PART III

IN THE IONIAN SEA

_End of December, 1914._

It is nearly two o’clock in the morning. Far to the south glides a line of phantoms. We left Malta nearly a week ago; our monotonous cruising has almost effaced the very memory. It is a bad night. The rain is pouring down. The wind whips into our eyes and onto our lips handfuls of stinging nettles. I am shivering with cold. I see the file of boats and masts tossed by the swell. A British convoy is passing yonder, carrying Hindu regiments from the sparkling seas of Asia to the mists of Flanders. Its lights appear and disappear as it pitches on the water, and it does not notice our dark presence.

Although unknown as their guardians, the cruisers have made the seas secure for these transports, which could not resist the smallest enemy torpedo. At a distance the French ships accompany them, keeping between them and Austria, and at the end of the regular course, give over to other ships the duty of safeguarding them, and move away to new tasks. The boats that come from India and Australia might fancy the sea was empty and that good fortune was directing them to port. On certain clearer days, when they see almost imperceptible clouds of smoke, do they guess that these come from one of their guardian angels?

If our task consisted only in freeing the route for these exotic allies of ours, there would be reward enough for the difficulty of our labor. For the first time in the history of men, a war summons to Europe the children of immemorial Asia as defenders and not as devastators. Let us be the good artisans of this miracle.

* * * * *

Perhaps later, in some unforeseen voyage, I shall pass through some bazaar on the banks of the Ganges, or admire under the limpid sky the mystic lines of a temple of Brahma. With his head in a turban and his feet bare, a brown man will approach me, his eyes will laugh with pleasure at sight of a Frenchman lost among the Hindu multitudes. His white teeth will light up his smile, and he will murmur a few words of the language which is so beautiful it makes one tremble under every latitude:

“You, Frenchman! Paris.... Marseilles.... Good-day, monsieur!” this man will try to say. I shall turn back and return his smile.

“Welcome!” I shall answer, “to one who greets me in such pleasant words.”

And we shall walk together. This man, born in the Punjab, the Himalayas or the Deccan, will draw a marvelous fresco from the treasure of his memories. He will tell me of the battle of the Marne, the Oise or the Escaut. His eyes will have a profound, fixed look from having traveled in so many strange lands; his surprising metaphors will make live again the cities he saw during the intoxication of battle: Paris, Rheims, Ypres, and so many others. At certain moments he will take my arm, with respect at first, and then with confidence, as the ghosts of the past disengage themselves from a memory made drowsy by the Eastern sun. All the epic drama of Europe, already pale and unreal in his mind, will revive for the benefit of my melancholy joy.

Perhaps too, if God is willing, my friend of the moment will prove to have pushed his victorious adventure as far as Berlin. He will draw from his bosom a picture wrapped in rags, a post card showing Unter den Linden or the Brandenburger Allee. Under the blazing sun of India I shall contemplate dreamily these grim buildings, and my thoughts will make my heart beat heavily, though I shall not betray my emotion.

“You see, monsieur, I got as far as that.”

He will put his finger on the Palace of the Kaiser, and the dignity of men who have accomplished great deeds will shine on his dark face. Silently we shall gaze at each other, living a unique moment together. And then something will break the charm, a street cry, a brawl of sepoys, or the barking of dogs. The Hindu will quickly hide the dirty picture, and will whisper more quickly still: “Afterwards I came back, and it was all over....”

We will go on a few steps, but he will remain silent, having finished telling me all the romance of his life. This romance will not return. No Hindu will live it again. Head down and hands folded behind my back, I shall find no words adequate to this dream of his, or to the shattering echo of our memories. On turning an alley, I shall offer him my hand, which he will doubtless kiss, and a few seconds later the eddies of the crowd will have parted us forever.

Go, charming Hindu with your sunny soul, towards the dream which enchants your slumber as you are cradled in the rolling of the transport. My lids burn and I am chilled to the marrow, but you have nothing to fear. The cruisers watch over your voyage and that of your brothers, for you are sailing towards France; and carry her your hearts and your arms, which are your only riches.

_1 January, 1915; three o’clock in the morning._

I come down from the watch. My boots, my jacket, and my oilskins, drip in little dirty streams on the linoleum; my hair is matted with salt, and a bad headache, driven into my temples by the rain and the squalls, prevents my getting to sleep. The close cabin, hardly longer than a railway compartment, smells of rubber, of tar and is rancid. The steam heater adds a mustiness of hot metal; the exhalations of boilers and engines filter through the decks, and saturate everything with a stale odor; the hull receives the eternal blows of the sea’s battering-ram that storms angrily against it. Through the joints of the port hole, which is screwed down as tight as possible, ooze threads of water which dribble along the wall and form a pool. For I know not how many days, the cabin has not received the least whiff of pure air, and the electric lamp shines grotesquely in the thick atmosphere.

With a towel, already soiled with coaldust, I remove the crust of salt and soot that is stuck on my face; then I wash my numb fingers in the little pool that dances at the bottom of my basin. Seated before my papers, my archives, I follow the movements of the cruiser as it rides the squall. Familiar lice and roaches risk timid voyages across my desk. A bold gray rat gnaws old cigar stumps and string in my waste paper basket. He is not afraid of me, and I do not disturb his little feast. What a sinister opening to the coming year!

Where was I just now, on the bridge enveloped in water? In the interval of my watch the year 1914 joined the dead and 1915 lived his first moments. A shower of rain gave its blessing to this agony and this birth, and a gale with lungs of steel howled with all its might. The clouds and the sea made a chaos in which sailors had difficulty in seeing anything, and the cruiser, tossed in the hollow of the waves, could scarcely keep its course. A hundred or two hundred miles away, other ships were burying their prows in this cataclysm of water, and struggling in the vast desolation.

The “naval army” is grieving over two recent disasters--the torpedoing of the battleship _Jean Bart_, and the loss of the submarine _Curie_. In the brotherhood of the sea, the injury or disappearance of a single ship creates a painful void.

* * * * *

The _Waldeck_ did not take part in this last Adriatic expedition, in which the fleet went once more to tempt the Austrians. It had other tasks; without it, the cruisers, battleships and destroyers went up the liquid avenue, and spent some time there. After a futile waiting they returned in triumphant march to the strait of Otranto. Slightly enervated by their unprofitable effort, they were perhaps less strict in their vigilance, and went slowly, disdainfully towards an enemy restive for combat. But Austria, who accepted no fight in the open, had despatched on their course her venomous beasts. Through the lens of his periscope the commander of the submarine at Cattaro saw the splendid array of battleships rising on the horizon. The proud, thickset, form of the _Jean Bart_ led the fleet on the return as it had led them on the ascent; on the mast floated the flag of the Commander-in-Chief, and his officers sadly surveyed the empty sea. But the Austrian, crouched in the waves, trembled at the approach of his unhoped for prize; each one of the men enclosed in the flanks of the submarine was keyed to the combat.

Oh! the minutes that these sailors and their commander must have lived through! Must one not envy them the emotion of their discovery and of decisive action at last? Boldness and courage erase frontiers; one feels jealous of an enemy for the supreme beauty of a dangerous coup like this. With all his energy concentrated in his eyes and on his lips, the lieutenant of the Austrian vessel watched the powerful battleships coming towards him; he maneuvered in short zigzags, to right and left, higher and lower, like an artist. If he showed himself, he and his crew would meet instant death. All the noblest and purest faculties of the officer rose in him. When his calculations and his experience told him that the _Jean Bart_ had reached the fatal place, he gave two orders, and two torpedoes, at a few seconds’ interval, threaded their way through the waves towards the hull.

