While this is going on, the destroyers maintain a defense at the opening of the bays. The hearts of the men are anxious when they hear the fall and see the bursting of the bombs over their toiling friends. But their own turn is not long delayed. Before returning to Cattaro the airmen do not hesitate to drop their visiting cards on the sentinel squadron. But for fear of betraying their position, the latter do not reply. At their post on the sea, wiping the spray from their faces, the sailors hear the descent of the bombs, screaming in the north wind, and keep their spirits equally high whether the shells touch or miss the mark.
8 February.
Further out, further north, the cruisers scout between Cattaro and the menaced harbors. Towards the end of one of their Ionian cruises, the Commander-in-Chief designates them in succession for this work; they do not care for these expeditions in which there are blows to receive, but none to give.
For from beginning to end of these voyages to succor Montenegro danger is present. Every time the cruisers ascend the Adriatic, they meet with mines set loose by the Austrians, which trail adrift, like evil beasts too lazy to run after theirprey. On our last cruise theWaldeckand her comrade saw several, though the brown speck is scarcely distinguishable upon the blue carpet of the waves. We approached them at a respectful distance, for fear they might be bound together like beads, and that other mines, invisible, would hit us as we passed. We demolished them with gunfire, without halting; they burst and sank, throwing off an inoffensive sheaf of yellow smoke. But what will happen to the ship that strikes one of them in the thick of the darkness, where one sees nothing?
And then, as the cruisers do every time, we watched all night the approaches of Cattaro, ready to receive the submarines and destroyers which will not fail sooner or later to attack the supply-boats at Antivari or Medua. In the misty, rainy atmosphere the searchlights of the Austrian harbor flash and sweep the sea, searching for the enemy they suspect to be within range. These great white restless eyes wander ceaselessly to right and left, and halt sometimes upon us. But the cruisers are so far away, shrouded in rain, that the enemy confuses them with the sheets of rain that are falling. Behind their guns, lighted up like specters, our gunners hold themselves ready to reply to the fire of the batteries if they begin. But nothing happens except a silent waiting; the searchlights abandon our vague outline, and go on indefinitely sweeping space.
From hour to hour our anxious wireless asks news of the unloading. And the destroyer anchored near the cargo-boat answers in short phrases:
“Rain and hail. Half done.”
Or else:
“Very bad weather. We do not expect to be through before six in the morning.”
As night wears away, thanks to the tension of mind and the bad weather, disquietude increases on the cruisers. They would like to be nearer, sharing the danger of the others. They fear some catastrophe before dawn.
The other night we saw some suspicious lights in that direction; short sparks like will-o’-the-wisps which succeeded in traversing the leagues of rainy air. The officers on the watch stood by helpless at these signs of the drama that must be going on. Soon the wireless despatch arrived, and was feverishly translated by the ensign on duty.
“The airmen are bombarding us. The bombs are exploding on deck. One fell into the hold. All the Montenegrins have fled and taken shelter on the shore. We fear we shall not be able to finish at dawn. The Austrians continue the bombardment.”
Immediately theWaldeckreplied:
“If there is too much danger, or you are nolonger numerous enough, stop the unloading, leave the harbor; we are coming to your assistance.”
Without waiting for a response, we made for the bombarded harbor, moving at top speed, for fear we should arrive too late. But in less than ten minutes our rush was stopped short by the wireless reply, which showed their astonishment at our proposition.
“We will continue alone. We will not leave until daybreak. There is almost nothing left to unload.”
They did as they said! They did even better. How did they find means to increase their strength, to make up for the flight of the Montenegrins? They did not even think they had done a big thing, but at dawn the holds were empty, and on the wharf were heaped to the last one the bales that had been in their charge. Ah! the brave sailors!
9 February.
Long hours flow away. The January nights seem eternal when one has to live them wide awake. But at last the sky pales in the East, the lights of Cattaro sink into the grayness and a sharper cold revives the watchers a little. It is dawn.
Empty or not, the cargo-boat casts off its hawsers, and as clumsily as it entered the night before, it leaves in the morning. On the wharfare heaped the supplies for Montenegro; more will be brought in a few days. The stevedores go back to the destroyers, and exchange their night’s fatigue for that of the engines and the work of navigating the ship. The procession forms again in the mist, and goes down the coast of Albania in good shape. Without ballast, the cargo-boat dances in the midst of the convoys like a cork. At a great distance the cruisers continue their proud vigil until all this little company is out of harm’s way. Then they feed their fires, stretch their legs, and limber up with a little gallop as far as their Ionian sectors.
Or else between sunrise and twilight, they coal in some hidden bay. And if chance favors them, they receive letters, and bundles of papers which have wandered in pursuit of them over the vast sea. Although it has left France so many weeks ago, and is already old, and made stale by events, the news is read and commented upon with passion.
The sailors are not turned aside from the great drama by any mediocre or banal concerns. Among all the people of the world, it is they who vibrate most strongly to all the joys and troubles of France. Their clear vision, free from passion, judges calmly the conflict of the two parties. Better than anyone, thanks to the patience of their pilgrimages, they discern in the future the reasons for victory and the heavy ordeal of attaining it.
Bent on their secret task, they do not heed the dazzlement of victories. They know that their collaboration, decisive as it is, will be effaced by the future prowess of the soldiers. The gunfire, the charges, the final drama for which the land will be the theater, will relegate their silent labor to oblivion. But to overthrow Germany both will be needed, and the glorious army can hold out a grateful hand to the Navy.
Already our fleets are closing the doors of the world upon our enemies, and keeping them wide open for the resources that will feed our victory. As yet it is nothing; but hour by hour we forge a new lock. When Germany and her allies, foaming with rage in the prison to which our ships are the bars, suffer the tortures of famine; when the one hundred and ten millions of Germans, howling at death’s door, demand pity, and beg a bit of bread, when this menagerie tears itself to pieces in the struggle for food; when revolt, insurrection, and the frenzy of civil war shake to its foundations this manufactory of murder; then, Russia, England and France will let loose their bulldogs and their tamers. From their bridges the marines will hear the footsteps of the soldiers’ charge and the barkings of their 75’s. Their hearts will leap with joy, and, gazing at the sea, the companion of evil days and luminous sunrises, they will say to her: “It is we two together who have made it possible for all this to happen.”
Why does my vision wander to those happy days, our recompense? Is it because of the contrasting melancholy of winter? Or else, have I not been conducted thither by a natural path, through the letters of comrades, the illustrious marine fusiliers in Belgium? Since their wounds have got better through hospital treatment and convalescence, they have commenced writing again. Nearly all my friends over there are dead. Those who remain describe in simple language the trip to Antwerp, the return in the horror of the conflict, the resistance so savage that our enemies will never acknowledge that it was this handful of brave men who blocked their rush. History will reward these officers, these sailor-soldiers whom we knew on the deck of the men-of-war. Where they have been, we should all like to have fought. The entire “naval army” is jealous of this naval brigade. Exiled from the sea, they were acquainted with the cyclones of the struggle. Separated from the hurricanes at sea, they did not lower their heads before the mysterious thunderstorms of the Yser and Flanders. They paid the price of their courage in a terrific hecatomb; the barrier where the German invasion was stopped is built on blue collars and red pompons.
