PART IIIN THE ADRIATIC
Adriatic Sea, 25 September.
THE ships keep shelter in Pola and Cattaro, and will not come out! There is nothing Austrian in sight except the names on the maps and the silent coasts. We continue, however, to sail along the shore, we brave their submarines, their mines, their torpedo-boats. Like the knights of the Crusades challenging their adversaries, we go to offer ourselves to their attack. But they do not issue forth.
Like a great army corps that waits the engagement, the armored squadrons run the barrage of Otranto. They are the lions of our naval menagerie. Claws sheathed, jaws closed, they strain their ears for the call of the cruisers.... In small groups the torpedo-destroyers circle round them, sweeping the road where the great beasts of battle are about to pass, and watching to see that no submarine is prowling on the path.
Further north on the skirts of the Adriatic great-lunged battleships are holding the jungle. The cruisers know no rest; they pursue their anxious watch along the outposts, traversing thewaves and piercing the sky. Upon their observations, in sun and shadow, depends the safety of the great battleships. Theirs is the joy of spying the enemy upon the horizon, of rushing forward, of receiving the first shots and launching the first shells, of so calculating the retreat as to draw the enemy within range of the battleships’ guns.
We are three brothers—theErnest Renan, theEdgar Quinet, are as beautiful and majestic as theWaldeck-Rousseau. Their six stacks belch forth the same clouds. Engaged in the same work, all are acquainted with the same fatigue. Older and less sturdy, theGambetta, theFerry, theHugo, and theMichelethave the same tasks. Their family is known by its four smokestacks.
From Otranto to Fano, and along its whole shadowy line, the seven cruisers blockade the Adriatic at the end of which the Austrians are entrenched. From the summit of the bridge one can see for ten miles; that is why we navigate at twenty miles’ distance, on circuits of short circumference, ever the same. The cruisers never sight each other, but each knows that below the horizon a brother ship is within reach and on guard. Sometimes the ceaseless rhythm of their march brings them to the confines of their “beat,” and they sight each others’ masts glistening on the horizon like the bayonets of a double sentry. Then both tack about, and go their opposite directions; the masts sink out of sight, the smokedrifts away, and nothing is left but a solitary vigil on a deserted sea.
Since our departure from Toulon theWaldeck-Rousseauhas been in constant motion. In the waste of waters the clamors of the world are stilled. We have commenced the pilgrimage known to so many generations of sailors. At a venture we halt some small game—packet-boats, three-masted schooners, or steamers, which submit to our examination. They bring us a faint echo of human affairs—Italians, Greeks, or Spaniards—and are fraught with I know not what continental aroma. We send these timid travelers on their voyage; their examination is but play; the important affair lies up there at Pola or Cattaro. Every week after coaling—which we do at sea—we go and shake our fists at the enemy, crying shame upon him in his retreat and challenging him to an encounter. Many times already we have gone up there in the night; in the daytime we have circled about Lissa, the Dalmatian Isles, and even further still. Far behind us the battleships follow, alert for the signal—“Enemy in sight!” But our guns are leveled in vain; in vain our eyes face the tracery of sun and shadow. Nothing appears within our range except the motionless shores, the slumbering isles—never a quarry.
This disappointment does not slacken our vigilance. In times of peace a single lieutenant,aided by an ensign, suffices for the many duties involved in managing a ship. Whether it has to do with observing the heavens, avoiding collisions, or coordinating the movements of many hundreds of sailors, during his four hours’ command he can easily attend to and handle it all.
Those times are no more. War puts a tenfold burden upon the cruiser without adding to its staff of officers. For now the ship is at once an organ of navigation and an instrument of battle. This duality of function demands at every moment two directing heads; the first continues to direct the watch, the second assumes responsibility for the lookout, defense, and battle. On theWaldeckwe have only six lieutenants; so we form three crews of two each, who relieve one another on the bridge in an endless round, by day and night, in all weathers. One of them looks after the route, the crew and the signals from the shores; the other keeps his eye upon the sea and is ready at any moment to let loose the guns. My rank of seniority gives me the second rôle.
Throughout the rest of the war, whether it be short or long, my mate and I are destined to the same changes of fortune. He must have my confidence, and I his. These things are not uttered. But they are implicit in our handshake at the moment when we take the watch and assume the precious charge of the ship for our four-hour period.
He is a Fleming, I am Latin. This difference extends even to our ways of thinking, and lends piquancy to our two daily meetings. As we lean on the bridge rail, he at port and I at starboard, we watch the sea with equal vigilance. But in our secret souls move thoughts which have nothing to do with our profession. This is one of the privileges of men of action. They can surrender themselves wholly to their task without ceasing to dream of a thousand things. My comrade and I talk in low voices. The war, Germany, the future, everything comes up in these murmured conversations. We do not believe in keeping silent, for our motionless position is likely to bury us in a dangerous torpor. As our eyes search space, we passionately discuss the great drama, and we never agree. But if, in the treacherous night, a shadow appears, or a suspicious shape, suddenly we are one. Each performs instantly the necessary rites; one commands the helm and the machinery, the other directs the primers and gunners. The two of us in the darkness cooperate perfectly.
And then a few minutes later the scare is over. The gunners resume their posts, the primers unprime the guns. We two officers—one on the port, the other on the starboard—continue our vigil and our whispered talk.
Adriatic Sea, 27 September.
Three English cruisers—theCressy, theHogueand theAboukir—have just found their last resting-place in the North Sea. Still intact, but bearing in their sides torpedo-wounds, they have slipped into their winding-sheet of sea-weed, where the skeletons of vessels sunk in ancient wars await them. The sea-water, that patient embalmer, will reclothe their keels with a shroud of rust and lime. On bright days, when the sun shines on the still sea, they will see the shadows of living vessels pass overhead. They will be caressed by the ripple from those screws, and their petrified hulks will quiver with pleasure. During the tedious hours of the lookout, I have been meditating upon the wireless messages which announced the death of theCressy, theHogue, and theAboukir. That same tragedy may cut short the very phrases which I am commencing to unite. I imagine the whole scene, I recreate it. I have sailed the North Sea, I have lived two years in a submarine, and I am at war now on a cruiser.
I see three ships, somber and silent like ourselves, following the course laid down by the Admiral. North and south, other patrol vessels are traversing the appointed routes. While the soldiers of France and the children of England sleep, the sailors are keeping watch on the sea, that no one may force the barriers of their countries.But the sea is illimitable, the cruisers are few and far between, and cannot lend each other aid. For this the sailor must make up in toil and weariness; he takes less sleep, he watches unceasingly, he is always cold, he never touches land. Up there, just as in the Adriatic, he mounts his guard, longing with all his heart for an adventure.
Thus sailed theCressy, theHogue, and theAboukir, how many days I do not know. But I do know the vigilance, the labor, the self-sacrifice of their crews. More than all the others, they offered their souls to the service of victory—these sailors whose ships are decorated with the famous names of English victories. These three noble names, did they not foretell a new harvest of laurels? Did they not symbolize a return to more fraternal policies, which dedicated to the service of France these namesakes of French defeats? English officers and sailors, with the clear instinct of men participating in great deeds, should offer France, in a single victory over our common enemies, a recompense for these three disasters England had inflicted upon her!