One passed harmlessly behind the _Jean Bart_, and disappeared. But the other exploded against her prow. The heavy sound warned the sailors that the sea was seeking a victim. Through the breach the water poured into the breast of the battleship, tore open and twisted the compartments, and did not stop until it reached a wall strong enough to resist the pressure. Like a stunned fighter, the _Jean Bart_ lowered her forehead and sunk her brow in the water. She carried more than a thousand men, but not one showed fear. Before disaster could happen, all of them did their instant duty, and the ship survived. By good luck the torpedo had been fired two or three seconds too soon; otherwise it would have destroyed her. In a few months she again took her place among us.

The _Waldeck-Rousseau_ has had her own risks. Several times she has been attacked by submarines, but doubtless her very familiarity with this danger has kept her from being struck. Her crew are happy over her having escaped the fate of the _Jean Bart_. But what has the future in store? Let us continue to do our duty; let us watch with even greater vigilance, and keep our good ship from the hospital or the grave.

Since this accident to the _Jean Bart_ we scarcely venture on the Adriatic except for very definite purposes. The enemy submarines have demonstrated their presence, which could be denied so long as none of our ships, through good fortune or skill, had been actually hit. It is a habit of men’s minds to depreciate the danger which does not touch them. After the admiral’s ship had been struck, the zone of operations was moved to the south, in the Ionian Sea. The “beats” of the cruisers are longer, and the weather is frightful. This sea is a regular gathering-place for the winds. Coming from the four quarters of the horizon, the sons of Æolus meet here and riot. The end of the Adriatic and Albania breed a keen icy capricious north wind which descends at a great velocity, rushing out of the corridor formed by the banks, expanding suddenly in the open, and turning the waves upside down. By way of Epirus and Morea, the winds of the east and southeast come from Syria and Asia Minor, and raise the stormiest seas. Endless fogs are carried over by the fringes of the simoon, from the hot south and the sands of the Soudan and Libya. And the strong west wind, born in the Atlantic, blown over Gibraltar and Sicily, rushes up and throws gigantic waves against the wall of the Ionian Islands, thrusts them back, cuts them and joins them again in wild and formless masses on which we leap and roll as if intoxicated. We see nothing but the gray elements of rain and wind, mist and spray. The ships avoid these latitudes, where few of the commercial routes cross, and which our presence renders still more undesirable. It is a sort of desert place in the city of the sea. Sea birds accompany us no longer; they fly in the heart of the gales. A troubled void, a journey of the Wandering Jew, that is the present existence of the cruisers.

Just now on going to the watch, my comrade and I, in order to celebrate the New Year, took to the bridge a bottle of champagne, a poor cheap bottle of champagne, some renamed Saumur, for our ship does not possess any rare vintage. In the shelter of the navigation-house, five glasses had been placed on the map of the Ionian Sea; they covered Sicily, Apulia, Corfu, the Pelopennesus and Libya; the bottle occupied the sector of the _Waldeck-Rousseau_, and in the storm awaited the five officers on duty. A black and icy rain was falling. The chill bit into one’s flesh. When we stretched out our hands we could not see the tips of our fingers. A dripping steersman came howling in our ears--“Captain, it is midnight!” “Lieutenant, it is midnight!”

Bracing ourselves against a gale which almost tore us from the deck, we wiped our weeping eyes. We could not all get into the shelter-house; a group of two or three slipped in by turn and those who were not drinking continued the lookout. We stood under the wan streak of an electric light among books, confidential documents, maps, not daring to stir for fear of wetting these precious papers. We uncorked the bottle, which in popping made a pretense of sparkling, like our own false gayety. We raised the glasses. Drops of water fell from our sleeves and our fingers shook. We awaited the toast, but not one found anything to say. France invaded.... War stretching into the long future.... Our families, so far away.... So much sorrow.... No professional pleasures, and no hope of battle.... Accursed weather and a frozen body.... In our eyes shone something moist which was not rain; we were sad but tried to smile. The glasses trembled.

“To France!” I murmured at length. It was the only brilliant thing to come to my mind. “To France!” responded the others, and the glasses chattered against our teeth. No one finished his glass. After one swallow we could drink no more, but set our glasses down anywhere. The wind and rain rushed in by the half-open door, and one after the other, with choking hearts, we resumed our dim vigil on the bridge.

Two hours more before going below, two hours of tempest and anxious revery! Like a star shining in the midst of a hurricane, the mind watches in a body worn with fatigue. Across space the great tragedies of the dead year surge out of the past, and assemble in the mind of an officer harassed by the wind. Paris delicious in Spring and Summer.... Plans for the future.... The thunder of Serajevo.... The knife struck by Austria into the throat of Serbia.... The diplomatic storm.... The war.... The Prussians near Paris.... The immortal Marne.... The Adriatic hunts.... Drowning Russia.... Unchained Turkey.... Serbia invaded and freed.... Dramas of the sea.... Five months of exhausting cruises.... The submarine _Curie_....

_3 January, after several watches and bad weather._

The _Curie_! Twenty days ago, I was talking with her Commander, who confided to me his hopes. A fine, intelligent-looking man, he thought with vigor and spoke gently. He was preparing a raid as far as Pola, an Austrian base, and gave me the technical details, and the arrangements for this remarkable enterprise. A reflective enthusiasm brightened his talk. Such an officer on such a boat, with the crew he described, was justified in attempting the impossible. I envied his good fortune.

But Fate, the god of sailors, did not wish him to win. Wireless messages informed us that the barrages had stopped the _Curie_ in the very harbor of Pola. Later the survivors of this epic adventure will give the details of their audacity and their failure. To-day they languish in some Austrian fortress. God grant that some day I may press the hand of the Commander.

All alone, like the lost child of the “naval army,” the _Curie_ had started through the dangerous fields of the Adriatic. I do not know its route, the alarms it had, the ruses it used. Moving by night, hiding by day, darting its keen eyes over the horizon, it went along the coast of Italy as far as the Austrian line. At the end of the Adriatic it moved among ambushes; every wave of the enemy sea represented its winding-sheet. With body and soul equally hardened, the twenty-five men approached the hostile labyrinth. Their joyous hearts endured everything--the irregular meals, the suffocating atmosphere of the steel prison, the smell of oil, the whiffs of hydrogen, the sulphurous and oily vapors which make the head heavy and turn the stomach, the alternations of glacial cold and torrid heat as they came to the surface or submerged, the alarms and the dangers, the marvelous hope of penetrating the strongholds where the Austrian battleships had locked themselves in with a triple lock, the fear of running aground on the threshold, and the tempest of thought that crosses the minds of gallant men at the moment of action.

_6 January, 1915._

One day, at the end of their hunt for danger, they see vague shadows on the horizon. It is the Austrian coast; it is Pola. Faint streaks of smoke hover over the further end of the well-guarded harbor where the Commander imagines the fleet to be. The prow of the _Curie_ turns towards this cemetery; for whether it is their own or their enemy’s; someone has to die in this adventure. Officers and sailors make the great dedication together, a generous offering of their youth and strength to their remote native land. The submarine submerges. They hear nothing more except the lapping of the waves on the ship, the purrings of the motors, as submissive as the obedient souls of the men, and the brief orders of the officer.