We shall never see again those naive faces which laughed at the tempest. Their death was not such as they would have chosen; they have had to pass to their eternal rest beside the bankof a canal or a marsh, with their hands tightened on their guns and a last smile fluttering on their eyelids. When their brains reeled with the dizzy agony, and their torn limbs were trembling, they could imagine themselves in the grip of the sea’s great surges, and glimpses of its vastness floated through their last visions. Under the gray skies of the Belgian plains, their glazed eyes saw the skies of typhoons; the mud in which they sank took for the moment the odor of their native spray; in delirium their ears recognized in the noise of the shells the blows of the waves on the hull; in the whistling of the balls the sound of the wind as it makes the cordage vibrate as if under violin-bows. All this drowns out the usual memories that accompany one’s last hours—the chiming of village bells, the murmurs of a sweetheart or old grandmother. For there are two things in the world which a man never forgets—the fascination of the sea, and the tenderness of women. But when the soldier approaches the threshold of eternity, the phantoms of the latter disappear before the last appeal of the former.
All these things I read in the narrative of the survivors. They remember the lightning storm which preceded this emptiness from which they have come back. Unaccustomed to the march, they could not think of the sea during those atrocious days when at each step their feet and their knees became heavier with a weight that fairly nailedthem to the ground. But they went on just the same. They did not think of the sea when their breaking lines recoiled before the German flood. Neither could they think of it under the storms of shells. But at the minute when they wavered between life and that which has no name, they all received the final kiss of the sea. Its whispers cradled them, and they were grieved that they could not be buried in its watery grave. Thinking of their comrades, they bequeathed to them the hope of perishing in its enveloping arms, during some heroic combat.
From their hospitals and homes the survivors send us their good wishes. Towards the East, towards the Dardanelles, the world is beginning to direct its attention, and the ships at last are going to experience a great conflict. Our sailors have received the heritage from the marine fusiliers. They envied, they are envied; thus runs the world. If fate destines them to write history with their blood, and no longer merely with their patience, their desire claims the legacy from their brothers who have fallen over there.
End of February.
In one of our trips to carry supplies to Montenegro, theDaguehas just been lost. In the open roadstead, at midnight, she was waiting for the cargo-boat to finish unloading its bales and cases on the wharf. Her crew was assisting inthis dangerous work. The heavy sound of the cases falling on the planks was all that could be heard.... But a submarine from Austria was lying in wait for theDague.
Suddenly the destroyer leaped into the air as if lifted by the hand of a giant. It fell in two pieces like a dead branch of wood. The sailors, enclosed in her sides, did not know they were at the point of death. Thirty seconds later, at the spot where there had been a living ship, and men full of energy, there was no longer anything but the dark water.
1 March.
Malta at last! Landscapes which do not move, roads of hard stone, a desired presence.... Some drives in an English dog-cart behind a frisky pony.... A dress of mauve muslin, the sweet Italian tongue interrupted by silences, the charming visits to the fountain of the swans.
Malta, remote island and jewel of the Mediterranean, blessed repose of navigators, peaceful harbor and immense fortifications, feverish atmosphere and nostalgia of the blue sky. All the roads cross there. Between the antipodes and the fields of battle the Hindu, the Canadians and the French pass several hours there; and later, in the night watches, each one will remember his happy rest in that place.
Malta, the starting point for the warriors ofEgypt, of the Dardanelles, of Mesopotamia, and Flanders; the port of call for the sailors of the Mediterranean, of the North Sea and the Persian Gulf. In the Strada Reale clash faces, uniforms, dialects; they linger on the mystical pavements of the churches, and pass into the rocky countryside to dream those dreams one never forgets.
Malta: First pilgrimage of the new crusade. The battleships and cruisers, the drag-nets and dredgers get their second wind here before sailing for the East, for Constantinople. They go there to take part in epic conflicts, and retake from the Osmanlis the city of the Bosphorus, which for five hundred years has awaited its deliverance. Regiments, batteries and squads accompany them, crowded on the transports and eager for victory. May the men who are preparing this great enterprise, this terrible enterprise, measure well its obstacles, and be able to obviate them!
Malta, paradise of the vagabond weary of wandering, light fragrances, exquisite light, enchanting sea, creator of tenderness. Oh, these evenings and mornings when the heart melts in one’s breast! But one needs a companion. Woe to the lonely man! He will not appreciate the smiles of this Eden. He cannot enjoy its treasures. How many sailors’ wives, who have come here to see for a moment the husbands torn from them seven months ago, will not remember this idyllic spot with tears in their eyes? But other lovesare born on this island, which perhaps will die there. These amours I desire every man to have who fights on land or sea. Then a shell will but bring him happiness.
Farewell, Malta! Yesterday under a fragrant arbor the evening light shone on a tragic face, and the coming separation made our speech falter. This morning, towards dawn, in a silent church, two clasped hands and a bowed head were praying for the safety of the traveler. TheWaldeckleft during the day. It took its way slowly among the motionless ships, which will soon sail in their turn. Outside of the harbor, already moving with the swell, it put on full speed and raced over the blue water. Along the ramparts some handkerchiefs and soft hands waved sad farewells. Every one of us, with his glass to his eyes, looked for the beloved face and dress, which were becoming fainter with every turn of the ship’s screws. And then distance wiped everything out. Over there lovely eyes have been weeping; here our lids are still wet. The sailor’s malady—what is it but separation?
Ionian Sea, 5 March.
The Spring is venturing her first caresses. I know countrysides in France where the cherry trees are already blooming, where violets are fragrant, and lilacs are beginning to unfold. The April sun will soon set flowing the tide of lifeand bloom; the poppies will get their color from the blood spilled in Champagne and the Vosges.
But upon our sterile sea no grass grows green, no tree blossoms. The water is bluer and the sky paler, the air brings softer breaths, but these beauties are mere phantoms. They glide past like the moments of our monotonous life, like the white clouds filled with light which move above us.
A few living things distract our melancholy. Young porpoises, with silver bellies and slender snouts, play around the hull, lashing the water as if with thongs of whipcord, falling back with a gleaming graceful movement. The old porpoises, mere dignified, follow patiently their continual leapings, sewing the cloth of the sea with an invisible thread; each one of their stitches on this blue material leaves a streak of foam.
When these playful fish pass at a short distance from us, they are amusing. But what frights their more distant tracks through the water have given the officers of the watch! On an empty and shining sea, the silver trail of a porpoise looks too much like the volute of a periscope.... And the periscopes are prowling about.... The fine days have arrived, and the sea is favorable for submarines to come down the Adriatic as far as the Ionian Sea. Many people may not think so, but the cruisers know that the enemy is hunting them to the death. We meet on the water vast flat mirror-like tracks like the trail of a snailon the ground. A submarine has just passed. From one end of the horizon to the other the viscous line is sparkling, but the horizon is empty.