This night passed like all the others. Along the horizon were trails of gray light. The rolling sea emerged from the chaos of dawn, and the lookouts, with heavy heads and quivering eyelids, scanned for the thousandth time the troubled awakening of the North Sea. They saw nothing.Perhaps one of them had descried a streak of foam whiter and clearer than the rest, and quickly raised his glass to his eyes. But the streak of foam had already been covered again, and he dropped the glass which had not revealed the periscope. The three cruisers pursued their way amid the ridges of foam, one of which, though they were unaware of it, meant death to them.
A shock went through the first ship. The sailors on deck thought there had occurred an accident to the machinery; those below thought that a gun had been fired.... Everyone listened. Under the brave fellows’ feet the ship turned, lazily at first, while the waves boiled impatiently about her. Then they understood, all of them; they knew that death was near. Before they sank into the sailors’ grave, they looked again for the enemy who had destroyed them without granting them the joy of battle. Their staring eyes fell upon their comrade of the patrol, and filled with fear, for theAboukirwas lurching too. Both had been stung to death by the stealthy advance of the submarine vipers. Generous still in their very death-agony, the two wounded ships hoisted warning signals, that their comrade might evade the deadly track. But she, as generous in her pity, raced to save the lives of the sailors in the engulfing waters. She too received her mortal wound, without being able to fire a single gun, although, clearer-sighted in theface of death, she was able to discern the submarine under its white streak of water.
As the chill of the hemlock poison rises to the heart, the water rose in the three ships. The boilers choked with it, the machinery was drowned; one by one the watertight compartments, exploded by the pressure of the waves, burst with the noise of thunder. The electricity failed everywhere at once, and the sea became a tomb where men struggled and were buffeted by the waves. On the deck, drawn up in line, the crews gazed straight into their doom. The triple choir raised a hymn which they had learned on their English Sabbaths, and they sank to meet their God.
Farewell, sailors of the three cruisers, fallen perhaps through the same fate that is in store for our Adriatic cruisers! Your anguish, your vigils, your last thoughts, we feel here on theWaldeck-Rousseau. Your end was noble, even if no one around me envies it. For we pray the God of Battles, if he sends us death, that we may at least exact a heavy toll from our enemies!
Strait of Otranto, 8 October.
How can one describe the atmosphere of the Adriatic? For that marvel our most delicate adjectives are inadequate. It is more than diaphanous, better than translucent; it dreams. It seems to exist only to contain pure color.
How many times has this immaterial air deceived the officer of the watch! How many miles away is a certain steamer? In how many hours shall we skirt the island that rises amid the clouds?
Formerly we solved these problems without thought, for our eyes had learned to gauge the density of the air and its deceptions. The Adriatic atmosphere has lowered our conceit. Skies or sails, lighthouse or shore, each object is always further off than we suppose. Prudent now, we hesitate to say whether Corfu is thirty miles away, or that this pale line of the Otranto coast is not a cloud resting on the water. We are not wrong to mistrust ourselves. Corfu is fifty miles away, and this imagined cloud is the coast of Italy.
The officers on the bridge struggle with these illusions. The sea itself multiplies their difficulties. Formerly the sailor dreaded only what moved above the surface of the sea. He noticed at almost any distance traces of smoke, indistinct masts, and all the signs by which a ship reveals her presence. But the sailors of to-day level their gaze upon that surface which was once so innocent.... Between two crests floats a dark speck.... Is it not a mine charged with explosives? Those shining lines, like the trail of a snail, are they not the oily tracks of a submarine lying in wait for us?
But sailors learn secrets. Formerly, they contemplated the waves and ripples carelessly, as queer old comrades whose every mood one pardoned. But now they keep them under a stern inflexible eye. The play of a wave, the alternate strips of light, the shadows of a cloud—we grapple with everything, and never relax our vigilance. For everything is illusion.
The lookout wavers between a fear of being ridiculed and a fear of having seen amiss. There is never a day that some wireless message does not come from one of our sentinels of the sea, telling the “naval army” that a submarine is in sight. From Saint Maure to Lissa, from Tarento to Corfu, all the French ships are anxious about the outcome of this encounter, and hope that the comrade engaged will be victorious. Minutes slip away, we imagine the whole drama; a noble envy stirs every heart. And then the second message comes over the sea. “It was not a submarine!” it declares. Then the Adriatic and the Ionian Sea resound with a burst of mocking laughter, one of those bursts of laughter which only the descendants of the Gauls know how to give.
Tragedy, nevertheless, comes close on laughter. From the bridge the officer of the watch has seen something, two or three miles away, that is not quite the color of its surroundings. He fastens his glass on this dark or light speck, which moves slowly like a periscope on the lookout.... Thething disappears and reappears, like a periscope which is taking its bearings, ordering its course, and waiting.... The officer’s heart leaps. His orders start the engines, direct the pilot, send the gunners to their guns. His body is tense with joy, his eyes shine; on the bridge, at the port-holes, officers and sailors follow the alarm with excited interest, and gaze out at the suspicious speck in the distance. Everyone envies the comrades who have charge of the ship at this brave moment, the gunners and steersmen who will pit their wits against the submarine. A sort of joyful anguish grips their hearts, for it is war to the death, and perhaps the torpedo is already launched and making straight for the keel. We fairly suffocate with excitement.
But some more experienced eye has made out the shape. “It’s a bit of wood!” murmurs a top-man.... “No, it’s a bottle!” whispers a gunner. Each one gives his opinion. “It’s a seagull!” “It’s the branch of a tree!” “It’s a broom-handle!” “It’s a box of preserves!” The uproar increases and rises to the officer on the bridge, who wipes his glass in order to see better. He is still expectant; he curses this encounter a thousand times. He is responsible for the boat and for all these laughing sailors. Torn between derision and danger, he remains prudent, and makes for the dangerous object, with the order to open fire still on the tip of his tongue.
Suddenly, when we are eight hundred or a thousand meters away, he takes a few nervous steps, countermands the alarm, orders the engines to slow down, and turns his eyes away from the preserve-box, the branch, the bottle, whatever it may be. The ship shoots by at a short distance. The jokers in the crew salute the innocent waif that floats past and disappears.... Unless it be a gull, busy with its bath; in which case it dives, preens its feathers, dives again, without bothering about the ship, or her officer on the bridge. Between its plunges, sunk up to its breast in the water, it rides past the flying steel monster with a mocking “Kwang! Kwang!”
At the end of his watch, the officer goes below to the ward-room where he is received with mocking laughter. These sorry jokes he scorns as a stoic should. He knows that the next night or to-morrow, at any moment, his comrades are as likely to make a mistake as he. We had all rather see a periscope than seagulls or branches. In the North Sea theCressy, theHogueand theAboukirhad seen gulls and branches a thousand times. The day they sighted nothing they went to their doom.
Adriatic Sea, 15 October.
The Adriatic is our private estate. The cruisers make use of it as if Austria did not exist. They ascend it, circle about, stop in frontof the islands, challenge the coasts, without a single visible enemy’s attacking them. Doubtless the submarines come out daily from Cattaro in quest of the prize booty that our vessels would make. But either chance or our vigilance has prevented the disaster. We watch, we are worn out; nothing happens. Sometimes in the West, low on the water, trails the Italian coast; smoke floats over Otranto or Brindisi; for forty days this is all we have known of human activity. The lighthouse of Santa Marin of Leuca marks the uttermost point of Latin soil; it is a desolate object, like a pale needle stuck into the blue air. By night, its light falls on the veils of the horizon. It is one of the lonely friends of our solitude.