He and the others see nothing. But through the periscope the land rises into view, the smoke becomes black, the coasts reveal lighthouses, forts, promontories, and at last he perceives motionless masts. Between him and these masts lies the network of dikes, barrages and nets; against him the Austrian Argus levels a hundred eyes and a hundred arms--torpedoes, mines, guns, outguards, semaphores, and sentries. None of the sailors hesitates. Motionless before their valves and their hand-levers, they await the order of the man who is watching, and long to anticipate his will so that they can accomplish their task still sooner. They maintain the profound silence which precedes great deeds, and hope thrills in their hearts.

The steering-gear is handled, the manometers announce the various depths; the submarine touches bottom, and runs afoul on the shoals bristling with traps. An even profounder silence settles on all. Like statues of flesh, the men’s hands are firm and their gleaming eyes are fixed on the man whose eyes in turn remain rivetted to the periscope. But one can guess from the quivering of his forehead, and the sound of his voice, the danger that approaches, the danger they are touching, the danger they are passing. “After God, the master on his ship!” says the naval proverb. This officer is a god, whose exactness of word and vision is responsible for the lives of twenty-five men; through the magic of confidence, they experience all his emotions.

The _Curie_ has passed through. Obstacle after obstacle has been overcome. Through the increasingly bold behavior of their commander the sailors guess that the prize is near. Sleeping at their anchorage a short distance away, float the battleships. Who would have thought that a submarine, coming from the Ionian Sea, would ever penetrate into the very heart of Pola? The Austrian crews are off their guard; their officers, glass in hand, are doubtless stooping over the maps, and joking about the French Navy. It is a feast day. Whoever is not on duty is amusing himself on land. In the gay town toasts must be going round to celebrate the German victories, and in the squares the bands are playing Wagner or Brahms. Pola resembles some pretty town of Gascony or Provence, that is well protected from the enemy; between the morning paper and the evening communiqué she forgets the great drama of the distant war. But the _Curie_ is moving about in the depths of the roadstead.

From this moment, the wireless messages tell us nothing; Austria acknowledges nothing. What did our submarine do? Did she disable, did she sink some ship that thought herself invincible? Or else, tacking towards the battleships, was she caught too soon in some treacherous barrage? The last news told of her being stopped by the steel meshes. Going or coming? The mystery will be well guarded. What despair, what death in the midst of life, when the twenty-five heroes of the _Curie_ understood that they could get no further! They heard a grating along the hull; it was the prow penetrating the mesh, like a fish in the dragnet. Warned by this sinister sound, the Commander tried to reverse the engine, but the steering-gear at the side, with projections like fins and gills, was already entangled in the metal gauze. Then, however the _Curie_ moved, the mass of the net softly followed, bending without breaking or permitting passage. How many times did her Commander repeat his maneuvers in search of safety? I do not know. What miracles of ingenuity did he not employ? I do not know. Every effort useless, he turned away his eyes, big with horror, from the periscope to the interior of the boat, and looked at his alert men, the great engine which he had directed to the goal and which would never return; he thought “We are lost!”

Did he pronounce these words? What if he did not! Everyone understood them and forgave. Since they had come either to die or to conquer, they accepted death along with the officer, and did not reproach him. They looked at each other with eyes that were melancholy but not afraid. They were merely regretful. They were ready for asphyxiation, poisoning, hunger, thirst, drowning, madness; all that was as nothing to the price of their failure.

While this was going on, electric bells in contact with the barrage, announced that something had been caught in it. The lookouts exchanged stupid glances, refusing to believe that it was a submarine. At first they supposed that a snag was moving the barrage, and were convinced only when they saw the eddies, and the bubbles of air on the surface which showed that a live thing was struggling below.

The hypothesis of a French submarine never occurred to them at all, and they telephoned the Admiralty, which became anxious. Some submarine of the station, returning to the fold, was struggling in the barrage, the intricacies of which it should have known. At once the chiefs summoned all the officers of the submarines, prepared to give a sharp reprimand to the foolish commander who failed to respond, after they had rescued him. But the officers all presented themselves. At length they all admitted that, in spite of the improbability, the devilish Frenchmen had reached the end of the channel. The admirals were silent, as one is silent before a miracle.

How many hours did the _Curie_ spend in trying to break its bonds, like a noble stag stamping its hoofs and tearing its legs? But they could be saved neither by their knowledge, nor their prudence, nor their perfect audacity. No other crew, I swear, would have succeeded where they were stranded. Exhausted, the steel fish slowly rose to the surface.

_8 January._

And the lookers-on saw the boat that had come from France. It was immediately showered with shells from guns and mitrailleuses, but the sailors, nearly asphyxiated, opened the narrow panels. Now that their death was no longer necessary, they consented to live, and the volleys spared this superhuman body of men who were surrendering. Pola assembled to see the landing of the sailors who had emerged from so impossible a feat. The survivors passed along, still staggering from their extraordinary adventure. I wager that the crowd made not a single unfriendly gesture against these martyrs. Perhaps, before these faces, so handsome and so terrible, and these ragged garments, the women crossed themselves, and the men saluted. The sailors of the _Curie_ did not then receive the benediction of France, but in the respect of their conquerors they read the magnificence of their unsuccessful enterprise.

And we who sail the Ionian Sea award this crew the palm with invisible leaves. When in the middle of the storm, our imaginations begin to reconstruct this epic drama of our brothers, we envy them, we begrudge them the feat, and would exchange all the vagabondage still before us for the few hours which those men lived.

The admiration is not unjustified. In these days our enthusiasm is not spent foolishly. For the citations and the orders of the day create a roll of gallant men before whom one prostrates oneself almost as before angels. Before the war the most hopeful of us scarcely suspected that our wonderful race would prove so courageous. If we are so astonished and delighted, the world will be too. We live in an age which the Greeks would have peopled with demigods, and a Homer who attempted their celebration would scarcely have found words adequate to hymn them.

The fecund soil of France has given birth to all the virtues. There each soul becomes a tree on which flowers have suddenly grown. The coward becomes bold; the egoist, generous; the atheist kneels before his country. I fear that these miracles are not so evident to Frenchmen living on their native soil, but the exiled sailors are not deceived. And yet all they have to go by is papers and letters, black print upon white. Across these lines passes a breath like the pure wind which sweeps a dark sky. All becomes clear and bright. Perhaps one must be far away to admire the halo, shining fairer hour by hour, which encircles the destinies of one’s country. The faults and errors vanish like dark spots on the gorgeous disk of the sun. Every French thought is a ray from a rising star. These rays are so warm, and carry so far, that they reach even us who live among the storms.

Day before yesterday I read two letters from the same mail. The weather was like the end of the world. Formless and gray, the mists poured over the troubled sea; the cruiser struggled in a circle of specters with liquid hair, who smothered the dying light. The two envelopes lay on my desk, that rolled as the ship tossed. In ink upon expensive paper, the first one contained an address in angular handwriting; the second was on cheap paper, in which the wavering writing had made holes. One gave forth a delicate perfume, which reminded me of the fair Parisian who alternated between love for her Pomeranian and the pretentious inanities of tango teas. To her husband, an encumbering sort of toy, she accorded only what the Civil Code ordered in the way of marital duties. The second envelope had no perfume; perfumed paper is unknown to the puny little stenographer whose services I made use of in Paris. She was a fierce anti-militarist; her father and her brothers talked themselves hoarse in meetings at the Salle Wagram, and I was often shocked at her anarchistic ideas.

In the first excitement at the end of July, it happened that I saw both women on the same day.

“You will see,” said the first woman, resting a careless hand on my shoulder, during the tango “you will see that the common people will sabotage the mobilization. These fellows are rebels. Sooner than fight they will surrender to William.”