9 March.
Several times at twilight one of the cruisers has seen rising, far away, the kiosk and shell of a submarine, coming to the surface for the night. The cruiser has rushed upon the enemy, but in the splendid evening this fish of steel has filled its reservoirs again and quietly submerged. The red of the sky gives place to purple, and the purple to violet, and the violet to black, to darkness. The cruiser in pursuit has informed the “naval army” of the encounter. We know she is not mistaken, but the other ships, patrolling in the south, treat us as visionaries.
Visionaries indeed! If only we were! We should not then experience, during our watch, these sudden heart failures, and the nights of the watch would not be riddled with these useless agonies. Each day the crews become more apprehensive of some fatal surprise, and no one is indifferent on board except the animals who dwell with us. Happy beasts! Nature has freed them from forebodings.
Our cats, lazy and coquettish, choose a couch on the warm deck in the sun, and roll themselves up in a ball, with their nose resting on their furry paws, their green eyes half closed; or else theystretch out on their sides, stiffening and unbending their paws, and letting the breeze play on their bodies. They forget to sleep. Under the moon or in the darkness they go sidewise, slowly brushing the cordage and the rasping metal. Sometimes they mew with a call that is soft, raucous, and hopeless, for ships of war are chaste, and our poor tomcats spend their nights without any spring amours.
Towards four o’clock in the morning Venus rises fresh and dazzling. Soon the feathery tribe begins to stir. Between the chimneys a cock proclaims his fanfare, the hens cackle, and great disputes, accompanied by much rustling of wings, take place over a cabbage leaf or some water or a grain of corn. Our pigeons coo softly, as they puff their necks; their glossy wings powdered with salt dew. Breaking in on these light sounds comes the lament of the oxen which are to be slaughtered. They low discreetly. At this din, which reminds one of one’s native land and one’s country home, the officer of the watch on the bridge thinks he smells the odor of the poultry-yard, the healthy odor of dung, and listens to the creaking of the carts as they leave the farm. It is the illusion of homesickness. The only voices of labor are the humming of the ventilators, the pulsation of the engines, and the vibration of the waves which slap the hull. Our only ties with the world are the cruisers, with their stacks and theirremote smoke, which go from sector to sector on the same careful vagabondage. And we have no other reason for living than to await the prowling submarines. The submarines, the curse of this war!
11 March.
There is one formidable problem which I have not yet solved.
From the bridge the officer sees a companion vessel explode, sink and disappear. The catastrophe may be slow or swift, it matters not. Many men have just been killed by the explosion; but there remain living survivors in the water, who are condemned to death if their neighbors do not come up to rescue them. The officer’s pitiful heart directs him to rush towards the disaster and pick up these brothers of ours.
But no! The submarine is perhaps waiting and is aiming a new torpedo. It is lying in wait for the rescuer with her formidable strength, her thousand able men, and is counting on her rashness to send her to join the victim it has just sunk. The duty of the officer tells him to save a sound ship for France, so that to-morrow she may avenge the dead in some victorious action.
The English Admiralty has solved the dilemma. “Woe to the wounded!” it has said. “I order the living to flee!”
The men who drew up this formidable law inthe privacy of their offices were thinking only of the glory of their navy, of the fate of their country. Would these same men, as officers of the watch, hearing the appeal of drowning men, have the terrible courage to flee?
During the long hours of the watch I have pondered over this riddle. To-morrow, this evening, in an instant, the drama of which I am thinking may rise on the horizon. If fate wills that I be struck, I know that as my mouth fills with water, my last cry, to those who approach me will be this:
“Begone, for the submarine is watching for you too!”
But if in the treacherous night or under the kindly sun, I see one of the companion ships of theWaldeck-Rousseaudestroyed, I hope some inspiration will dictate my conduct. I cannot foresee what it will be. There are tragedies where the reason stumbles, and man is outdone by the malignity of things, where only revelation and divine grace permit him to find his way.
This is the way weariness bewitches one. If we were in action, I should never feel these dilemmas. I should not like to repeat here what all my comrades every minute and every hour are saying around me. Never have the cruisers been plunged into a profounder ennui. The great naval routes pass north or south of our present beats, the battleships are at the Peloponnesus, in Crete,and we can no longer see the coasts of Italy, our companions in recent months. We should never suspect that land existed if wireless messages did not bring us a suggestion of it.
Whence come these birds which for many days now have followed our cruiser as it emerged from the winter? What woods, what nests, have they left? By day they fly from mast to mast, cat-head to bridge, and by night they hide in dark corners.... We are wandering on the treeless waste, two or three hundred kilometers from any shore, and yet these birds with their fragile wings choose our island of steel to rest upon before continuing their journey. They are very young birds, and carry themselves badly upon their inexperienced wings.
14 March.
A swallow, a chaffinch, a robin and a bullfinch, are what I have seen this morning, about sunrise.
In the wide expanse there was the growing light, a pale moon leaning towards the west, some idle curls of smoke, and my vague thoughts. And then, from nowhere, came this chaffinch, and stopped on the bridge at my feet, looked at me impertinently, seemed reassured by its examination, and without further concerning itself with me, began hopping on the floor. Then the swallow arrived, restless and swift, but so awkward that, as it rested on the steel bars, it swayed and caught itself as if it thought it was falling.
It remains faithful to us. The sailors with their affectionate and clumsy hands, have already tied on its dark body a yellow favor which it wears coquettishly. It is our passenger. The others, more lively, only pause between two flights; they peck on our deck, and by chance discover something to store in their tiny paunches; perched on a rod, a partition, or the rigging, they rest awhile, with their heads hunched in their feathers and their wings up to their eyes like blinkers. We call them; they do not answer, for they are asleep. And then all of a sudden the chaffinches and robins fly away, as if they really knew where they were going. They trust themselves without fear to the great mysterious emptiness, and to-morrow other finches and other robins will come, and will also fly away. We love them when they are there. We forget them when they fly away. We shall not weep for their death. They are like us, mariners of the air.
15 March.
They are happier than we, for they are not preoccupied with their fate, all the winds that pass are favorable to their wings. Carelessness is their daily bread. They never ask the reasons for their pilgrimages, and do not guess that their lives might be more useful. We envy their spirit and their empty heads. How many times have we not wished to kill our reason and become likemachines, which work without thinking? The sailors cannot know this infinite weariness of anxious thought, and they would never say the bitter things that rise in our minds from the strain of overwork. Are there any combatants in this war who have need of so much patience for so painful a task? For weeks and months, ever since the origin of time, it seems, the sailors have been here performing the same duties, seeing the same faces, hearing the same voices. They know beforehand what their neighbor is going to say. Whether we are paradoxical or bitter, braggart or fatalistic, each of us has long ago finished emptying out his intellectual baggage. There is no chance of evasion or of renewal. One sees the very inside of hearts. Some solid friendships, cemented by common miseries, cheer this existence. But aversions and enmities are strengthened. In many ward rooms now the meals have become gloomy or charged with ill-feeling. One has to keep silent for fear of setting off the evil spark. Everything provides material for discord, and nothing inspires amiable thoughts. One does not wish to make venomous relations that are already strained, and so one says nothing.