Towards the eastern coasts other friends watch our passage—the gaunt peaks of Albania or Epirus, or even the Ionian Archipelago, that delicate jewel of stone. Albania and Epirus! Famous but sinister names! Wherever Islam rules dwells devastation. The bases of the mountains are buried in the sea, and they look colossal; death lives on their gray slopes. A warm sun, however, shines on them, and busy hands may be tending vineyards and olive orchards. Yet one sees only masses of rocks, and the scars of mountain-streams. Here and there a bald yellowish circle stains the mass of stone. In that spot flourished in former times an Albanian or Epirote village. Fire destroyed it, and the fury of menhas left it only a charred waste. A dizzy silence comes from these mountains. It falls and rolls over the blue water, so hard a blue one thinks a hammer might strike sparks from it. No one lives in these somber regions. Along the bays and inlets barks with Levantine sails scud before the wind, passing by in all possible haste. These barks carry mountaineers crowded in their holds like sheep in a pen. In these brigand realms life is so unsafe that even the brigands themselves prefer the hazards of the sea to journeys by land.
Our cruiser halts these tiny boats. Then the human cargo bursts out from the hold, and their distress shows that they think their last hour has come. Clothed in sheepskins, armed with daggers and pistols, these rascals conceal in their hearts a world of unknown crime; every time they find it profitable they are ready to massacre and betray. Their dark minds do not know who we are nor why we have come. We can only be executioners, equipped with irresistible weapons.
The visiting officer reassures them, of course, with his gestures. The passengers remain suspicious; their keen eyes watch him as he points to the holds and orders their contents turned out. The bullies understand; we are robbers and will let their lives go in exchange for their merchandise. Pell-mell they throw out their figs, their bundles of dried fish, their little sacks of corn—wretched food of wretchedbeings. They spread them out at the foot of this plunderer in a lace-covered uniform. Their broken language and raised hands call Christ to witness, or Allah, or even the Demons of the caves, that nothing further of value is left in the hold. The officer turns the sacks over, opens some, for fear that cans of essence or cases of explosives have been the object of this furtive journey to Cattaro or Pola. His foraging fingers encounter nothing but figs or herrings, which leave on his finger-nails a faint spicy smell. Carelessly he wipes off with his handkerchief the mixed fragments of fruit sugar. With a severe glance he makes a last inspection of the boat. The good bandits relapse into disquietude. They don’t understand; what does he want of them? One of them speaks, and at once their faces clear up. It is gold he demands, good sterling coin, an easy ransom to carry. The richer ones extract from their belts some pieces from the Balkan States, much worn and effaced; the poor ones spread out on their palms some sous and centimes, so bent and filed they are good only for jacket-buttons for our sailors. An old bashi-bazouk, white around the temples and at the ends of his mustache, has not a single good coin; crouched on the deck, he tells over a blackened rosary and from his god begs absolution for past sins. The others plead; the women kiss the hands and knees of the uniformed stranger; the children cry bitterly.The visiting officer embarks majestically in his long-boat, and makes a gesture of disdain that sends all this misery on its way again. The pilot hoists the sail, the rich man pockets his piasters and the beggar his coppers, the bashi-bazouk his prayers, the women their kisses, and the children their tears. The sheet swells, and the bark passes below the cruiser, whose crew smile indulgently, while our Albanians and Epirotes, seated on their hatches, understand nothing whatever.
On other days our police duty takes us further south. Steamers and sailing vessels frequent the approaches to Corfu, and our visits are more careful and more profitable. The shores have lost their gloomy appearance; black herds are pasturing on the hills; each slope is checkered in squares of olive orchards and clusters of vineyard; in little well-sheltered coves four white houses are grouped round a ruined mosque.
On the edge of the water, overhanging a harbor, rises the castle of some erstwhile pasha. This castle is round, copper-colored, classic in design, beautifully situated. The blue water reflects its pale image, and we often slow down for the mere pleasure of admiring it. Victor Hugo would have loved this stronghold, whence pirates used to surge forth, and the village where the booty was brought together; his lines would have celebrated the pasha-corsair, the beauty of his odalisks,and the romance of their jeweled retreat. These lovely walls, however, conceal tragedies of Islam. They brood over the sea paths, and their silence is that of a beaten vulture. I prefer to forget that sinister grandeur. I prefer this empty silhouette, artistically placed here in a happy setting for the brief delectation of a few passing sailors. These are empty pleasures, perhaps, but we have no others.
Perfect hours await us at sea, off Corfu, Paxo and Cephalonia. When the twilight unfolds its pageant of air and light, we get a sense of joy and confidence that sustains us in our exile. The sun sinks in a procession of purple clouds, shading away to a faint heliotrope in the sky overhead. From mid-heaven hang sheafs of eglantine and geranium, beneath which blossom red carnations, tulips and poppies. The sun feeds all this floral fire. Under the iridescent play of color the sea has disappeared. Its liquid surface has merged with the luminous air, and the cruiser, rose-colored, moves through myriad rainbows.
Everything about the suspended ship is changed to silence and fantasy. The shadows of twilight succeed the colors that glow and disappear. Air and sun create marvels that are not of our world. The light falls on us like a blessing which penetrates our hearts and thoughts with an inexpressible ecstasy.
At last the sun rests on the horizon, whichslowly swallows it. Our sad thoughts are drawn toward the West, towards France. For some of us that sun is gilding the faces of loved ones and caressing the windows of our homes; for others it is glimmering in the tearful eyes of a sweetheart. From our lips, like a messenger of feelings that cannot be written, its beams carry our kisses to lay on other lips.... But it also sweeps over fields bathed in the pure blood of our soldiers—and the thoughts of these “vagabonds” it bears onward toward their spoil.
Certain evenings, while the glorious sun is thus bearing away our dreams, the moon, languorous and discolored, rises laboriously over the Ionian Isles, and offers us her pale rays. But we do not look at her. For her sickly light, her capricious form, her pilgrimage among the shadows—all serve to remind us too painfully of the obscurity of our own labor, the uncertainty of our thoughts and the memory which our work will leave behind us to the ages.
Strait of Otranto, 18 October.
Day before yesterday the “naval army” gathered at the rendezvous appointed by the Admiral off Fano. It was a warm, clear day. The sea seemed asleep; light clouds came and went in the sky. From all directions gathered the squadrons, the divisions, and the separate vessels. Slow and thickset, the ironclads rose over thehorizon and moved down upon us. Round about them destroyers performed evolutions like greyhounds frolicking round a hunter. From Italy, from the Ionian Isles, raced black-striped cruisers, swift and graceful, plowing up the foam; they had left their monotonous patrol guard to join the French cohorts about to ascend the Adriatic.
At the rendezvous, crouching like a beautiful tiger in repose, and covered with flags and pennants, theCourbet, the Admiral’s vessel, awaited the others. Breathless they paused beneath her gaze, and received their final orders. From the bridges of theCourbet, the signalmen, with movements of their arms, sent preliminary instructions to each ship; the many-colored signals ascended and descended the halyards. Boats and launches left the ships and hurried to the Admiral from whom the officers received long closed envelopes which they quickly carried back to their ships. The commanders opened them, bent over maps and plans, and divined the wishes of their chief.... Every week since we left Toulon this has been the episode which interrupts our tedious voyages. After it is over, our “naval army,” numerous and impressive, again breaks up. One after another, the ships begin to churn the purple water, taking their proper posts and lines, and dispersing towards their regular night routes. The Admirals lead their squadrons and divisions; long dim streaks in the sky, far apart,indicate the tracks of our departure, but the fickle sea effaces all its lines. Towards the North, losing itself in the distance, the immense procession moves on to offer a tournament of battle. It stretches out the length of a province. Behind, and at a great distance from each other, the armored squadrons move at a slow and steady pace. At the head, offering their breasts, deploy the cruisers, sweeping the Adriatic. Ahead of them there is nothing but emptiness.