To one of my subsequent questions she replied haughtily:

“My husband? My husband? What are you talking about? All the same they will not have the audacity to call out men of thirty-five!”

And, after a silence:

“I do not expect to lose him. We should go to the country.”

The tango was finished without another word.

That same evening the stenographer brought me some pages. She was flushed, and her eyes flamed. I counted the pages carefully and paid her. Without looking, she pocketed the money, and remained standing, trembling. I was careful not to say a word.

“And you?” she said at last. “Would you go?”

“Certainly!”

“Well! It’s your war!”

“My war?”

“Yes! The war of the upper classes, the officers, the idle people who carry swords!”

“Ah!”

“Certainly it is! You are going to make us kill ourselves to the last man, so that you can be masters afterwards.”

“All the same, mademoiselle, you will keep your father and brothers. Their opinions compel them....”

“Hey? What’s that you say?” interrupted the mutineer. “They have ordered their new boots, and papa refuses to guard the railroad. He wants to go to the front. But it is not for you they fight, ladies and gentlemen, but for France!”

God forgive me, I found nothing to reply. A few minutes later, having descended several steps, she became timid and correct, and leaned against the banister.

“You are going far away, sir.... The sea is terrible!”

“It is my profession.”

“One can be drowned.”

“One can swim.”

“Would you be happy? Should you like it? Anyway, forget what I said. Can one write to naval officers?”

“They may even answer.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes.”

Her sharp heels rang on the staircase. And every month since she has written two pages to her patron, the officer, the bourgeois.

* * * * *

“My father is happy,” says the letter in the last mail. “They have put him fifty kilometers nearer the Boches. My young brother has had his foot frozen, the other has lost his left arm, and won the _Croix de Guerre_. You see that all my people are well. They are bored in the trenches. They would like very much to get at the Germans. The officers say that that will come later. One believes them, doesn’t one, because they get themselves killed first, and do not risk their men’s lives? You are very fortunate to be an officer, and if in the navy they are like what they are in the army, I am well content with France which....”

Thus writes my rebel of former days; sincere to-day as then, she is the happier now for hating nobody.

“My dear husband,” says the perfumed letter, “received a splinter of shell in his right shoulder. In fifteen days he can return to the front. I am obliged to feed him, for he has difficulty in using his other hand; he lets things drop into his beard, which is not nice. I should like to keep him, but I do not dare tell him so. I am not a heroic woman, and I am not afraid to acknowledge the fact to you. However, when I see these poor little soldiers in my hospital, who smile so sweetly in spite of their suffering, I understand that I have no right to keep my husband. If you could see these dear wounded men! They thank you so bashfully. They find simple words to express great things, and they look at their nurses with such kind eyes, and so respectfully that I feel unworthy to dress their wounds....”

Thus my idle lady. I am sure she has quite forgotten her old bitterness. I do not care to remind her of it.

All the letters that come from France are just as good, and contain sentiments that do not surprise me in the least. Wives, mothers and sisters of fighting men, have learned the sorrow of separations that may be eternal. Since my entrance into the Navy, how many such letters have I not received, each line betraying anxiety? But they were written by women of the sea, if I may so put it, women accustomed to anxiety. The majority of Frenchwomen were not acquainted with this style; but it did not take long for them to discover it. For the same anguish creates the same words.

These women hate war in the same way that our women curse the sea; they as much desire to keep their dear ones out of the terrible battle as ours rejoice when they learn that we were far away from a certain wreck or explosion. Their hearts are tortured by that suspense which makes them blanch at a telegram, and catch their breath at the sound of the postman’s step. Who better than we naval men can understand the silent tears which will be shed by all the beautiful eyes of France?

By some secret sympathy the wives of soldiers use the same words which used to make us dream. They drive back their tears and try to smile; their letters tell us news, slip in anecdotes, and are silent about the mysterious scourge of the war. They carry themselves bravely, but the tones of their voices betray them. Near the beloved one, sharing his danger, facing the same death, they would be indifferent and cheerful. But they are alone. They can only wring their hands and raise them to God.

In times of peace only sailors were blessed with the love of these Penelopes, these Hecubas, these despairing Antigones; to-day this love is lavished on all the heroes of France. If they die in battle, the mourning in their homes will be like the mourning in so many sailors’ homes: a dumb distress, faces buried in hands, bodies shaken by ceaseless sobbing. If they return they will see what our eyes have seen on our homecomings--these faces made sublime by the patient waiting, these eyes grown larger, these lips closed tightly on inexpressible suffering. They will know the long embraces, in which arms are stiff as chains of tenderness, and the mad beating of hearts, broken by infinite joy; they will listen to words that are never heard by those who never go away. Survivors, you will some day become acquainted with the poignant sweetness of the homecomings of cruisers, for to-day all the women of France are the wives of sailors.

Henceforth you will appreciate the power of simple souvenirs. A lock of hair, an amateur photograph, a muslin handkerchief, a penny pencil tooth-marked by some economical housewife--everything becomes a souvenir, everything creates homesickness. During long hours in the trenches or on sentry duty, these little objects will take you back to the sanctuary of your loves; you will appreciate the bonds of affection, to which perhaps you were careless because habit had disguised their sweetness. In the muddy furrow where your body is growing mouldy, and your blood is freezing, these secret amulets will warm your heart.

We too in our moving cabins keep priceless treasures and talismans.

_10 January._

On this damp steel vessel of ours, where sometimes we are burning, sometimes frozen, the weather and the salt air discolor and thin out our memories. The faces that enchanted our lives take on smiles that are a little faded, watch over our weariness and our uncomfortable slumbers, and hold with us silent conversations, in which more is said than ever was said in other days. One’s heart softens, one forgives, one makes new resolutions. The defects of the loved one disappear under new charm, and the proudest among us reproaches himself for ever having been rebellious.

After such conversations, the exile of the seas pursues his monotonous task with a lighter heart. The furnace of the engine-room and the icy bridge are thronged with phantoms who alleviate our austere labor with their invisible caresses. As at the beginning of the war, I should like to present a few pictures of the essentials of our existence, in which we kill time in tedious activity. But I can no longer do it. Nothing comes to me. The résumés in which I sum up our daily activities and which I extract from the log, are pretty significant. They are somewhat like the movements of a cloud, supposing it could think--its goings and comings, its risings and descendings, without ever being able to imagine either the causes or the effects. Why should I not merely copy here the journal of several days taken at random? The date matters little; the explanations which I shall add will apply just as well to past weeks as to months in the future.

SUNDAY. Sailed to a rendezvous in the bay of Katakolo where the fleet of battleships is stationed. 4.50 P.M.: anchored at Quilles S 77 E of the light of Katakolo. 6.05 P.M.: got under weigh in line behind the _Courbet_; the _Renan_ and the _Democratie_ behind us. The two other squadrons to the south. Night cruise.

MONDAY. 5.30 A.M.: in sight of the light of Katakolo. 3 A.M.: anchored at 1m.5 S 89 E from this light. Boats in the roadstead: _Courbet_, _Renan_, _Diderot_, _Danton_, _Condorcet_, _Mirabeau_, _Voltaire_, _Paris_, _France_, _Patrie_, _Democratie_, _Republique_, _Justice_, _Commandant-Bory_, _Chasseur_, _Voltigeur_, _Lansquenet_, _Canada_. 4.45 P.M.: weighed with the _Renan_. 6.30 P.M.: started on a route to south and west of Zante. Night cruise.