Spasmodically, at the reading of an important communiqué or wireless messages, discussions burst forth and wax intense. For the thousandth time we sift over what has been said, and as all the arguments were laid on the table eight monthsago, no one can win in the encounter unless he can shout louder than the others. The president of the mess, cool and benevolent, throws himself into the fray, and his advice makes us see the inanity of such disputes. The officers understand that he is right. Better to keep out of it.
Silence falls again. While awaiting his watch, the officer returns to his cabin and tries to forget his troubles. Shall he write to his dear ones? What for, and what shall he say to them? Everyone devotes himself to some mechanical task. This one is learning Spanish, Greek, Japanese; others are measuring their strength on the Ethics of Spinoza, or the theory of the equations of partial derivatives; some are doing carving, collecting stamps or raising turtles. The essential thing is to get a man’s mind away from the ship, from the water, from himself.
The night, solitary, kindly, ends with the dawn. Sleep effaces everything, and our duty transforms us into automatons. On the bridge the officer no longer thinks of anything but his superior duties. Near him stand watching the accustomed statues of gunners and steersmen; under him gently vibrates the moving vessel; and all around stretch the silent shadows. Above his head wings like felt open and close, and form rings of sound. They are the horned owls, migratory birds too, which have substituted our masts for their native nests. Frightened, they wheel above the watchers, andtheir hairy wings sometimes brush our caps. In the blackness of the sky, they fly uncertainly about, hiding the stars and then disclosing them again. Their flight and their silence are congenial to our thoughts. For them the sun does not exist, any more than happiness exists for us. Perhaps they would like the light, but their blinking eyes cannot endure it. They are like our own hearts. For months past we have lost all the joys of life, and dare no longer look them in the face.
17 March.
After four hours of anxious thought and watching, the officer leaves his successor in charge and goes down to his cabin or the ward-room. He is too wide awake to fall quickly asleep, too tired to think. The cruiser is like a castle of the Sleeping Beauty. In the labyrinth of ladders, doors and passages, black holes alternate with the shadows from dim lamps. On each side of the corridors are the rows of closed doors leading to the cabins where the officers and the boatswains toss between insomnia and bad dreams. A smoky light reveals the suspended hammocks. After their hard work the sailors fling themselves down there and sleep just as they fall; their dangling hands and knees are covered with coaldust; many of the faces seem masked in black.
At the staircase to the engine-room, the fireman and swabbers (soutiers) tumble out pell-mell onthe metal floor, too exhausted to lift themselves into their hammocks. One has to be careful not to step on someone’s chest or ear. The ship could go down, and these men would not wake from their stupor. Some of the more fastidious ones have taken the trouble to procure a pillow; it is a lump of coal, very hard and dusty; their cheeks press it as softly as if it were of down.
With outstretched hands and hesitating feet, the officer makes his round, runs into something, and stops. He passes the watchers, the gunners, the sentries. Wrapped in his cloak, and leaning against the breech, a pointer is observing the flight of the gray water through a port hole. His eyes are wide open, but what can be the reveries of this man who every day and night for so many months has watched the gliding of the water?
“Well, Kersullec, it’s tiresome! You are almost through!” whispers the officer.
“Yes, Captain. It isn’t that I’m not sleepy, but I’ll hold out the rest of my fifty minutes.”
And further on:
“You’ve got your eyes open, eh, Le Bihan? You know that yesterday evening they signaled a submarine.... Quite near....”
“Let it come, Captain. It will see if Le Bihan sleeps on his watch!”
Reaching the ward-room, the officer takes off his cloak, his muffler, his gloves, and puts down his glasses. He nibbles a crust of bread or refresheshimself with a drop of wine. The room is in disorder from the preceding evening, with newspapers left on the red sofas, games on the green tables. One turns the pages mechanically without reading, and shuffles the dominoes and cards without thinking, and before going back to his dull bed, one casts a glance at the betting-book.
22 March.
A happy find, this betting-book, which has banished acrimonious disputes from theWaldeck-Rousseau! For since in this war our prophecies about to-morrow or next week have nothing to base themselves upon, what good does it do to argue? If one of us, through some revelation, acquires a definite opinion on future events, he writes it in this notebook with the date, the hour and the place. The page is divided into two columns, one for, and the other against the prediction; the man who bets proposes the stake. The other signs in the right column or the left, and when the bet falls due, the bad prophets pay up as gracefully as possible. There is no opportunity for contradicting, and it is much more amusing than all the discussions.
30 March.
This morning, towards four o’clock, I signed my name in the column of the most recent bets. Here are the three wagers which interested me:
Friday, March 26. 8.50A.M.at 38° 11´ N. and 16° 11´ E.
M. X.... bets that within three months Italy will be at war, but not Roumania. Stakes a dinner in Paris in 1917, for which the winner shall choose the restaurant and make up the menu.
The page of this wager is scribbled over with emendations and remarks. The number of signatures in the two columns is equal. The winners will be awkward in their triumph.
Sunday, March 28. Midnight: at 38° 02´ N. and 18° 7´ E. M. J.... bets with M. Z.... that the Viviani ministry will not last out the year 1915. Stakes: the two bettors being unmarried, the loser agrees to act as groomsman at the marriage of the winner, who agrees to choose him a pretty maid of honor.
The page is sprinkled with facetious comments. To tell the truth, I do not know which are wittier, those which mention the wager, or those which discuss the stakes. Between the fiancée and the Premier, the maid of honor, the winner and the loser, it is all humor of the cleverest kind.
Tuesday, March 30. 2.30A.M.at 38° 10´ N. and 16° 23´ E. M. W.... wagers that inside of a month one of the seven Ionian cruisers will be sunk by a submarine and lost without anything’s being saved.
For this wager I see neither any stake nor opposing signature.
4 April.
For seven weeks I have not been off the cruiser, but this morning I was given a new duty; namely, to land during our coaling; my turn has come to provide the food for my twenty-five comrades of the mess.
At no time is this a pleasant business; during our war campaign it requires an angelic patience, for supplies are difficult to get and the quality uncertain. Each one of us watches without enthusiasm the day approach when he becomes the scapegoat for the dyspeptics and those with ailing livers. But the implacable schedule, drawn up by lot before our departure from Toulon, appoints a new “chief of the mess” every two months.
You housekeepers who complain of the price of provisions and the bad quality of the eggs had better take passage on the ships which move in the Ionian Sea, and you will learn about unknown miseries. It is no mere question in our latitudes, of varying the menus, of serving such a fish or such a meat, nor even of calculating almost to a half pound what will feed the household without waste. The task is more difficult.
