He surely was going to live to be a hundred! And the cook flattered by such praises, whose origin he did not happen to comprehend, responded as always,--"That is so, my captain." Toni, silent, disciplined and familiar, inspired him with no less admiration.

His life was an upright life, firm and plain, as the road of duty.

When the young officials used to talk in his presence of boisterous suppers on shore with women from distant countries, the pilot had always shrugged his shoulders.

"Money and pleasure ought to be kept for the home," he would say sententiously.
Ferragut had laughed many times at the virtue of his mate who, timid and torpid, used to pass over a great part of the planet without permitting himself any distraction whatever, but would awake with an overpowering tension whenever the chances of their voyage brought him the opportunity of a few days' stay in his home in the _Marina_.
And with the tranquil grossness of the virtuous stay-at-home, he was accustomed to calculate the dates of his voyages by the age of his eight children.

"This one was on returning from the Philippines....
This other one after I was in the coast trade in the Gulf of California...." His methodical serenity, incapable of being perturbed by frivolous adventures, made him guess from the very first the secret of the captain's enthusiasm and wrath.