With the familiarity born of shared meals, I lost no time in getting acquainted with a certain number of passengers, of whom I give here a brief annotated list:

1. The historian Juillard, a man of independent means who frequently took pleasure cruises, occasionally stopping to deliver scholarly lectures renowned for their witty and engaging lucidity.

2. The aging Livonian Olga Chervonenkhov, formerly a prima ballerina in Saint Petersburg, now obese and mustached. For the past fifteen years, having retired from the theater in her prime, Olga, surrounded by an abundance of animals that she cared for lovingly, lived a quiet, secluded life on a small property she had bought in Livonia, not far from her native village. Her two favorite charges were the elk Sladki and the she-ass Milenkaya, who both came at her slightest call and often followed her into her private suite. Not long before, one of the ex-dancer’s cousins, residing since childhood in the Republic of Argentina, had died and left behind a small fortune amassed by way of his coffee plantations. Olga was sole heir; notified of her good luck by the deceased’s lawyer, she resolved to go look after her interests personally. She left without delay, entrusting her menagerie to her neighbor, a zealously devoted woman; but at the last minute, unable to bear the painful separation, Olga bought two openwork crates for the elk and donkey, who were carefully settled among the cargo. At every stopover, this tenderhearted traveler visited the two prisoners with a solicitude that, as time passed on board, only increased.

3. Carmichael, a twenty-year-old native of Marseilles, already renowned for his prodigious falsetto that gave the perfect illusion of a woman’s voice. For the past two years, Carmichael had triumphed on cabaret stages throughout France, dressed in female attire and singing, with infinite suppleness and virtuosity, and in the appropriate tessitura, the most trying passages in the soprano repertoire. He had booked passage on the Lynceus after having accepted a splendid engagement in the new world.

4. Balbet, French sharpshooting and fencing champion, the popular favorite in an international marksmanship contest to be held in Buenos Aires.

5. La Billaudière-Maisonnial, maker of precision objects, looking to present at the same competition a mechanical foil capable of multiple transcendent feints.

6. Luxo, a pyrotechnics entrepreneur, who owned a huge plant in Courbevoie where all the great fireworks of Paris were manufactured. Three months before embarking, Luxo had received a visit from the young Baron Ballesteros, an inordinately wealthy Argentine, who for several years had been leading in France a wildly dissolute life of unbridled ostentation. Now ready to return home and be married, Ballesteros wanted, on the occasion of his nuptials, to set off a fireworks display worthy of royalty in the vast park of his castle near Buenos Aires; in addition to the agreed price, Luxo would receive a handsome bonus if he came to oversee the operation himself. The entrepreneur accepted the commission, which he promised to deliver personally to its destination. Before taking his leave, the young baron, whose reputation for his looks, while justified, had gone to his head, formulated a certain thought that betrayed a rather extravagant frame of mind, though not lacking in surprise or originality. For the grand finale, he wanted rockets that, upon exploding, would spread over the skies different aspects of his own image, in place of the traditional but hopelessly ordinary caterpillars and multicolored stars. Luxo deemed the project feasible and the next day received a voluminous packet of photographs, which, perfectly suited as models, depicted his improvident client in the most varied guises. One month before the wedding was to be celebrated, Luxo had departed with his entire cargo, not forgetting the famous finale wrapped separately with special care.

7. The great architect Chènevillot, summoned by the same Baron Ballesteros, who, wishing to effect some major renovations in his castle while he was on his honeymoon, had decided that only a French builder could do a satisfactory job. Chènevillot brought with him several of his best workmen to keep careful watch over the chores assigned to the local laborers.

8. The hypnotist Darriand, wishing to introduce to the new world certain mysterious plants whose hallucinatory properties he’d been able to fathom, and whose scent could enflame a subject’s faculties to the point of making him take for reality what were merely projections of finely colored film.

9. The chemist Bex, who for the past year had traveled through many lands with the sole, selfless aim of popularizing two marvelous scientific discoveries, the fruits of his ingenious and patient efforts.

10. The inventor Bedu, bringing to America a perfected loom that, placed over the currents of a river, could weave the richest fabrics automatically, thanks to a curious system of paddles. By installing the device built from his blueprints on the Rio de la Plata, the inventor expected to receive lucrative orders for similar looms from manufacturers throughout the country. Bedu personally drew and colored the various models of silkwear, damask, or Persian that he wished to obtain; once the movement of the countless paddles had been regulated to follow a master pattern, the machine could reproduce the same design indefinitely, without aid or supervision.

11. The sculptor Fuxier, who with great subtlety modeled numerous seductive images, which he placed in embryo in certain red lozenges of his own creation, so that they might blossom into smoke on contact with an open flame.