For fifteen or twenty days the cruiser has kept to sea without quitting it; she has done her coaling outside and has not revictualed anywhere. Fresh provisions are a mere memory; eggs, preserved in straw or lime, acquire with each meal a richer and more vigorous flavor. The wine,shaken about in warm casks, ferments. The fresh water absorbs the rust of the iron-casks, and tastes like the mephitic beverage of some invalid resort. Our bread is heavy and indigestible, for the bakers are seasick and the flour is mouldy. For dessert we nibble some empty or frost-bitten walnuts, dried raisins, excessively dried, and almonds which either cannot be cracked or are filled with powder.
Despite our work and weariness, we push aside these pitiful refreshments sweetened with coaldust. Our teeth crack lumps which have no taste of vanilla; these are cinders which have got into our sauces. Morning and evening we have to face one or two dishes of beef. And such beef! Battered by the wind and spray, tossed by the rolling of the ship which bruises their tender nostrils, the poor animals of the shambles trample listlessly the steel deck and sniff their fermented hay listlessly. After a few days at sea they have lost their fat. They have to be killed in time, for fear they will die during the night. For this maritime agony they avenge themselves upon our teeth; their flesh is like a ball of discolored twine, with the pleasant elasticity of rubber. I will not describe the chickens which survive a few weeks of the cruise. I should need the vocabulary of a cordwainer.
And then, in their distant campaignings, the sailors habitually provide themselves with somedigestive or rheumatic complaint, which is quiet enough in hours of prosperity, and revives exactly at the moment when one wants to keep well. Seven entire months at sea under this régime have resurrected all these ailments. The martyrs require a light but nourishing diet of good food. Where can we get it? The chief of the mess cannot transform into fresh eggs these shells in which are stirring chicks anxious to hatch out, nor into fresh milk the viscous compound which comes in metal cans. Musty cakes, greenish purées, coagulated rice, become more and more common on our plates. Complexions become yellow, features drawn, and good-humor vanishes. Discussions on the war or the service turn bitter. Those who are endowed with unbroken health take the diatribes philosophically: “Take it easy, my poor friend,” they think. “Take it easy. I would reply to you, if it wasn’t only your enteritis that is speaking!”
One night a wireless arrives from the Commander-in-Chief.
“You will coal Wednesday at Dragamesti, with the cargo-boatMarguerite.” It is only Sunday, but a smile appears on a thousand faces. The whole cruiser takes on the alert pace of a horse which sniffs the relay. A sorry relay however! From morning to evening, in a harbor where the wind blows violently, the ship will be shrouded in coaldust; the sailors will wear themselves out, theofficers shout themselves hoarse trying to hurry the filling of the sacks, and we shall leave more exhausted than at dawn, for fifteen or twenty days of pilgrimage. But we shall have made a halt. Sailors in any part of the world, you will all understand me!
The chief of the mess is happy, but becomes anxious. Between two watches he has a conference with the cook and steward. Both are neurasthenic; it is as disagreeable to them to prepare our little meals as it is to us to swallow them. But hope, invincible in the heart of man, cheers the trio:
“Captain,” says the steward, “buy some figs, some salad and some fresh cheese. That will improve the menu for a week.”
“Certainly,” replies the captain chief of the mess. “But shall we find any?”
“I want some lambs,” demands the cook, “some fish for two or three days, and if I can lay my hand on a good fat sheep, I can guarantee that you gentlemen will be satisfied.”
“All right. But I’m afraid we shall not find very much.”
“And then, I must have at least four hundred dozen eggs. The last time we only took two hundred; a good half of them were rotten, and we use six to seven dozen a day. So, in twenty days....”
“Oh! But, great heavens, my friend! Where am I to get the money?”
For it is a fact: in war times, and in almost impossible regions, the sailors have for their pay and food not a cent more than in times of peace. Upon this detail the chief of the mess has his own opinion, but keeps it to himself. Pencil and memorandum in hand, he wavers between fear of overspending his credit, and of incurring the anathema of his comrades. He opens his till and counts the notes and change, closes the lock with a sharp click and murmurs:
“I shall never get away with it....”
Monday and Tuesday pass. The general satisfaction increases. The furrows deepen on the brow of the chief of the mess. To-morrow is Wednesday, the fatal day. But at dusk another wireless message arrives:
“CollierMargueritedelayed by bad weather. You will coal Thursday with theCirce.”
At this delay which desolates all the others, the chief of the mess calms down and has a better sleep. He has just gained twenty-four hours. But his calm is shaken at table by the remarks which unanimously agree that the food is uneatable—they are right—and that the chief of the mess ought to be hung. Poor chief of the mess!
A third wireless follows:
“Remain in the third sector until next Saturday.You will coal Sunday at Santa Maura with theBayonnais.”
Horror and desolation! The language of sailors is not unresourceful, but in desperate cases it becomes magnificent. This is one of them. Rabelais himself, the prince of truculence, would open his ears wide to hear the sailors—ordinarily civilized—comment on this third message. I dare not reproduce these explosions, but will keep to my hero, the chief of the mess.
The bitterest pleasantries have an end. Towards sunrise the ship finds its way to the appointed rendezvous and anchors there. I will not say it is at Santa Maura, or on Sunday, or with theBayonnais. It may be with theBiarritz, at Antipaxo, on the following Wednesday. We are within neither a week or a hundred kilometers of the original order, but the cruiser lies still, with the collier alongside, and the crew have already plunged into a cyclone of black dust. With his pocket full, but with an anxious heart, the chief of the mess, accompanied by his two acolytes, reaches the shore in a steam cutter. There is nothing but ten houses and a small church. The horizon consists of solid rock, without a sign of cultivation. At each step the hope of provender diminishes. We touch the quay, if there is a quay; when there is nothing better we run up on the beach, and the trio makes for the cluster of houses. Some Greeks with intelligent smiles and unintelligiblelanguage are always to be found to conduct you to persons who will sell you eggs, poultry, groceries or animals. They take your hand and pull you by the sleeve. They show certificates from another cruiser which has left the evening before, and which, like the brigand she is, has surely taken everything! After many muddy puddles, many ruts, the three victims arrive in front of the herd, the poultry-yard, or the baskets of fruit.
I suspect the people of this region of having founded along their coasts sanatoriums of lymphatic sheep and tuberculous cattle. I suspect them of cultivating boxwood and fusain, cutting the twigs off with scissors, and calling them salad. I suspect them finally when they sell eggs at eight sous apiece, of wishing to give you your money’s worth, and of setting odor above cheapness.
“If you want to see better animals, there is another herd ten kilometers away, behind the marshes.”
“In that island opposite, I know a man who grows vegetables; go to him. It will only take you three hours there and back.”
“Yes, you could find fresher eggs at my neighbor’s, but he just left for the mountains last night.”
The chief of the mess devotes forty minutes to understanding these wily proposals. He has only a few hours in this remote region, and beforenight he has to provide for the food of twenty-five men for twenty days. Followed by the steward and the cook, he perspiringly visits the miserable shops and doubtful poultry-yards.
“We have no more figs or raisins. The Germans bought them all three months ago.”