It was one of those Sundays in the Navy when everything is covered with gloom; weeping clouds, high seas, whirling icy wind. We were sailing steadily over a forsaken part of the sea, when a wireless from the Commander-in-Chief ordered us to the west coast of the Morea, to the bay of Katakolo. The dripping officers looked up the description and maps of this harbor we had never visited. As what we had to call evening fell, we approached the rendezvous. We could see nothing there. The rain came down in torrents, shutting out the view and almost the air and space. Suddenly there appeared the vague outlines of the ships, as if drawn in pencil and brushed over with glue. So short-sighted were we that we went near to them to be sure that these huge shapes were not tricks of the rain. Cowering in the rain, they seemed deserted, and we passed carefully between their motionless lines, as during a thunderstorm a traveler makes for his home through streets that are lined with houses set close together.

_15 January._

Our anchor fell, and we heard nothing but the pattering of drops on the metal. As the night deepened our ship and our neighbors seemed to thin out like ink in a wash-basin; but the signals flashed on the mast of the _Courbet_, the Admiral’s ship. Red and white, they had difficulty in crossing the rainy whirlwind, and their sparks made even more sinister this winter twilight. They ordered the squadrons to get under weigh. During the night, which is favorable to surprise attacks, the ships never stay in strange or open roadsteads.

All together we weighed anchor, and took our distances and our proper intervals. The night had completely fallen, the storm was increasing in violence, the unlighted ships groped about like blind men seeking their places in a ballet. Immense outlines approached, passed, disappeared, in the evolutions of the night; an error in the distance or route, a mistake in calculating the phantoms which moved all together, might have caused an irreparable disaster. At these movements nothing but their work exists in the minds of the sailors; family, country, war and affection, are abolished; one is simply a part of his vessel, like a gun or a smokestack.

While certain battleships, separating into two groups, sail to the south as a reserve, the _Courbet_, the _Waldeck_, the _Renan_ and the _Democratie_, go in Indian file on the parallel assigned to them. One behind the other at a distance of a thousand meters, pitching and rolling for two hours westward, then two hours eastward, all night long they struggle through the waves. Through the stormy night the officers of the watch, in their turn, attend to their professional duties. Sometimes they lose sight of the shadow that is the ship ahead of them, and fear they are not taking the prescribed speed; they increase it, leaping ahead into the blackness; the rain redoubles, and they increase it again so as not to lose touch with their neighbor; the rain lessens, and an enormous mass, looming on the water, high in the air, rises almost within touching distance.

It is the ship in front, which the clearing of the rain suddenly reveals, and which we should ram if we did not reverse with all possible haste. Orders are sent to the engines, which slow down. The dangerous mass buries itself in the rain; the officer on watch is glad, and thinks: “All right this time....” At this moment, to his right or left, there emerges from behind a dark spot which does not at all resemble the rain. The officer observes it carefully. His inflamed eyes finally make out that the ship at the rear, which also has lost us, has increased its speed, and is about to ram us as we had just escaped ramming the other. He puts on speed; the ship aft diminishes, recedes, disappears in the darkness to fall back doubtless in a few minutes on the fourth ship of the line, which will have thought herself lost too, and been about to seek her comrades in her turn.

In the deviltries of this bad weather the officer in charge wears himself out solving these problems. Every minute of his watch is accompanied by a crisis, a pang, a cold sweat. His eyes meet only the gale, the stabbing gusts of rain, and downfalls of water. The hours pass. His eyes become painful burning circles. When he tries to sleep on his restless bunk, his eyes resist sleep, a sort of nightmare, accompanied by the rolling of the ship, makes illusory forms plunge before him in the darkness.

_18 January._

In the morning the three groups of ships returned to the bay of Katakolo. This morning we found delicious, because the sun, though invisible, had whitened the edges of the clouds, and the monotonous rain had given place to brief showers; fragments of rainbow, scattered over the network of the waves, brightened the gray web of the sea. And land was near, fair, almost gay, under the false smiles of day, after being lashed by so many weeks of rain. At the edge of a little jetty some slender masts were swaying like bushes; from the white houses of the port a road emerged, winding among the rocks, the olive orchards, and the herds, towards a town situated on a hill. Green foliage covered the buildings of this little town, which the distance rendered imposing. Small imagination is necessary to give grandeur to the stones in Greek lands; as our eyes rested on these buildings, that were perhaps very ugly, they sought there some temple with classic colonnades or majestic portals. Illusion of our memory! This town is named Pyrgos, this province is Arcadia, and the brook which flows into the bay was formerly celebrated by the name of Alpheus; unconsciously we are paying its insignificance the homage which has been won for it by the divine liars of Greek poetry.

But why discuss such meager pleasures? This coast and anchorage are pleasant; would it not be more worth while to enjoy a few agreeable hours? Moreover, our order for departure has come, for it would be strange indeed for a cruiser to remain forever in one spot. The weather is spoiled, no more rainbows or showers. The rain begins to fall again, and shuts out all the light. The _Waldeck-Rousseau_, accompanied by the _Ernest Renan_, weighs anchor.

In a few minutes the two cruisers part from the battleships. When shall we see them again? They follow their vague courses in the south, wandering from roadstead to roadstead, and remaining in each without doing anything. They cover fewer miles than the cruisers, but their existence is perhaps duller. We watch, they wait; we run risks, they take shelter. Certainly I had dreamed of another kind of warfare, but I prefer the campaign of the cruiser to that of the battleship.

Just as troops in the army are transported by railway to the seat of operations, so the great ships tow the French submarines to the entrance of the Adriatic. Their base is in the bay of Plateali, behind the palisade of the Archipelago. Between two chases towards Pola and Cattaro, they assemble around an old battleship, the _Marceau_, which serves them as mother ship. The _Marceau_ collects shipwrecked crews, renews the commissary, furnishes its tools for repairing the small engines. Anxious to get away, the sailors of the submarines work with file and anvil, and are happy when they shorten the delay by a day, or an hour.

We go to look for the _Gay-Lussac_, whose turn for refitting has arrived. After a night of heavy seas, the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ clears the narrows of Dukato. In default of fine weather, she finds here a little calm. Ithaca, Cephalonia, Santa Maura, the Echinades, and the splendid mountains of Epirus are capped with mist; a foaming sea rages round their base; brooks cover them with a silver network. Some strips of fog float in the channels, cling to the rocks, and tear apart like carded wool.

A winding channel opens out on the cove of the submarines and the _Marceau_. Crouched in the depths of their den like a nest of strange animals, they look gray and shiny; a thread of smoke is rising lazily from the battleship; the _Gay-Lussac_, ready to depart, is throwing from its stacks short black wreaths of smoke. Islands and rocks form an enclosed frame all about the waiting _Waldeck-Rousseau_. Some rocks are formed like saws, crafty and dangerous reefs, scarcely emerging from the water; others suggest a face left unfinished, where some capricious giant, after sculpturing the rough outline of a chin, a nose, or a jaw, has fixed them there forever; certain ones reveal exquisite curves, which one wants to caress like the back of a supple cat or the thigh of a statue.

The _Gay-Lussac_ detaches itself from the group, and emerges from Plateali. On our after deck a group of seamen are arranging the towing tackle; the prow of the submarine halts a few meters from us, and we make the proper maneuver. We can distinguish the features of our comrades in their cramped black garments. Their young faces, ruddy with a fine color that has been tanned by the spray, are gravely happy. A few words are shouted down to them; brief responses come back.

“Are you ready?”

“Quite ready.”

“Do you need anything?”

“Nothing at all, thank you.”

