With the same imaginative rapidity with which a drowning person giddily recalls all the scenes of his former life, the captain now beheld his infamous existence in Naples, his expedition in the schooner carrying supplies to the submarines and then the torpedo which had opened a breach in the _Californian_....

And this man, perhaps, was the one who had made his poor son fly through the air in countless pieces!...
He also saw his uncle, the _Triton_, just as when a little chap he used to listen to him in the harbor of Valencia.

He recalled his story of a certain night of Egyptian orgy in a low cafe in Alexandria where he had had to "sting" a man with his dagger in order to force his way.
Instinct made him carry his hand to his belt.

Nothing!...

He cursed modern life and its uncertain securities, which permit men to go from one side of the world to the other confident, disarmed, without means of attack.