“Yesterday one of your ships took the finest head of cattle. If you had only come the day before yesterday!”
Hours pass, but they do not in the least improve the quality of what we are offered. The agents become more and more cunning as they press you to buy, for they know that the cruiser sails at dusk, and their kind souls fear she will leave without provisions. In a creaking carriage or on a broken horse, the chief of the mess goes to see this herd, or that famous poulterer, and returns with a desire to slaughter his guide. Evening comes. The cruiser whistles, raises the flag of recall, and is to put to sea in half an hour. We must buy now, whatever the cost. Then pell-mell, in sacks or boxes, under the goad of the shepherds, on the shoulders of the boys, the eggs and suspect vegetables, the consumptive animals and the parchment poultry begin to move towards the cutter. The Chief’s spirit is haunted by dark presentiments, but he offers fresh blue notes and new gold pieces in exchange for these precarious victuals. The sons of Mercury wrangle over the change and the price, the porters demand theirtip, and the market becomes an uproar of invective. But all that is nothing to what is in store on board.
At last everything is in order. The cutter leaves the quay, followed by pleasantries, and arrives at the ship, which weighs anchor and begins in the night its twenty days of cruising. In answer to the questions of his comrades the chief of the mess tries to put on a good face, but the evening meal gives him a hint of the refined torture he will endure until the next landing, and he invokes the god of resignation to his aid.
This afternoon, since I had used up my store of gold and silver, I gave a hundred franc note to some breeder of elastic chickens. I owed him fourteen francs. Instead of giving me back eighty-six francs, he made the entire change for the note in pieces of five, two and one drachmas. In the midst of a crowd of boys and attentive men he counted it, recounted it, and put it in my hand.
From these hundred francs which he gave me I took out two five-drachma pieces and two two-drachma pieces, making up the total amount. But he returned me the two five-drachma pieces, and I cannot describe the air with which he said to me: “Your two coins are bad. Give me two others.”
If I had been a German, I should have knocked him on the head. But I contented myself with throwing the two coins into a pile of mud thathappened to be there, and jumped into my cutter without saying a word. As we returned, I examined the other coins. They were sound. And I could not help laughing, for if I had chosen two good coins to pay him with, this good breeder would have robbed me of ten francs.
I have traveled much, I have seen many swindlers; but this one takes the first prize.
Strait of Otranto,25 April to 1 May, 1915.
The cruisers on the Ionian Sea have received orders to go up as far as the Strait of Otranto. Perhaps the Commander-in-Chief, who is stationed towards the south of Greece, has learned that the Austrians are preparing certain naval operations and so sends us to watch the enemy at closer range; perhaps this movement corresponds to some play on the chess-board of war. Little do we care. We leave these desert regions, and go to find the friends of our early days: Santa Maria de Leuca, Fano, Corfu.
Again we encounter their charms and their graces. Autumn had decked them in soft colors; April envelops them in a virginal light. At the end of Italy the lighthouse of Leuca rises like a marble finger always white; and the islands and the mountains of Epirus are pink in the morning, blue through the day, and mauve at dusk. The air is so marvelously pure that the night itselfdoes not rob things of their color. Violets and yellows remain, even under the moon.
We have plenty of time to admire these beauties, already so familiar. The cruisers move very slowly, for they must not use too much coal. Several times we have been surprised to find one of them wanting to hurry the schedule of coalings and do its provisioning two or three days earlier. So in order not to incur the reproach of stopping oftener than is necessary, the cruisers have taken a leisurely pace, and the consumption of fuel has become satisfactory. Especially at night, in the religious calm over which the hills of Corfu and the lighthouse of Leuca watch as sentinels, it seems that we are quite motionless.
The family of cruisers, which was formerly dispersed over the Ionian Sea, now meet each other continually, and play at puss in the corner. In the course of a day one sees three or four gently rise on the horizon, make a curve as they double the edge of their sector, and nonchalantly depart again. When they have something to say, two comrades approach each other: theFerrytalks to theGambettaby wigwagging, theWaldeckto theRenanwith flags and pennants; through the glass one recognizes friends; salutations are exchanged by waving caps or hands. When the conversations are finished, each one turns her back and goes to patrol her watery field. Every morning, from eight to nine o’clock, the ships signal informationabout the amount of coal remaining, their daily consumption, the number of sick on board, and the number of the sector they are patrolling. If one of them has done or sighted something interesting, she mentions it. We have a little daily chat; thanks to which we feel less lonely—within reach of a voice, so to speak. During their watch the officers consult the memoranda of the wireless messages, and read hastily the news from their neighbors, just as one listens, without paying attention, to the friend one meets in the street who gives one the bulletin of his family’s good health.
We have, moreover, plunged back into the great road of international traffic. Again the throng of steamers, freighters or sailing vessels, passes along the Italian and Greek coasts. We may not go too near them, for fear of penetrating the territorial waters, and of thus finding Italy or Greece, with whom the Entente is carrying on negotiations, touchy about their sea frontiers. If one of the cruisers visits some ship too near the limit, she is accused of having overstepped the line, and the affair, exaggerated, becomes disquieting. Better to evade the controversial line, and only accost, with a clear conscience, the ships that risk themselves on the high sea.
In order that the crews may not lose their skill in firing the guns, which sleep in a profound slumber during this disconcerting war, from timeto time we practise firing at floating targets. Not shooting with a regular charge, for our guns make so much noise that an hour later all the telegraphs of the world would announce “the great naval battle in the Strait of Otranto,” but what is called in the navy reduced firing. With small charges and small shells we fire upon little canvas targets which float on the water like children’s toys driven by the breeze. This makes proportionately no more noise than a pea-shooter firing peas, but the entire organism of the ship—engines, system of direction and of firing, telemetry and rules of firing—functions as it would in battle. When we pick up the target the crew examines the canvas and the framework, counts the holes and the scratches, criticizes this parody of battle. A pitiful solace for our desire for action! One thought consoles us: the Austrians at Pola, the Germans at Kiel, the English in the bases where they wait, are tiring themselves with the same vanities as ourselves, with reduced firing and the pretences of battle. Yes, this naval war is indeed disconcerting.
These were my thoughts during the watch the other night, when everything about me was so fair. A full moon with soft features, but with a contour as sharp as that of a new medal, rode in a sky as pure as the face of a child. The stars were swollen with joy. Vague lightning illuminated first one part of the sky and then another,like vagrant smiles of the night, without arrière-pensée. The sea, drowsy with warmth, had a calm and fragrant breath, and it seemed as if our prow in cutting it was profaning a divine slumber. It was one of those moments when the most unhappy man feels love flood his heart, and as my eyes fell only on eternal things, my spirit absorbed all their blessing. The cruiser was patrolling the middle of the Strait of Otranto; on its left a comrade kept guard towards Fano and Corfu; on its right theGambettain the Italian sector received from time to time the flashes from the lighthouse. During the afternoon we had come quite near theGambetta; our boats had exchanged the parcels, the mail, and orders, and it is now theWaldeck-Rousseauwho will occupy the Italian sector after we separate. At the last moment some new order has given our place to theGambettaand kept us in the central rectangle. It is of no particular importance, and our turn to be neighbors with the lighthouse will come to-morrow.