TheWaldeck-Rousseauadvances in the night. Tense with watching, she trembles in the darkness. All the ports, all the scuttles are closed, and not a particle of light betrays us. The fires are controlled, so that they throw off no sparks or cinders. Absolute silence prevails. Our invisible progress makes no more sound than the flight of a night-bird. It is my detachment which has the first watch.
There is a certain powerful excitement in concentrating all one’s energy in ear and eye, in restraining the desire of the blood for sudden action. My comrade to port, I to starboard, do not stir. If our fingers mechanically touch our eyelids or scratch our itching neck, our intent eyes never waver. They see nothing but blackness. The light of the stars is veiled in a thin mist, and there are no reflections on the water. We move in a darkness as of the tomb. Thus, in the forest, animals creep along on guard, bending the weedsand crawling through the brush they do not even rustle. Our engines and screws drive us along, supple and furtive like groups of cats. Our prow cuts the water without stirring it.
Of this cautious being, my comrade and I are the temporary brain. Around us perhaps lurk Austrian destroyers, also invisible and silent, which may be launching at us, as they pass, their pointed torpedoes. Before we have suspected that death prowls there, they will have perceived a gigantic hulk making a spot in the darkness. Let the two officers on watch, safeguarding the ship, have a second of forgetfulness or fatigue, and a thousand men may be lost in the abyss whence none returns. In us these thousand sailors place implicit confidence. If disaster should happen, they would forgive us in their last agony, because they know that no human power could have prevented it. Presently, when we lie down on our bunks, worn out with the strain, we shall deliver our lives over to our successors without a thought. The two watchers on the bridge are the guardian angels of the crew.
That is the greatness of our vocation. Nowhere in this war, in which the battlefields will have seen so much heroism, will there be a heavier task imposed on leaders of men. No general or sergeant could commit a mistake which would annihilate his army or his squad in a single instant. The ball kills only one man, the shell carries offonly a file; and the mine spares those at a distance. Every fighter on land has his chance of surviving the worst disaster, and the most careless officer will never have upon his conscience the death of all the men he has commanded.
But a boat is a prison, more confining than stones and bars and chains; we are suspended over the abyss. Naval catastrophes are like a vomit from hell; no other catastrophe crushes so many lives at a single stroke. Lives and goods lost together! Terrible words, which cannot be said of cataclysms on land. Earthquakes, fires leave reminders, ruins, witnesses of that which was.... But the ocean tears from her surface a handful of metal and men, and sends them to rot in her bowels. And the next day the unchangeable deeps smile their eternal smile.
Long ago the sea knew the whole art of murder. Our diabolical genius had to add tenfold to the horror. Human ingenuity has invented the mine, more remorseless than a hundred reefs; the torpedo, more destructive than a hurricane, and those explosives which tear to pieces still living tissue into projectiles of flesh.
The slow night ebbs away. These forebodings of the fate of sailors invade the souls of the watchers, and make them long to vanquish the specters of the shadow. For to die is nothing if one has been able to save others. From the interior of the ship, from the hammocks and theposts of the watch, rises the voice of a hundred trusting hearts. That unity of appeal creates this thing which has neither form nor law, but which draws its strength from the very depths of the soul, in that affection, that complete devotion of oneself: Duty.
Tedious as are the hours filled with such distressing thoughts, the night, nevertheless, finally begins to fade. The East pales and the mists disappear and unveil the depths of the sky, where a few faint stars go out one after the other before the approach of the sun. The light slowly conquers the limits of space, and sea and ships take on form and substance. From the South a cruiser emerges, gray as the waves through which it comes, the dawn strips it of its veil, moulds its shape, reveals the masts and the smoke from its stacks. Farther away there is a row of motionless points on the surface of the water; these are the masts of the ironclads that have followed on our track. Others still farther South are entirely invisible.
The mountains of Austria and Montenegro take possession of a segment of the sky; their white peaks have a scarlet hem. They form a wall stretching from North to South, of which the ravines, the escarpments and the summits are still buried in mist. Our cruiser gets orders to bear farther northward, while the other cruisers deploybetween it and the ironclads. It puts on speed, its whole bulk quivering under its armor. When it has taken position, it can still see its neighbor in the South, and the stacks of the ship behind it. But only puffs of smoke reveal the presence of the other ships, of which the most distant is opposite Antivari or St. John of Medua, fifty kilometers away.
The entire “naval army” bears off to the right and moves toward the enemy coast, which every moment renders clearer. I take the watch, which has been resigned before midnight. A few hours of uneasy sleep have left me with the taste of ashes in my mouth, and a painful fluttering in my eyelids. But have we not all lived in this way for I know not how many weeks? And should one not whip up his blood in the face of approaching danger? And can one stay drowsy in the marvel of this dawn?
Here is light in all its purity and perfection. The blue of a young girl’s eyes, or the delicate green of April meadows, seem gross and hard in comparison with this light. It is quiet, yet alive with beauty. It enchants like a perfume; it evokes a solemn rapture. Surely the robes of angels must be woven from rays of such light.
But from behind the mountains the sun rises. Objects appear more clearly and lose their delicacy of line. Far to the North over the Dalmatian Isles a few clouds stain the sky. The hazeis lifting from the bay of Cattaro, the details of which we study through our glasses—gray spots of forts, white streaks of lighthouses, smoke of Austrian ships sheltered in the roadstead. Above the town, which is still invisible, slowly rises a black point like a dark bubble; I watch this suspicious ascension, but cannot yet make out what it means. On the other side the sun hangs on the summit of a mountain.
All the air seems to vibrate. One’s eyes are dazzled at such refulgence, such clearness. The sun frees himself from the mountain peaks, and as he rises pours down a triumphal torrent of light. The Dalmatian Isles, the Austrian coast rise suddenly, imposing and menacing. The cruisers to the South reflect a radiance from their hulls, the sheet of sea over which our cruiser advances alone is covered with a glassy surface which the eye cannot penetrate. With their hands on the mortar, the gunners stand stiller than ever. In the bow of the ship the sailors who do not belong to the watch keep their eyes on the approaching land and the gliding sea. The ascending black point has stopped, and seems held at the end of a line. Now I recognize it for a captive balloon. Its casing, its cording, looks as transparent as a spider’s web. But from its height a human eye has observed us; the submarines and destroyers have been warned by telephone; and all is astir, in this inaccessible arsenal, with theeffort to attack, without danger to themselves, the cruiser that offers them battle. In the splendor of the still morning, this captive balloon symbolizes the troubled passions of men—murder and destruction. But it is delightful to approach the enemy through all this enchantment. Under the sunlight the sea has become blue and seductive again, and the death of the cruiser, should it occur, will take on a sort of divine beauty in this brightness.