“We can start?”

“Go ahead!”

The steel cable unrolls in the water, measures its length, tightens, threshes about like a serpent fringed with foam, falls back, and the submarine begins to follow us. Cautiously we increase the speed to the prescribed rate, and begin the passage of the straits and channels. We cannot easily perform evolutions, because the _Gay-Lussac_, two hundred meters behind us, would ram us if we doubled too short.

The destroyer _Mousqueton_ heads the procession, moving with ease and grace. All muscle and speed, her pretty body winds through the islands, the guardian angel of our present cruise.

Towards evening we come out on the high seas. The bad weather has not become permanent, but the crossing will be unpleasant because of the short choppy swell that comes from Corfu and Santa Maura. Already the _Mousqueton_ is covered with showers of spray; the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ slowly heaves and rolls; at the end of the towing-line, which vibrates like a rubber band, the _Gay-Lussac_ bounces in the swell. The dull twilight comes on; the clouds descend a little lower, the wind rises, a gray night follows the slaty evening, and we begin the crossing which will be twelve or fourteen hours like so many others.

In the middle of the night I take the watch and look for my two comrades. If I did not know that they were there, I should have difficulty in finding them. An indistinct spot in front of the prow seems to keep us company; it is the _Mousqeton_. She rises and falls like a dripping black cloth which a laundress shakes incessantly. She lurches ceaselessly right and left, without finding any support, and reflects restless gleams in the night. Thanks to this dark artificial fire, I do not lose track of her.

The _Gay-Lussac_ is following us back there among the hills of water. The sentries on our cruiser, on the side of the towing-line, can tell by touch whether it remains taut; as long as the cable is tight, the submarine has not left us; nothing except its sudden slackness could warn us of a break of the line. Several times I go down to the after deck, unable to tell with my eyes whether the _Gay-Lussac_ is there or not, but the tension of the cable reassures me.

Towards dawn Fano rises on the horizon, and near six we prepare to cast off the submarine. Our engines slow down; we haul in the cable. The officers have interrupted their sleep, and Mgr. Bolo, always curious about the sights at sea, leans on the rail for the last maneuver. On the submarine the sailors, like shining tritons, loosen the tow; its commander raises his arm to indicate that he is free; his screws make an eddy in the water, he turns its head to the north, and the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ turns to the west. The Albanian mountains watch over this silent parting. How small the submarine looks, swept by the ceaseless waves! How weak it seems as it goes to risk its life in the vast ambushes of the Adriatic! And how melancholy is this silent departure, without a handshake, in the rainy and sullen dawn! From the height of our great ship we feel our hearts tighten. It is much like seeing a little child cross alone a square where automobiles are passing, one wants to say: “Don’t go any farther. Come back on the sidewalk.” And at the same time one approves its boldness, and encourages it from the depths of one’s heart, without even thinking of the danger. The sailors of the submarine no longer look at us. Their eyes scan the sea, at the end of which they are to fulfil their duty. One desire alone fills their souls; to play their part well and not to weaken. They are not angels. The life of each one of them undoubtedly contains many faults, and I would not swear, that when they are turned loose on shore, they do not give way to every intemperance. But at this moment those ugly things no longer exist. However gross in their failings, sailors are noble in their deeds. At the instant that the _Gay-Lussac_ passes behind us, the officers raise their caps, and the priest, without a word, extends his right hand, blesses and absolves these gallant men.

They go back up the path which the _Curie_ traversed. They go to hold the sentry-post of honor before the enemy coasts, and none can foretell their fate of glory or death. Like their brothers they seek in the Dalmatian Isles before Cattaro some ship worth sinking. But probably the Austrian spies have not failed to follow our cruise, and the _Gay-Lussac_ will find nothing. For three or four days, to the limit of its breath and its electric power, it will prowl invisible. Through the lenses of the periscope its commander will see the aviators describing great circles in search of it; he will make out the onset of the destroyers, will hide himself in the depths of the sea, and will hear the passage of the screws above him, frantic but impotent.

_20 January._

One evening, out of breath, aching in body and soul, he will descend the Adriatic, the Ionian Sea, the Archipelago, to the harbor where not even repose will be his reward. The entire “naval army” when it hears the news will breathe more lightly at the wireless which announces: “The _Gay-Lussac_ is returned.” And will share in its discomfiture at the postscript: “It has seen nothing.” It will hardly have left the shores of Austria when the ships will begin to move more freely, until the coming of the next one. Such is the Odyssey of the submarines of Plateali. Good luck, _Gay-Lussac_!

_22 January._

The _Waldeck-Rousseau_ has left the Albanian waters and reached its cruising sector. The Ionian Sea is divided into rectangles of vast extent, each one of which represents the territory of a cruiser. There she patrols for several days, reaches the next sector, and so on until she comes near land. Then she coals in all possible haste, goes to the farthest rectangle and begins all over again. Our post for the day is far in the west near the strait of Messina, at the end of the Italian boot, and we do not reach it before twilight. We take a route outside the cruising zones.

Two masts and four smokestacks rise on the horizon like a play of shadows. It is the _Gambetta_ prowling about. She sights us, approaches swiftly, assures herself that we are friends, turns back and disappears. For several hours we see nothing but the surge of water and the clouds of shifting slate. And then the _Michelet_ looms up in her turn, having just recognized us. We profit by this proximity to perform a telemetric exercise. In the course of this exercise the two cruisers execute a hundred movements which bring them together, and separate them, by anywhere from five to fifteen thousand meters; the gunners at their places, the telemetrists at the measuring apparatus, at the proper moment note the distances. Ships which meet by chance do not fail to indulge in this practice. A signal rises to mark the end of the exercise.

The _Michelet_ returns to its patrol, and we push towards the west. By evening a great wall bars our horizon. Later a light gleams out with a pale track across the water. The lighthouse is called Rizzutto, and shines at the base of the Calabrian mountains. If the weather were more favorable we could see the summit of Etna in a clear atmosphere. Its beautiful outline would make us forget the proud heights of Albania, in front of which, this morning, we parted from the _Gay-Lussac_. But the sailor must be satisfied with a gloomy evening and a sullen sea; his only friend at night will be the light of Rizzutto, which we shall lose and find again as we move towards the offing or towards the coast. We have another companion in the wind, which whistles itself out of breath, perhaps for fear we should think it asleep.

Early in the night, as the cruiser nears Calabria, a sort of luminous halo plays over the land. We recognize the aureole of a town. Over there, human beings are at rest, or amusing themselves, or talking pleasantly before sleeping. Here, dressed in leather and rubber, the sailors struggle with the gale and defy shadows in which danger may lurk. This contrast haunts the minds of the lookouts. Are they happy in their sentry duty in the rain? Do they envy the Italians sheltered in their peaceful homes? The two ideas alternate, and in order the better to curse the Calabrians who are giving them not so much as a thought, the sailors look for the name of this troublesome town on the map.

It is called Crotona. In the days when Rome was weak and Athens powerful, she waged repeated and bitter war against her rival Sybaris. Softened by too much luxury, the Sybarites could not defend themselves against their powerful enemies, and Crotona, after effacing her voluptuous enemy from the world, survived throughout the centuries to show the light of her lamps this night to some passing French sailors.

