire for his paladin, or of an old subaltern for a superior officer, bound him to Ferragut.
The books that filled the captain's stateroom recalled his agonies upon being examined in Cartagena for his license as a pilot.

The grave gentlemen of the tribunal had made him turn pale and stutter like a child before the logarithms and formulas of trigonometry.

But just let them consult _him_ on practical matters and his skill as master of a bark habituated to all the dangers of the sea, and he would reply with the self-possession of a sage! In the most difficult perils,--days of storm and sinister shoals in the neighborhood of the treacherous coasts, Ferragut could decide to rest only when Toni replaced him on the bridge.

With him, he had no fear that, through carelessness, a wave would sweep across the deck and stop the machinery, or that an invisible ledge would drive its stony point into the vitals of the vessel.