Things begin to happen. Out of the last bank of mist which stretches along the coast there mount in spiral flights two almost imperceptible insects. At so great a distance they resemble two animated bits of dust. They are Austrian aeroplanes seeking the height and the currents of air favorable for attack. They see theWaldeck-Rousseau, lost in the sea-mist, and instantly separate, one drawing northward, the other southward. In a few minutes their outlines are hidden in the clouds, and we no longer know what has become of them.
Soon the Montenegrin post of Lovcen signals us by wireless that the harbor of Cattaro is astir. A squadron of torpedo-destroyers is getting up steam. Some ironclads are moving, submarines are making for the channel outlet. Forewarned, the watchers on the bridge, sailors and officers, gaze at the narrows, and soon discern on the surface of the water some fine bluish tufts like thesmoking butts of cigarettes. It takes the acute vision of seamen to distinguish them, for we are sailing more than twenty miles from shore. They are two submarines coming out of Cattaro and preparing to submerge. The brightness of the air is enough to dazzle us. And then we see nothing more. These metal fish are buried under the waves, taking unknown paths, and moving mysteriously towards us who are their prey.
All eyes on the bridge are fixed upon the scene. We approach danger with clear vision and mind and with a quiet pleasure. On the forward deck the marines not on duty scrutinize alternately the horizon and the faces of the officers on watch to make out what adventures they hold in store.... Among the winding straits of Cattaro glide masts as fine as hairs; these are the destroyers which in their turn are issuing forth to attack us. TheWaldeck-Rousseaukeeps on toward the hostile coast. At last the first destroyers appear, gray, and plumed with smoke; the moment has come to prepare ourselves for battle, and the commander orders the trumpets sounded to clear the decks for action.
At the first notes of this music which they have heard so many times for mere drill, the sailors prick up their ears and cast questioning glances at the bridge. Voices are raised asking nervously: “Is it in earnest this time?” With an affirmative nod I reassure them. A joyous clamor rises fromall their hearts, the clamor of children who are at last going to play. In an instant everyone has rushed to his post of battle. The decks are deserted, the ship is abandoned.
But in its bosom a hidden life goes forward. The port stanchions are closed; the powerful bolts, which the men hastily shoot, make out of the enormous hull a hive partitioned by steel. In every cell of the hive groups of men, sometimes a single man, look after the apparatus, set it working, and wait. They see nothing, and will see nothing. If the ship is conquered, they will not know how or why. Everyone is silent. Where soldiers in the great moment of battle translate their joy of action into shouting, sailors, on the contrary, must keep absolute silence. Only the rattle of the engines, the telephone orders, and the trumpet calls may be heard. In the turrets and the casemates, behind the guns, the gunners and pointers hold themselves motionless, ready for the swift, precise movements, repeated so many times in innumerable drills, which will send straight to their mark the rain of well-aimed shells.
From the guns, the engines, the helm, the mute tension of a thousand men flows back to the turret, the brain of a cruiser. In this armored enclosure are stationed the commander, his two officers in charge of the firing, his navigating officer. They know that the safety of the ship depends on theclearness of their judgment. With lowered voices, as if they were conversing on matters of no importance, they address sailors who transmit their orders. Crouching before the artillery keyboard, a few men manipulate the fly-wheels, the bells and signals which tell the orchestra of guns their distances, correct their aim, give them orders to fire. Behind the three dials which direct the engines three sailors quickly write the orders. To right and left, mouth and ear to a line of telephones and speaking trumpets, two sailors listen to the word from below and reply. With his hand on the lever of the steering-gear, and his eyes on the compass of the route, an impassive petty-officer executes the orders of maneuver. There is no noise except the slight grating of the rudder indicating each degree to starboard or port. Through the horizontal embrasures of the turret, like the narrow iron-barred slits in the helmets of knights, the four officers survey the horizon. They make out the churning of foam from a periscope which is moving toward the cruiser’s starboard at top speed. Instantly the whole volley of light guns opens fire on this enemy; the rudder is turned to starboard to change the course of the cruiser, deceive the submarine, and attempt to ram it.... Almost at the same moment there appears from the clouds to the northward an aeroplane, which descends towards us like a water-spout, and wheels about, trying to get a long-distanceaim. Our sharpshooters cover this enemy of the air, and their shots crackle above us like drums. As soon as we are close enough to fight the charging destroyers effectively, our heavy guns open a steady fire on them. Our cruiser becomes a mass of smoke and noise as it confronts the triple peril of air, surface and deep. Every man works with the precision of a clock. I cannot begin to enumerate all the episodes of these exciting moments....
Three hundred meters above us, the aviator lets loose his bombs. Their fall makes a noise like the rending of a sheet of iron. But the turn of the cruiser to starboard has defeated the precision of his aim. Near our hull, fore and aft, they burst with an uproar which deadens the voice of the guns; bits of them rebound to the decks and turrets, and around the spot where they have exploded the sea quivers as if it had been peppered with a hail of pebbles. The aviator mounts higher, pursued by our sharpshooters, who, however, soon abandon him.
Despite the turn to starboard, the cruiser misses the submarine by a few feet, and it disappears beneath the water. The sailors below hear a rippling and lapping of water pass along the hull; they even think they feel the impact of a solid object which scrapes the keel without being able to penetrate it. There is very little doubt but that the submarine did torpedo us, but thequick maneuver of the ship saved us. Instead of hitting us squarely, and damaging our sides, the torpedo—perhaps there were several—merely grazed us and passed on without effect.
In order to see whether it has touched us and to get another aim at us, the submarine comes to the surface again; as it rises we see its periscope and turret athwart us, and without delay the light guns cover it a second time. The water boils about it, the shells burst and envelop it in yellowish smoke. Had it been struck? Is it destroyed? One never knows the fate of these enemies, which, whether victor or vanquished, immediately submerge. The course of the cruiser sweeps us far ahead; we no longer concern ourselves with the submarine, which is no menace to us now. Only our heavy guns speak.
At a great distance the Austrian torpedo-destroyers are encircled by our falling shells. But, like the snipes they are, they twist and zig-zag on the water. We rush along at a speed of eleven meters a second; and if our fire halts the destroyers, it does not seem to touch them. Their prudence triumphs over their boldness. Persuaded that our fire will never admit them within torpedoing distance, they describe a half-circle and flee. In succession, like rabbits regaining their burrow, they take shelter in the channel of Cattaro, until we distinguish only the tips of their masts, which recede, and disappear.
Our heavy guns next engage the coast-works, lighthouses, or batteries, which are now in range. Since the explosions on rocks and earth enable us to regulate our fire, we should shortly be doing great damage to the shore, except for a wireless from the commander-in-chief ordering us to cease our solitary combat. Doubtless the land forts are waiting for us to come nearer, and their guns, more powerful than ours, will do us more harm than the aviator, the submarine and the destroyers together.
Regretful but obedient, theWaldeck-Rousseauturns her back on the shore and moves southward toward the waiting cruisers. In a few seconds their distant outlines, as well as the squadrons of ironclads, grow large and stand out in relief against the sky. They would all have come to our rescue if our challenge had succeeded in drawing out the powerful armament sheltered in Cattaro. But once more the Austrians fail to offer battle, having attempted only to send theWaldeck-Rousseauto her death, with the smallest possible loss to themselves.