Have we not a right, we officers, companions of the darkness, guardians of a crew of gallant men--have we not the right to send our dreams across the war to the regions of antiquity? The carefree Sybarites left a name which serves only for jesting. The map is almost ignorant of the exact places where they ignominiously disappeared, and the pick of the excavator exhumes only chalky debris. The people of Crotona bequeathed the future to proud descendants, because the sweetness of life did not make them disdain war. A stern lesson which we repeat in the biting north wind and the rolling waves; a parallel which forces itself upon one in these hours when France gathers herself together against the barbarians. But I have no doubts about her. The men of the _Gay-Lussac_ who went this morning towards Cattaro, the men of the _Curie_, who were stopped by the glorious net at Pola, the men of the “naval army” who since August have lived in company with hardship, the men who freeze in the trenches of Artois and the Vosges, the men who have fallen on the plains of Flanders and Champagne--these men will not play before posterity the rôle of Sybarites.

_25 February._

Like feudal barons, who lance in hand ride over their empty manors ruined by war, the cruisers traverse a lifeless waste. During the slow succession of days, they are glad to sight, by chance, the stacks of their companions of the patrol. As she comes to the boundaries of her rectangle, the sister ship seems to give us a nod and a good-day. Suddenly our world is alive again. Our thoughts are directed toward our neighbor, and her’s toward us. Whether it is the _Renan_, the _Quinet_, the _Gambetta_, or an entirely different one, we follow her and accompany her movements; the sailors abandon their work and their reveries for this reality which wavers before them.

“She is approaching!”

“I see her bridge!”

“Look, the forestack is pouring out black smoke. They are stoking up the fires!”

“Ah! She is coming on the left. Her masts are passing one after the other.”

“Are we not a good twenty-two thousand meters away?”

“She is farther away. Do you still see her masts?”

“Yes! No! Yes! No! No more.”

The cruiser vanishes and our world becomes empty again. This lasts a day or a week. Sometimes between two clearings of the weather some darker spot appears in the distance, cloud or mountain, cliff or play of the clearing storm, no one can say. But the mechanics and the stokers, the hidden hosts of the depths, who come on deck between two watches ask curiously in the darkness:

“What do we see over there?”

The gunners and seamen, with a grand manner, repeat the scraps of officers’ talk they have overheard and remembered. They announce the oracle: “It is Epirus;” “it is Apulia;” “it is the Peloponnesus;” “it is Albania;” “it is Etna;” “it is nothing at all; we are a hundred miles from land.” The baffled men store up these complicated names, and in the next letter to their fathers or to some women in the country, each will write them down painfully; the strange words will carry to French cottages the echo of our geographical Odyssey. I should like to know the impressions made by these sonorous names, full of dignity, but without meaning to the ignorant. What do our brave sailors see in this fresco of coasts which we never approach? They are like the imaginary forms created in sleep; wavering, rising, disappearing on the borders of the horizon, they pass like Edens where we shall never land. The cruiser goes and comes on its rectangle of water, and while the officers strive to guess the meaning of this formless nothingness that emerges from the rain, the sailors pursue their dreams, the rain falls or is blown away in the caprices of the gale.

Yes, we pay to the hilt the ransoms for our patrolling! Nothing moves on the sea any more that carries an enemy flag. Nothing suspect approaches us. Masters of the seas, we have made it a desert for those who do not work for our side. If I dared, I should say that we have done our task too well, for everything which our country gains through our vigilance, we lose in boredom. The days of visits and searches is over; even these small distractions have fled from our daily labors. If there are contrabandists, they stick like woodlice to neutral shores, and carry to Austria or Turkey, at the price of increasing risks, the precious goods which become rarer every day. Their detours are long and laborious, but we cannot harass them so long as they frequent the territorial waters. Sensitive to their sovereign rights, Greece and Italy, by the regulations of war, do not permit us to approach their coasts; we are condemned to remain in the offing which our persistent surveillance has devastated. Doubtless Austrian submarines are moving under the waves. The hour for one of us will perhaps strike. Woe to the ship that becomes careless through lassitude!

But at least, on the great routes from Gibraltar to Suez or Saloniki the English and French transports are sailing without impediment. Formerly their fleet moved westward carrying to Marseilles or the Atlantic ports the men and products of the East. But for several weeks, since the entry of the Turks into the war, a second route has been established and is more frequented every day. Bases of operations are being installed in the Ægean Sea, in the Greek Islands; naval forces are assembling there; a few detached cruisers watch the coasts of Syria and Asia Minor; and multitudes of active troops are congregating down there.

_2 February._

All these movements go on in silence, the silence that is the proper preparation for enterprises of war. The world does not yet suspect what is going on; its ears have not heard those names which, unknown to-day, will before long become famous. But the sailors pursue the task, and their souls quiver with joyous anticipation of these military glories in the East.

Sometimes, from a cloud charged with lightning, there is slowly detached a massive shred, that one can scarcely distinguish as it glides upward to some clear portion of the sky. The cloud swells, extends and forms into a new storm which rages, far away from the clouds which engendered it. Thus, born from the European War, a new war is in secret ferment; before the thunderbolts fall on the lands of Islam, we are preparing them in the mysterious and silent seas. We are acquainted with the daily effort, the cautious approach of the Allies, the legions of gallant men who caress their guns during the long Mediterranean crossing. But we take no pride in this knowledge. We expect to go on protecting the march of the soldiers towards glory. And we hope for the supreme joy of sharing their risks, hand in hand, so to speak, they on land, and we on the restless element of the sea.

At present the seventh week of our pilgrimage is closing in hail and frost. Since our trip to Malta, before Christmas, we have experienced all the evil moods of the weather, which grows angrier and angrier. At night, one falls and hurts oneself on the sleet-covered steel decks, as on a hard mirror invisible and yet in motion.

_5 February._

Like seed thrown by some terrible hand, the hailstones bounce on the cruiser, which rings like a tambourine; and the sea, whipped up by these projectiles from the sky, makes a noise like a boiling liquid. The organ of the winds harasses our watches. Dismal and raucous, they stride breathlessly over the miles of water; their rage vents itself on the ship, and on our bodies, in icy handfuls of spray; when they strike against the cordage and metallic structures, they whistle and sing like evil geniuses filled with mirth. We know the harmony of each cord, of each halyard, of each cable, as they vibrate above our heads. Whether short or long, thick or thin, made of hemp or twisted steel, they have their share in the tireless orchestra. Certain ones give out in the north wind a clear and joyous sound, like a fife, bagpipe or flute. Others, melancholy strains like cellos and oboes, reminding one of the bells of one’s native village, of beloved distant voices, of all the sweetness of France to one forlorn in nights of exile. But the hollow, tolling notes that are thrown from the heavy, wet cordage, sound a perpetual knell that is heard above everything. If one stops one’s ears, their sinister bass penetrates one’s fingers and head. They are always there. They are triumphant. To the cold of the body they add the chill of the soul.

_6 February._

Montenegro is dying of hunger. From the top of its barren mountains its people can see the Adriatic, and imagine the prosperous lands in the distance, Africa and Italy and their crops. Towards these bountiful harvests they stretch their appeals and their greedy hands; but famine, following war, is devastating their homes.

Despite her own agony, France does not suspect into what horrors the present tragedy can plunge the peoples who are cut off from the world. In Paris and in the provinces there is food, and subsistence. Whatever the price, meat and bread can be bought at the butcher’s and baker’s. Montenegro has nothing. Walled up in a dungeon, its women and its soldiers scatter to the four winds appeals which do not feed them.

From the north, Austria is waging against it that same campaign of devastation which she began against the Serbs. To the south, Albania, that courtesan of pillage; only waits the command to throw her bands into Cettinje. To the East, Serbia, hemmed in, remains alive only by a tenacity which will amaze the future. And, finally, towards the West, the sea, closed to the nations without navies, leaves deserted the harbors of Montenegro, and empties her granaries.