I shall not try to describe the train of thought which haunts the officer of the watch when nature becomes kindly again and accords him a respite for his body. As he surveys the sea with unrelenting eyes, he makes the tour of the weather, of the world, of his ideas. The fluttering butterfly is less capricious than this reverie of his, but he rests at last on some flower of thought. Iremember that on this night, towards the third hour of my watch, I was thinking of the contrast between the peace of Nature and the human agony of the war. I had taken off my cap to feel the caressing fingers of the night; I had even opened my vest, and felt almost on my skin the freshness of the reviving breeze. On the sea, so light that it seemed transparent, I saw nothing in particular; but that was undoubtedly the weakness of my vision, the fatigue from too long cruises, the lassitude which on this night all my comrades of the watch on the cruisers felt with me. Otherwise my mind was clear.
The work of France and Russia, the enterprise of the Dardanelles and Gallipoli, all that had not been done, all that could be done, and ought to be done, everything defined itself in precise images. Around the cruiser was so much silence and so much silent light that my thoughts seemed to speak aloud to me. When my successor came to replace me on the watch, I quickly told him all the routine things, and then remained several minutes before going down to my cabin, in order to enjoy the marvelous night for a little while longer. There was not a single sound or light, and I left the bridge regretfully. I thought of the officers of the nearby cruisers, towards the right and the left of us, several miles away, feeling the same sensations, and I was consoled.
The arriving day brought dazzling beauty afterthe quiet charm of the night, but everything around the cruiser remained the same—calm, silence, warm air. After a heavy sleep, a listless morning and a short meal, I resumed at noon the interrupted watch. The same thoughts continued to accompany my duties. Between them there was only the difference of moonlight and sunlight. My reasonings were clearer, my rancor stronger, but the sparkling of the waves revealed nothing. As we had nothing to communicate to the cruisers on our right and left, we remained quietly in the center of our sector, and my only companions of the watch were the sun, the migrating birds and some dolphins in the water.
Towards two o’clock I received the sudden news of the death of a sailor on board. The news tore me from my peaceful mood. I know that in this far place the death of one man does not count, especially when one is acquainted with that man only by a number. Yet I could not refrain from a certain melancholy, and the train of my reveries became somber. You poor little sailor, who has given up his life in this iron prison, where will be your grave? The perfumed rocks of Greece, or the sands of Apulia, or a shroud in the Ionian deeps? Wherever it be, no hand will ever strew flowers on your white wooden cross, and those who write you to-day perhaps will not know to what part of the vast world they should direct their tears.
To the end of my watch I keep thinking of this destiny of the sailors, who do not even halt to die. Around me the faces of the lookouts and gunners show the same aspect of gravity which mine should have. This morning, it seems to me, touches us more than it should. Is there not going on somewhere a drama much more terrible?
In order to banish such reflections, I go to look in my cabin for my little dog Jimmino, with his cold nose, his soft eyes and silky hair. Since my last stay in Malta, he has exchanged the ease of his mistress’ home for the hard existence of a ship. At night he sleeps in the hollow of my shoulder, and when he wakes, he watches my slumber without stirring. When I work, he whines softly until I lift him up on my desk. He puts his head between his paws, and follows the course of my pen. He does not like me to remain too long without speaking to him, for I think he is of a jealous temperament. In order to let me know he is there, Jimmino rises and walks across my pages where his paws trail thick threads of ink. Then I give him a little tap on his cold nose and scold him:
“Get away, you horrible, badly brought up little thing! What would your mother say if she...”
“Well, well,” replies the little tail as it wags. “You have spoken, silent master, and you havestruck me; so you must love me. I am not vexed with you any more.”
Jimmino lies down again within reach of the paper, his nose so near the sheets that at the end of every line I feel his warm breath on the back of my fingers. He watches my bent head, and thinks:
“I know very well you are bored, and that you brought me with you to distract you. I am very happy when you deign to think of me. But do you suppose that I am amused? Formerly, I played with the cat, on the stairs, under the furniture, and around the kitchen. Everything smelt good all around, and they washed me every morning. Here everything is full of coal and bad odors. The moving sea makes me dizzy. And then I have become the dog of an officer, and cannot go with the crews’ pets. What have I done that you should exile me? Listen to me, silent master. Speak to me.”
The paw stretches out cautiously to the edge of my freshly written line. “Back, Jimmino! You will make a bad blot!”
The paw draws back.
“Bah! You are right,” the master goes on. “It is late. In a quarter of an hour we shall eat. Come up on the bridge. We will take the air.”
I take Jimmino, warm and soft, up on my shoulder, where he weighs nothing. He settles himself, snuggles against my ear which he tickles.He trembles at my rapid course along the corridors, up the companion ways, to the height of the bridge.
The twilight is marvelous with its soft and delicate shades of color.
“What news?” I say to the officer of the watch.
“Nothing.... The same old story.”
“Any interesting messages?”
“None! Communiqués from Eiffel, Norddeich, Poldhu. The cruisers have nothing to say. Go read the memorandum.”
I hasten to read the book of telegrams, glancing over the hundred or two hundred messages of the day. It is the same strain as yesterday, and as it will be to-morrow. “Left Navaria at 2P.M.,” says this one. “I count on finishing coaling this evening,” says another. “I am on my way to Bizerta,” says a third, and so on for four pages.
“Well,” says the officer of the watch. “You see there is nothing.”
“It’s queer. TheGambettahas not spoken to-day.”
“There was probably nothing to announce.”
“It should have signaled its daily position this morning.”
“Wireless damaged perhaps.”
“Perhaps. All the same it has said nothing since 9 o’clock last night.”
“Have any of the cruisers called her?”
“Yes! And she has not responded.”
“You are sure?”
“Go and see. I will watch in your place.”
Five minutes later my comrade returns, after running over, examining and considering the four pages of messages.
“You are right,” he says. “It is strange. However, nothing has happened to her. She would always have had time to signal S. O. S. That doesn’t take two seconds.”
“That’s true. But all the same, she should have replied to the ships that called her.”
“She was wrong. We shall see to-morrow.”
I go down to dinner. On my chair Jimmino, crouched like a sphinx, is waiting for bits from my meal. Our assembly is not very noisy. We comment upon the end of the day, and the doctor receives placidly the usual pleasantries. The conversation turns listlessly on Turkish affairs. Why is there no animation? The officers who are going to take the watch rise to put on their uniforms for the night. We greet them in the familiar way as they pass out. “A good watch to you, old man! Keep your eyes open!” “Don’t delay us!” “You know I’m taking the Paris express this evening.” “If you see a submarine try not to waken me.” “And then,” I added, “let me know if there is a message from theGambetta.”
“Why?”
“She has not spoken for nearly twenty-four hours.”