While our cruiser regains her own division at top speed, the periscope of a second submarine, on watch in the offing, reveals its furrow of foam on our port side. Regardless of whether it has launched its torpedoes, we rain upon it a steady fire from our lighter guns, not pausing to pursue it, for the order to return is imperative. Halfan hour later theWaldeck-Rousseauslows down and again takes her place in the line of cruisers. Their crews look with envy upon this vessel, the first in the naval war to have the triple honor of facing the triple enemies of the ships.
Two signals are raised. We take new positions for descending the Adriatic. In a few days we shall come back to insult Austria, and perhaps we shall be more fortunate. It is now the end of a white, translucent morning. On board, the battle organization is abandoned, the ordinary watch resumed. While the officers and sailors on the bridges continue to study the sea, we meet again in the ward-room. Meal-time approaches, no one mentions the moments through which the cruiser has just lived. A certain officer of engineers comes out of the boiler-room and tries to beat his record at cup and ball, playing with a steady hand. Four others, their ears still filled with the roar of the guns, plunge into the peaceful subtleties of “bridge.” Others examine maps of Flanders and Poland.
In a profound calm, a kind of oblivion, we talk of things remote from war. And when, after the meal, the commander assembles the officers in the saloon to celebrate in a glass of champagne their baptism of fire, his speech already seems to call up an event from the far past.
Adriatic Sea, 25 October.
Something dark brushes the horizon. A spot on the sky? A storm cloud? The mirage of an island? Our eyes do not hesitate for long; the thing lives and breathes; it is the smoke of a vessel. The officer on watch speeds up the engines, changes the rudder, and points the bow toward this smoke. Since our departure from France not a ship, not a sail, has evaded investigation by our cruisers and destroyers, the Argus and Cerberus of the ocean paths.
Above the horizon rise the masts, the stacks, the hull of the ship. Innocent or guilty, it knows it cannot escape our speed, and does not attempt to flee. At fifteen thousand meters, its outline indicates whether it is a liner, or a freighter; at ten thousand, its displacement shows us whether it is loaded or carries no cargo; at five thousand, its flag reveals its nationality. If it be English or French, it is allowed to pass. If neutral, we show it the signal of the international code: “Halt immediately!”
It has to stop. If it shows any inclination to pursue its way, the first blank shot warns it not to play with fire. If it pretends not to hear this reprimand, a shell falls in its path to inform it that we are not joking. If it insists upon proceeding, a few shots straight at its hull assure it that the matter is becoming serious. It always stops in time.
The cruiser halts within range of the suspect. In an instant one of our long-boats has been lowered and its crew seizes the oars. An officer, armed with sword and revolver and carrying a big record-book, jumps into the boat, which puts off from our vessel. A sailor accompanies him. When the wind is rough and the sea choppy, the boat bounds, plunges and rolls on this passage which seems interminable; the seven sailors struggle with all their might at the oars; buckets of water drench the heads of officer and men; in a few minutes they are soaked through.
The long-boat accosts the steamer, from the rail of which hangs a rope ladder, sometimes merely a knotted rope. Why are they always too short? I don’t know. Anyway the officer, hampered by his sword and his register, and strangled in a uniform which was never meant for jumping, stretches out his arms and tries to grasp the ladder. But the swell rolls back and forth and tips the boat. As he approaches the ship, there is the ladder swaying two meters above him; as soon as he is high enough to seize it, the ship lurches off. It is like a skittish horse that refuses the mount. At these gymnastics the passengers and crew of the ship smile maliciously. The officer rages. He puts his sword between his teeth, his register between coat and shirt, waits for the least unfavorable moment, launches himself headlong—and grasps the ladder. For a few secondshe performs on this flying trapeze. A playful wave laps his knees, his hips, his chest. Recovering himself, he makes a few rungs, hoists himself up the slippery ropes, throws his leg over the rail, and at last puts his foot on the deck.
This adventure, thank heaven, is not always so unpleasant! Some visits seem like pleasant duties. But what has the bad winter weather in store for us?
It would be demanding superhuman virtue from the captains to expect them to like these visits on the high seas. We delay them, we bore them, and sometimes we turn them away from their route. Ordinarily they show us a very surly face; too polite a mien, on the other hand, is to be distrusted. The officer readjusts his disordered uniform, controls his ill-humor, assumes an impassive air, and gives a military salute.
“Captain,” he says, “have the kindness to show me your papers.”
This formula is pronounced in English, Spanish, Italian or French. Grammar sometimes suffers, but not all the world is polyglot. When the visiting officer has exhausted all his vocabularies without anyone’s understanding him, he contents himself with a gesture, reinforced by a contraction of his brows in the direction of his revolver. Thereupon intelligence comes to the most obtuse. A little procession forms. The captain looking important, the officer severe, the commissaryobsequious, the sailor escort bringing up the rear; by means of the passage and stairs these four actors in the little drama reach the navigation room, where are kept the regulation papers. The more luxurious liners sometimes set a table with cigars and liqueurs in the first cabin. Such an attention arouses double suspicion.
The passengers line up along the deck. This episode makes a pleasant interruption in the monotony of the voyage, and gives their pacific minds a slight shuddering taste of the great war. Every man begins to feel like a hero, and to invent a tale which will astonish his future hearers. The men search the face of the French officer, but read little on this cold mask. The women, bolder, solicit his glances, his smile, press themselves on his attention. “Vive la France!” cries one. “He has a real revolver!” whispers another, shuddering. “Stop, officer, and let me photograph you!” begs a third.
The visiting officer does not reply, does not stop, but hastens on his mission. In his register he consults the original of all the documents he has warrant to verify; text, stamps, signatures are exactly reproduced, and not one word of the ship’s papers must differ from the original. If they are in Arabic, Norwegian or Japanese, the officer’s pencil compares them line by line. In curt phrases he approves or objects.
The civil status of the ship seems correct; itsname, its country, its record, reveal nothing ambiguous. The captain is then questioned. Whence has he come, where is he going, and where has he stopped? What are the owners’ orders? The chart and the log, the dates and hours of calls at ports, certified by the official authorities, are all verified. The slightest inaccuracy requires explanations, proofs. In such times as these, all movements at sea must be above suspicion, and the least evasion renders one suspect. To help his captain the ship’s commissary bustles about, pours a glass of liqueur, uncorks a bottle of champagne, introduces a foaming glass between two incisive questions. But the French officer courteously waves aside these seductions.
The commissary in his turn goes on the stand; he spreads out and explains the bills of merchandise, illegible scrawls in every language, dotted with strange abbreviations, with obsolete weights and measures in the jargon of grocer and manufacturer. Every line has them, and twenty special dictionaries could not disclose their traps. Like an archæologist poring over a worn stone, the visiting officer weighs, unravels, interprets these hieroglyphics; from a pocket-book he extracts lists of shippers and consignees friendly to our enemies, and inspects the ship’s papers to see that their names do not figure on them.
Every bill of merchandise raises a question.Certain cargoes always go through, others under certain conditions, some, officially contraband, are fair booty. The texts of the treaties of The Hague and of London pretend to solve all these problems. The officer consults these texts, looking for helpful suggestions. But these treaties, drawn up in times of peace for the despair of sailors in war, are full of ambiguities, over which the crafty neutrals slide. How many enigmas does not the officer have to solve in a few minutes under the dull gaze of his two colleagues!