In spite of that, she does not hesitate. At the first insults hurled against her by her Slavic cousins, each man took his cartridges, wound around his legs the puttees of war, and went to the frontiers to fight in defense of honor. If I had not forbidden myself to inscribe here events which have nothing to do with the Navy, I should tell of this drama of skirmishes, raids, night assassinations, in which a handful of mountaineers, without arsenals or foundries or commissary supplies, or routes or guns, renews every week, against the immense armies of Austria, the exploits of Leonidas against Xerxes.

But this perseverance, invincible to the attacks of men, has to yield to the sufferings of the body. To conserve energy in his muscles, precision in his eyes, firmness in his will, the Montenegrin has to have food. They call for help. Since snow and mud have taken possession of their kingdom, Prince Nicholas and his ministers send out wireless messages of supplication. Smothering their invincible pride and the shame of yielding to hunger, they tell us every day the story of their distress. Just now, in some district that had been bombarded by heavy artillery, the storehouses were burned, and the meager provisions of a year destroyed. Another day, Croatians and Bosnians, pursued by the Austrian butchers, took refuge in ruined Montenegro; as gifts they brought only their hate and their hunger.

Nevertheless, this little agrarian population opened their arms, and for these people without a country they deprived themselves of a pinch of wheat from their own pittance. Our wireless poles receive a new story of distress every moment; the children are dying, the soldiers have no more shoes, the cartridge boxes are empty, and the mules are dying along the roads where they find nothing to eat but snow.

Who will feed these unfortunates unless it be generous France? For months the “naval army” has supplied Montenegro. In the Ionian Sea cargo-boats come to get orders from the Commander-in-Chief, and then go to the ports of Antivari or Medua. They bring wheat, corn, equipment, munitions, and empty them in haste on the wharves, fearful of these dangerous waters.

These are enterprises for contrabandists and pirates. The Austrians know our least movement, spy upon the arrival of our cargo-boat; and their submarines, and aviators, and destroyers, make any unloading by day impossible. Everything has to be done at night, between the setting and the rising of one sun.

Far from the coasts a squadron ascends the Adriatic. It is composed of a precious battleship, some destroyers and large cruisers. We keep a careful lookout, for the enemy lies in wait. At the fall of evening, the squadron arrives off port; the cargo-boat and the destroyers turn aside; the cruisers push farther north towards the approaches of Cattaro, in order to prevent the first attack. At a little distance from the roadstead where they unload, a line of destroyers cruises about all night, ready to repulse any sudden attacks. In the harbor itself are anchored one or two other destroyers, motionless sentinels of the affair. The cargo-boat approaches the wharf.

There is nothing to be seen. The rain, wind and hail fall in avalanches from the icy heights. We must not show a light. Montenegrin soldiers try to offer their assistance, but they know little about delicate maneuvering, and in the darkness they get in the way. Somehow or other the commander of the cargo-boat manages to get it alongside the wooden jetty; he strikes it, tears his hull, breaks the hawser, swears and storms. The sailors of the destroyers come to help; they find their way to the wharf in small boats. With agile fingers and feet they grip the uprights, take hold of the cables and gropingly make them fast. The boat clings tight to the quay, and immediately a stream of sacks, cases and bales pours out. The Montenegrin soldiers come up, seize the black things in the darkness, drag them up the bank, run, stumble, fall. One must work quickly and keep silent. Up above, the camps and the huts are waiting.

But a noise in the air makes us prick up our ears. It comes from the north, a droning which is louder than the wind. It grows, and intrudes itself into the darkness like a sonorous wail. Another sound, duller, from farther off, accompanies it and draws near. Others follow, like dark wasps. These are the aviators from Cattaro. The sound of their flight rolls in the air above the harbor, diminishes and descends, makes a circle about the wharf, diminishes and descends again, directly above the cargo-boat. The target is indicated by the heavy sound of the bales and the hurried steps. A shower of bombs falls.

It is impossible to respond. The Montenegrin coast is not organized against aviators. The projectors that one could light on board would only draw the shots with greater precision; the crews, handicapped, occupied with the unloading, cannot fire guns or cannon. On the wharf, in the water, on the deck of the boat, the bombs burst, setting fire to the woodwork and the cases, mixing with the storm a suffocating smoke. Terrified by this unaccustomed enemy, the Montenegrin soldiers grow slack; the sailors, however, pursue their perilous task humming a song.

Sometimes a shell falls into the hold which is being emptied. If it bursts, some men are mowed down; if it rests harmlessly on the piles of sacks, hands seek it in the dark, seize it, throw it into the water, and the work continues. Exhausted by past watches, the crews work through this night without losing a second, and find means to stow neatly the sacks which will be of no use to them. No matter which destroyers and cargo-boats take part, the same business goes on at the wharves of Antivari and Medua every three or four nights.

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 their prey. On our last cruise the _Waldeck_ and 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 the _Waldeck_ replied:

“If there is too much danger, or you are no longer 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 wharf are 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 bank of 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 nailed them 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, the _Dague_ has 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 in this 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 the _Dague_.

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 of Egypt, 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 loves are 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. The _Waldeck_ left 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 life and 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 snail on 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 they stretch 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 their remote 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 in the 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 the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ destroyed, 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 like machines, 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 months ago, 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, and their 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 on the 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 refreshes himself 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 the _Waldeck-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. 8.50 A.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. 2.30 A.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 some digestive 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-boat _Marguerite_.” 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, the officers 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:

“Collier _Marguerite_ delayed by bad weather. You will coal Thursday with the _Circe_.”

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 the _Bayonnais_.”

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 the _Bayonnais_. It may be with the _Biarritz_, 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 unintelligible language 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 before night 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 their tip, 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 that happened 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 itself does 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: the _Ferry_ talks to the _Gambetta_ by wigwagging, the _Waldeck_ to the _Renan_ with 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 information about 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 time to 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 the _Gambetta_ in the Italian sector received from time to time the flashes from the lighthouse. During the afternoon we had come quite near the _Gambetta_; our boats had exchanged the parcels, the mail, and orders, and it is now the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ who will occupy the Italian sector after we separate. At the last moment some new order has given our place to the _Gambetta_ and 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. I remember 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 after the 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 have struck 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 2 P.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. The _Gambetta_ has 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 the _Gambetta_.”

“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 the _Gambetta_.

“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 the _Gambetta_; 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 the _Gambetta_. Eyes closed or open, I cannot escape 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 the _Gambetta_?”

“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 the ensign 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 the _Gambetta_ were 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 the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ had 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 the _Gambetta_, 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 the _Waldeck-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 the _Gambetta_ covered 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, the _Gambetta_, 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 the _Waldeck-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.

* * * * *

Without mourning or benediction they laid their bodies in the cemetery of the sea. From Admiral to midshipmen, all the officers are buried in this sea, at once so maternal and malevolent. The superhuman souls of these officers attempted the impossible. They wished to save the cruiser, and the cruiser went down. They wished to save the men, and it is not their fault that nearly eight hundred sailors perished.

And then, according to that law of the sea which ordains that the officer shall wait until the last sailor is saved, they went down with their ship. The ignorant will criticize them, but they are wrong. If each Frenchman, in civil or military service, performs to the uttermost the task his country demands of him, his country, with a heave of her shoulders, will chase the Germans out of France.

Officers of the _Gambetta_, you have your place in the paradise of “_la Revanche_.”

FINIS.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.