“The deuce!” murmured the assembly. “What has happened to her?”
The game tables are set up, for dominoes, chess, bridge; the smokers light their pipes; the readers open their paper; others stretch out on the cushions. Interpretations are offered concerning the silence of theGambetta.
“Accident to the wireless....”
“She had nothing to say....”
“She ought to have signaled her daily position....”
“She should have replied when she was called....”
“We shall see to-morrow...!”
The cards fall, the dominoes grate, the newspapers crackle, and the pipes pull. All in this little world are silent, absorbed in their game, their reading or their reveries. But it is appearance only. Yesterday afternoon we talked with theGambetta; last night she cruised in the sector where we were to go. For twenty-four hours she has been silent. In the cards, in the papers, and the smoke from the pipes, each one of us reads these disquieting thoughts. But no one speaks of it. I go to bed, for I have to take the watch again in the middle of the night.
Jimmino trots behind me, installs himself near the pillow, and sleeps with a dreamless slumber. But I await through the long hours some news of theGambetta. Eyes closed or open, I cannotescape being haunted by her. All my comrades tell me they have passed a sleepless night.
In the shadow I go up to take the watch. My predecessor repeats the sacred phrases. I interrupt him:
“But theGambetta?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you think of it?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you believe that...?”
I dare not finish. He dares not answer, but disappears in the darkness.
I fix my eyes on this treacherous sea which never gives up its secrets. An anguish with iron fingers presses my heart. There is no more doubt of it, death has passed over one of our brothers. Each hour that slips by proves the magnitude of the disaster, and if no news ever reaches us, it will be because all at one stroke eight hundred men will have plunged into the sea. Leaning on the rail, I stroke the metal mechanically, and the wood and canvas which meet my hand. I enjoy feeling the good cruiser, alive and in motion, quivering under me. I realize how much I love her, and it seems to me, that in order to pierce the darkness, my eyes take on the acuteness of a father’s who scans the face of a child of his that is menaced by death.
A little later our wireless operator sends me a bundle of messages. With nervous fingers theensign translator turns over his codes and dictionaries in order to transform these ciphers into French. Each minute I go to his shoulder to read the line, or the half-line, or the word he has transcribed. Heavens! How long it takes to spell out the horror!
It happened yesterday evening, during that fatal watch which I found so beautiful. The moon was quite round; the sea was transparent, and I saw nothing on it. Like me the officers on watch on theGambettawere weary of their useless vigil; at the end of their route they saw the gleam of the lighthouse at Santa Maria di Leuca. In the distance passed the shadows which I should have seen if theWaldeck-Rousseauhad cruised in the sector which it was to have had. These shadows were ships going along the Italian coast.
But another shadow, covered by the water, had been on watch for many days. It knew we were going by way of the Strait of Otranto. Advised by its accomplices, it awaited, motionless, the occasion for striking a decisive blow. For three nights, for four nights, the majestic cruisers passed too far from this shadow submarine, from this octopus with deadly tentacles. The moon, as it approached its full glory, became more and more luminous.
During these splendid hours, when I had almost disrobed to feel the caresses of the night near me,the submarine saw approaching a slowly moving vessel, with four stacks and graceful outline. It made ready, as it had the night before and the night before that, and hoped that the ship’s present route would permit it to cast its death thrust.
What pen could describe this drama in all its fullness?
On theGambetta, sailors and officers scanned this sea that was almost too bright; they had seen it raging or seething with billows, or tormented by the wind, or calmer than a sleeping eyelid. It was the ninth month! Flashes of lightning dazzled their eyes, and they moved, like the watchers on theWaldeck-Rousseau, in a confusion of gleams and darkness. It was the two hundredth night! They were weary. They had waited so long, they no longer expected anything. Their eyes met only illusion.
The submarine lay in wait in the bosom of the waves. It knew that some time or other its wonderful prey would pass within range of its torpedo. Through the lens of the periscope its commander saw the luminous circle where the moon danced, the surface of the mirrored water, and the phantoms which move in a night at sea. He heard on the submerged hull the lapping of the dark waves. All the sailors at their posts watched the gesture of his hand and the sound of his voice.
Suddenly this man’s heart began to beat as if it would burst. God of death, you were speaking in his ear! He had just seen in the funnel of his periscope two masts and four stacks. She rose in the midst of the lightning flashes, a phantom. Tense and still, the man asked himself if the vision would approach, or would vanish as on the preceding nights. She approached. She came, a vagabond, predestined, without knowing that a demon was plotting her death. With closed lips and moist hands, this man prepared his words. Twenty-five men watched him as if he were a destroying angel.
At the given moment he said: “Fire!”
The torpedo left the submarine like a breath in the water and as silently. For a few seconds, a few endless seconds, it rushed through the echoless water. Two flashes, three flashes, gleamed in the sky; the lookouts on theGambettacovered their faces with their hands. They did not suspect that this moment, which followed so many other moments, held in it the last breath they would draw.
Then a dull sound behind her made the cruiser tremble. She was seized with a sudden fever, and each of her metal plates resounded. Death spread through her limbs and muscles. In through a breach in her very heart rushed the dark water, leaped and broke everything before it. What happened then?
I do not know. I do not yet know. But some of the messages make it possible to imagine the details of the horror.
Filled with water on her wounded side, theGambetta, lurched toward her sea grave, and the sailors who were not killed at once thrust out their arms to save themselves. Everything slid around them. To stand upright they had to lean over; their hands had to serve them for eyes, for darkness enveloped the cruiser. Naked and silent they rushed on toward the deck, but the slanting companion ways were now as perpendicular as walls. How many unfortunates perished in their suddenly interrupted sleep, without realizing that their ship was going down for the last time?
On the deck, a black chaos! Each second the cruiser sinks deeper. The gulf of the waves grows larger, and each moment perhaps will be the final plunge. By main force the sailors launch the boats and the cutter, which drop into the water wrong side or right side up. The officers are calm and have put aside their fatigue; they give the necessary orders for the rescue. In the sky the two masts and the four stacks sink lower and lower. The cruiser, with its apparatus damaged, can send out no signal for help, and all those who dwell on her plunge into the depths as if down a silent stair.
A handful of men have been able to enter the boats. Chilled, but struggling for life, they have taken the oars, and during the last hours of the night have rowed towards the friendly lighthouse. At the first gleam of day, with bleeding hands, but with a marvelous tenacity of will, they have made a supreme effort, and the Italian customs-officers take in sixty exhausted men almost at the point of death.
From Tarentum to Rome, from Rome to Paris, from Paris to Malta, and from Malta to theWaldeck-Rousseau, this story of the drama has been traveling for twenty-four hours. The good neighbor we loved to see in our meetings on the high sea has met the death which might have been our own. She has disappeared without a word, felled at the first stroke in an eddy of the sea, as befalls her pilgrims. The wound was muffled and dumb, for over there on the horizon I saw nothing. One of the flashes that played in the sky was perhaps the gleam of the torpedo which killed her, but I was deceived by the illusion of distance.