According to such and such a paragraph the case appears clear, but a footnote throws everything into confusion again. There are neither precedents nor regulations. Upon our decision rests a fraction of our country’s honor. Too much good nature runs us the risk of providing our enemies with valuable materials; too much rigor will bring vigorous complaints from injured neutrals. Let our decision leave a loophole in the dispute, and learned jurists will deliberate over it in the prize-courts for weeks and months; then will consume endless hours and heaps of paper before discovering what ought to be the judgment actually rendered in the interval between a drenching in a long-boat and a submarine scare.
Bah! We have our privileges of State. Our conscience is clear, our intentions are pure, and little remorse accompanies our verdicts. Yesterday, as well as to-morrow, we make a seizure orrelease, according to the simple dictates of common sense. The smiles and grimaces of the commissary do not warp our judgments; even when the captain, at a critical moment, presses on us a whole box of choice Havana cigars this seduction adds not a grain to our weighing-scale. The officer politely declines, ends his examination, makes his decision, and demands the passenger list.
“Captain, have the kindness to draw up on deck all the persons on board. Let each one hold his identification papers in his hand. In five minutes I shall make my inspection.”
Women, stewards and waiters scatter through the cabins, which suddenly fill with commotion. In the midst of a chorus of exclamations, of murmurs and laughs, feverish fingers ransack writing cases and bags; travelers with good consciences easily discover what they need; the women adjust their hair, hastily powder a suspicion of tan on their faces, and with a turn of their hand put all the details of their toilette in order. They are tremendously entertained. It’s like a real play! For a very little more they would put on their prettiest gowns.... But the officer is in a hurry, and the captain excuses himself: one passenger cannot lay his hand on his passports, which he has certainly shut up in a trunk. Exactly! The story is well-known! That bird from Germany must be held.
Everyone lines up in two or more rows. Irresistibly, an order rises to the lips of the visiting officer—“Right dress! Eyes front!” But no, these passengers are not soldiers. And now the task is to keep in line this fat lady in a rather short skirt, who inserts herself between an asthmatic youth and a rugged American. Let us stifle our laughter! The lines sway, somewhere at the back a boy sneezes, two Brazilians or Argentinians burst into shameless laughter, a huge negro trembles with fear. The officer passes on his inspection.
Like a row of blind people holding out their wooden bowls, everyone carries his passport in his hand. The men are extremely grave, almost indignant, and one can imagine the silent perturbation behind their brows. They lie in wait for an imprudent word in order that they may at once invoke their counsel, their ambassador, and the unwritten laws of neutrals. Vain hope! The officer looks them over swiftly, and opens their papers with a scrupulous touch. Stamps and signatures are correct, the descriptions too; the passports, the certificate of nationality, have no taint of fraud. But no touchstone is worth so much as that of speech: to expert ears a few words, a few phrases, reveal many secrets, and a hesitating manner accuses where the documents acquit.
“Kindly tell me where you come from....Kindly tell me your name and the date of your birth.... Did you leave your country some time ago? Kindly answer me in your own language.... What is your profession?”
One has to question closely and in various ways, and keep oneself from getting into dialogues. There is never a discussion; an immediate judgment, and we go on.
Compatriots, Russians, English, undergo the questioning. They are cheerful and anxious to chat.
“In too much of a hurry, my friend!... A handshake and bon voyage!... The last news from the wireless?... Everything goes well, very well!”
Click! Click! Right and left, the kodaks are at work. Who will ever count the albums in which playful passengers have put their naval inspection? They imagine they have not been seen, but their faces, suddenly serious, and their air of having touched nothing, betray their crime.
“And you, mademoiselle? What signatures on your passport? What journey are you making?”
“I am from Valparaiso, and I am on my way to my family in Moscow!”
Ye gods! What are all these women doing wandering about the vast world? Half the soldiers in Europe have thrown themselves on the other half, but travelers come and go like doves, without thought of trouble.
The passports of the men are comprehensible—functionaries, manufacturers going from port to port, mobilized men, producers from the Far East; all avow intentions which are definite and easy to deal with. But the origin and destination of the women are puzzling enigmas. In America, in Asia, in Africa, all the chancelleries of remote consulates have written over and scratched out the most bewildering itineraries. These papers are fantastic.
The mystery is increased by the contradictions of the passengers’ appearance. The visiting officer examines a modest passenger in tennis shoes, flannel suit and traveling cap, who blushes like a boarding-school miss, and answers very timidly. And what does he see on the photograph of the passport she shows him? A smiling doll, buried under a hat as large as a millstone, adorned with aigrettes and feathers; a very elaborate arrangement of the hair which hides half her face, and three rows of pearls on her bare throat. Is there anything in common between this luxurious figure and the timid person wringing her hands in the line, whose inward mirth appears in her sparkling eyes and an imperceptible trembling of her elbows? He would be a perjurer who would swear to it.
It is even a relief when they know their own nationality exactly. I never suspected that one’s native country could be mislaid, lost and foundlike a pair of gloves. But in these latitudes one learns something every day. Wars, treaties, and revolts, have so confused the map of the East that it seems as if every passenger were provided with two or three spare countries.
“Now, Madam, will you explain for your husband, whom I do not understand? What is his nationality? And you yourself, are you Turkish, Egyptian, Greek or Russian?”
“It is very simple, Mr. Officer. My husband was Armenian, that is to say, a Turkish subject. At the time of the massacres he fled to the Caucasus and found it wise to put himself under Russian protection. His business called him to Crete, which became Greek while he was living there. I was born in Macedonia, a Turkish subject, but the last war has made me a Serb. We went to Alexandria because it was quieter there, for since the English are suzerains of Egypt, we intended....”
So goes the story. Adventuresses, spies, or wanderers tossed about in Levantine eddies, their talk is as picturesque as their papers. It would be absurd to persecute them in this maze where they are astray.
To what end, moreover? The real prize, the choice booty, is recognized by infallible signs: German faces, Teutonic accents, insolent or honeyed replies, stammered explanations. However much they may have garbled their names andsubmitted to us false ones in writing, the race of these Germans oozes from every pore. They are on their way to foment rebellion in Egypt or in Tripoli; they are going to work the Balkans, to pursue in India or China their secret intrigues. Invariably their passports derive from Switzerland or Holland, but their certificates of nationality, very new, just off the press, remind one of coins that are counterfeit and too bright. Suspects!... The officer goes down to their cabins; everything he finds in the valises, the steamer trunks, denotes innocence and sincerity. But he is nauseated by a strange odor. It cannot be defined, but whoever has smelt it recognizes unerringly the kind of flesh it comes from. With handkerchief to nose; he turns over the bed and ransacks the furniture. Under the mattress, behind the wash-basin, in the folds of a blanket, lies the fatal paper, the envelope or the packet.... Enemies!...
Now the affair must be ended decisively, elegantly, in the French style. Invested with discretionary powers on a neutral boat, the visiting officer conforms to courtesies which would satisfy the most exacting. His attitude, the tone of his voice, his words, affirm, in surroundings often hostile, always excited, the sovereign will of his country. The staff-officer of the boat, the crew and the passengers form a hostile jury of free witnesses who would jeer to the ends of the earththe slightest clumsiness. But we are at any rate vain enough not to imitate the ruffianly manners of our enemies.
The visiting officer stops before the German, calls him by name, lays a finger lightly on his sleeve or shoulder, and says, without raising his voice:
“I take you prisoner. Follow my sailor, who will carry your baggage and conduct you to the ship’s boat.”
Cries, bursts of rage, insults, are of no avail. One adds nothing. What is said is said. At the worst, if the scene becomes painful, the officer turns to the captain.
