In the very year that Christopher Columbus had made his first voyage, discovering the Indies, the Jews were expelled from the Spanish peninsula, and Nebrija brought out the first Castilian grammar.
These Spaniards had left their native land months before their idiom had been codified for the first time.
A sailor of Genoa, an old friend of Ulysses, took him to one of the harbor cafes, where the merchant captains used to gather together.
These were the only ones wearing civilian clothes among the crowds of land and sea officers who crowded the divans, obstructed the tables, and grouped themselves before the doorway.
These Mediterranean vagabonds who oftentimes could not converse together because of the diversity of their native idiom, instinctively sought each other out, keeping near together in a fraternal silence.
Their passive heroism was in many instances more admirable than that of the men of war, who were able to return blow for blow.

All the officers of the different fleets, seated near them, had at their disposition cannon, ram, torpedo, great speed and aerial telegraphy.

These valorous muleteers of the sea defied the enemy in defenseless boats without wireless and without cannons.

Sometimes when searching all the men of the crew, not a single revolver would be found among them, and yet these brave fellows were daring the greatest adventures with professional fatalism, and trusting to luck.
In the social groups of the cafe the captains would sometimes relate their encounters on the sea, the unexpected appearance of a submarine, the torpedo missing aim a few yards away, the flight at full speed while being shelled by their pursuers.

They would flame up for an instant upon recalling their danger, and then relapse into indifference and fatalism.
"If I've got to die by drowning," they would always conclude, "it would be useless for me to try to avoid it." And they would hasten their departure in order to return a month later transporting a regular fortune in their vessel, completely alone, preferring free and wary navigation to the journey in convoy, slipping along from island to island and from coast to coast in order to outwit the submersibles.
They were far more concerned about the state of their ships, that for more than a year had not been cleaned, than about the dangers of navigation.