“Commandant, I direct you to use your authority to compel Monsieur to follow me. Otherwise I shall be obliged to use force. I take the responsibility for the order I give you, and I will draw up for you a report of the proceedings.”
That is enough. Protected by the owners and his government, the captain abandons the prisoner to his fate, and speeds the removal of his baggage. The German taken in the snare protests, sheepish and mortified. But the faithful sailor has already seized him and is hurrying him without much ado to the long-boat. The audience makes comments. The kodaks work their fastest. A few hands applaud, a few malcontents murmur. The circle opens deferentially before the officer, who copies on the log the formulas appropriateto the visit, recounts the incident, exonerates the captain, and signs the deposition which will go the round of the chancelleries.
Then, and only then, when the business is all settled, will he accept perhaps a cigarette, or a file of newspapers, or a cup of coffee. While the prisoner’s baggage is being somehow tumbled into the bottom of the long-boat, the officer takes a few steps along the deck. The crowd of passengers precipitate themselves upon his suddenly humanized person. “News! News!” implore all the voices. He repeats the wireless messages received from the Eiffel Tower, from Poldhu, and is careful to make no comments. As if by magic, the misses, the donnas and senoras of all the nations and of every type of beauty slide under his hand a pencil, albums, post-cards. He defends himself. They beg with alluring glances. Must he not yield? Feverishly he scrawls, signs, dates the cards and albums. He is promised photographs—which he never receives. Sly scissors clip from his coat a button to mount on a hatpin. Families invite him to the Ukraine, to California, to Buenos Aires, after the war is over.
Finally the sailor escort returns: “Ready!” he says, saluting.
The officer pushes his way through the crowd, throws his leg over the rail, commences his tumbling descent. On the seat of the boat the prisoner, quite still, takes up the least possible room.
“You may continue your voyage!” cries the visitor to the captain, who is awaiting his release.
More questions, and farewells; a waving of scarfs and handkerchiefs. But he is already in the hollow of the waves; he wipes the spray from his face, and, raising his cap, makes a fine salute of farewell to all these passengers whom he will never see again.
Ten minutes later the boat with its prisoner is hoisted on board. The officer reports to his commandant, and at once draws up his statement. The cruiser begins to move, heading west; the liner recedes to the south, and soon we see nothing but her smoke. For several hours we prowl about, expecting the same ceremony to recommence. Five or six times a day we stop, make a visit, permit them to go on, or show our teeth. There are some amusing and some dramatic adventures, but for a few profitable visits how many futile ones there are! Yesterday in battle; always on the watch; a beast hunting for prey; the customs-officer of the high sea; traveling ceaselessly; never in port—such is the lot of the cruiser. Who of us reckoned on this as war? No one, I swear.
North of Corfu, 30 October.
Was it not a dream from which we have just emerged? For several days—no, I must be mistaken—for a few hours theWaldeck-Rousseauhas been lying in the harbor of Malta, and our feethave trod the ground, the shore, the sidewalks. Fifty-three days at sea had persuaded us that everything in the world is in motion. One has to be a sailor to appreciate the delights of the shore.
It was in fact a dream. To-night finds us again on our patrol, between the coasts of Epirus and Corfu. Our rest is brief, we move very slowly, the screws seem almost asleep, and during my watch, from ten in the evening until two in the morning, the cruiser has slipped through magnificent shadows.
This sea is too lovely. Anxious to solace our exile with her feminine caresses, she shows us from hour to hour a delicious and ever-changing countenance. In moments of alarm and trial she succeeds in pervading us with her gentle consolation. But to-day, far from the Austrian coast, everything seems kindly, and the sailor can abandon himself to the magic of the shadows. Not a sound, not a breath, in these happy moments. Nature never slumbers so softly as on the sleeping waves, and the most smothered words are too noisy to express this silence. The sea opens languorously at our prow, and receives us amorously, so to speak, in her watery arms, which embrace us tenderly along our hull. The reflections of the stars, which ordinarily rock without ceasing up and down the ridges of water, stand motionless in it like nails of light. The coast ismirrored in the black element, reversed so perfectly that the land and its image seem cut from the same block. Epirus, Corfu and Merlera surround us in an immense circle, enclosing us almost as in a lake. But this lake is filled with a limpid water that extends from the shores of yesterday to the cliffs of to-morrow.
Enlarged in the transparent air, the stars seem to have come down nearer to us; the moon does not disturb the happy shadow. The star Sirius rises in the heavens, detached suddenly from the mountains like a slow rocket. She is round like some heavenly fruit, and the beacons on the coast are dim before this queen of our heaven.
On the Balkan cliff, halfway up the side of the mountain, flames a red light. Evidently it is a conflagration; in some little valley a wretched village is burning and expiring. Is it Albanian, Greek or Epirote? Some bandits with torches have set on fire the first barn on their path; the thatch, the mud walls, the dim huts, are consumed in whirlwinds, and the starlight is stained with streaks of smoke. The herds up there bleat and bellow in the flames; disheveled mothers carry off their nurslings; the men load their guns and unloose the dogs. To-morrow, in reprisal, another hamlet will be burned.
We are so far away, so lost in the night, that this sinister fire does not affect us at all. Why pity or curse, when distance smothers all sound?Yet how can we help being carried back to the obsession of the war, which the sea, the sky, and the stars, had banished from the present moment? Have not these distant flames been lighted by the incendiary of Berlin, and do they not portend the track of murder that will soon soak the East in blood?
But on this night I do not wish to abandon myself to sorrow. I wish to let my whole being slip into the rich blackness, and to ask of it the serenity demanded for the coming danger. Before dawn a velvety freshness creeps up, and banishes my insidious fatigue. This freshness of the end of night seems to make still smoother the surface of the sea, in which are sunk the reflections of the stars, clear, numberless, white as wax. Sparkling above each taper, every star recalls the flame which trembles on Christian altars at dusk, when the tardy penitent cannot distinguish the dim wick between the wax and the fire. Among the unreal columns of this Adriatic temple glides the cruiser.
This temple has neither nave, organ, nor pavement. The chandeliers have burned there since the first breath of things. The tabernacle is the immensity wherein swing the divine planets. The nameless architect is God, who has sown the stars near His throne in order that the humble regard of men shall be lifted to Him.
Among the Austrian Islands, 2 November.
It is dawn. We are moving in a long file towards the Austrian islands. From cruiser to cruiser the cocks are calling and answering each other. As their clear call salutes the dawn, it is accompanied by the cackling of our poultry-yard. In the fresh air the melancholy cattle are lowing, and the restless sheep are bleating; each of our dinners diminishes their number. To the officers on watch there rises the country smell from the henhouses, the cattle manure, and the hay, their fodder; and the air is filled with all the sounds of an awakening farm. Into the preoccupations of the watch creep precious memories and nostalgia; one would like to be in some country place, surrounded by meadows and woods, and one wants to close one’s eyes so that nothing may destroy the dream.
But it is the green sea that forms our meadows; and the Dalmatian Isles, which emerge from the mist, are the groves of our horizon. The three big cruisers with six stacks are in the upper Adriatic, at the approaches to Lissa, a bastion of the Austrians on that sea, over which we sail without opposition. Further south, toward the isles of Lagosta or Pelagosa, the armored squadrons move at reduced speed. Once again, the tenth or twentieth time—we have lost count—the French “naval army” emerges from the dawn and offers the challenge they will not accept.