Chapter III: Part II: In the Adriatic (2)

The visiting officer does not reply, does not stop, but hastens on his mission. In his register he consults the original of all the documents he has warrant to verify; text, stamps, signatures are exactly reproduced, and not one word of the ship’s papers must differ from the original. If they are in Arabic, Norwegian or Japanese, the officer’s pencil compares them line by line. In curt phrases he approves or objects.

The civil status of the ship seems correct; its name, its country, its record, reveal nothing ambiguous. The captain is then questioned. Whence has he come, where is he going, and where has he stopped? What are the owners’ orders? The chart and the log, the dates and hours of calls at ports, certified by the official authorities, are all verified. The slightest inaccuracy requires explanations, proofs. In such times as these, all movements at sea must be above suspicion, and the least evasion renders one suspect. To help his captain the ship’s commissary bustles about, pours a glass of liqueur, uncorks a bottle of champagne, introduces a foaming glass between two incisive questions. But the French officer courteously waves aside these seductions.

The commissary in his turn goes on the stand; he spreads out and explains the bills of merchandise, illegible scrawls in every language, dotted with strange abbreviations, with obsolete weights and measures in the jargon of grocer and manufacturer. Every line has them, and twenty special dictionaries could not disclose their traps. Like an archæologist poring over a worn stone, the visiting officer weighs, unravels, interprets these hieroglyphics; from a pocket-book he extracts lists of shippers and consignees friendly to our enemies, and inspects the ship’s papers to see that their names do not figure on them.

Every bill of merchandise raises a question. Certain cargoes always go through, others under certain conditions, some, officially contraband, are fair booty. The texts of the treaties of The Hague and of London pretend to solve all these problems. The officer consults these texts, looking for helpful suggestions. But these treaties, drawn up in times of peace for the despair of sailors in war, are full of ambiguities, over which the crafty neutrals slide. How many enigmas does not the officer have to solve in a few minutes under the dull gaze of his two colleagues!

According to such and such a paragraph the case appears clear, but a footnote throws everything into confusion again. There are neither precedents nor regulations. Upon our decision rests a fraction of our country’s honor. Too much good nature runs us the risk of providing our enemies with valuable materials; too much rigor will bring vigorous complaints from injured neutrals. Let our decision leave a loophole in the dispute, and learned jurists will deliberate over it in the prize-courts for weeks and months; then will consume endless hours and heaps of paper before discovering what ought to be the judgment actually rendered in the interval between a drenching in a long-boat and a submarine scare.

Bah! We have our privileges of State. Our conscience is clear, our intentions are pure, and little remorse accompanies our verdicts. Yesterday, as well as to-morrow, we make a seizure or release, according to the simple dictates of common sense. The smiles and grimaces of the commissary do not warp our judgments; even when the captain, at a critical moment, presses on us a whole box of choice Havana cigars this seduction adds not a grain to our weighing-scale. The officer politely declines, ends his examination, makes his decision, and demands the passenger list.

“Captain, have the kindness to draw up on deck all the persons on board. Let each one hold his identification papers in his hand. In five minutes I shall make my inspection.”

Women, stewards and waiters scatter through the cabins, which suddenly fill with commotion. In the midst of a chorus of exclamations, of murmurs and laughs, feverish fingers ransack writing cases and bags; travelers with good consciences easily discover what they need; the women adjust their hair, hastily powder a suspicion of tan on their faces, and with a turn of their hand put all the details of their toilette in order. They are tremendously entertained. It’s like a real play! For a very little more they would put on their prettiest gowns.... But the officer is in a hurry, and the captain excuses himself: one passenger cannot lay his hand on his passports, which he has certainly shut up in a trunk. Exactly! The story is well-known! That bird from Germany must be held.

Everyone lines up in two or more rows. Irresistibly, an order rises to the lips of the visiting officer--“Right dress! Eyes front!” But no, these passengers are not soldiers. And now the task is to keep in line this fat lady in a rather short skirt, who inserts herself between an asthmatic youth and a rugged American. Let us stifle our laughter! The lines sway, somewhere at the back a boy sneezes, two Brazilians or Argentinians burst into shameless laughter, a huge negro trembles with fear. The officer passes on his inspection.

Like a row of blind people holding out their wooden bowls, everyone carries his passport in his hand. The men are extremely grave, almost indignant, and one can imagine the silent perturbation behind their brows. They lie in wait for an imprudent word in order that they may at once invoke their counsel, their ambassador, and the unwritten laws of neutrals. Vain hope! The officer looks them over swiftly, and opens their papers with a scrupulous touch. Stamps and signatures are correct, the descriptions too; the passports, the certificate of nationality, have no taint of fraud. But no touchstone is worth so much as that of speech: to expert ears a few words, a few phrases, reveal many secrets, and a hesitating manner accuses where the documents acquit.

“Kindly tell me where you come from.... Kindly tell me your name and the date of your birth.... Did you leave your country some time ago? Kindly answer me in your own language.... What is your profession?”

One has to question closely and in various ways, and keep oneself from getting into dialogues. There is never a discussion; an immediate judgment, and we go on.

Compatriots, Russians, English, undergo the questioning. They are cheerful and anxious to chat.

“In too much of a hurry, my friend!... A handshake and bon voyage!... The last news from the wireless?... Everything goes well, very well!”

Click! Click! Right and left, the kodaks are at work. Who will ever count the albums in which playful passengers have put their naval inspection? They imagine they have not been seen, but their faces, suddenly serious, and their air of having touched nothing, betray their crime.

“And you, mademoiselle? What signatures on your passport? What journey are you making?”

“I am from Valparaiso, and I am on my way to my family in Moscow!”

Ye gods! What are all these women doing wandering about the vast world? Half the soldiers in Europe have thrown themselves on the other half, but travelers come and go like doves, without thought of trouble.

The passports of the men are comprehensible--functionaries, manufacturers going from port to port, mobilized men, producers from the Far East; all avow intentions which are definite and easy to deal with. But the origin and destination of the women are puzzling enigmas. In America, in Asia, in Africa, all the chancelleries of remote consulates have written over and scratched out the most bewildering itineraries. These papers are fantastic.

The mystery is increased by the contradictions of the passengers’ appearance. The visiting officer examines a modest passenger in tennis shoes, flannel suit and traveling cap, who blushes like a boarding-school miss, and answers very timidly. And what does he see on the photograph of the passport she shows him? A smiling doll, buried under a hat as large as a millstone, adorned with aigrettes and feathers; a very elaborate arrangement of the hair which hides half her face, and three rows of pearls on her bare throat. Is there anything in common between this luxurious figure and the timid person wringing her hands in the line, whose inward mirth appears in her sparkling eyes and an imperceptible trembling of her elbows? He would be a perjurer who would swear to it.

It is even a relief when they know their own nationality exactly. I never suspected that one’s native country could be mislaid, lost and found like a pair of gloves. But in these latitudes one learns something every day. Wars, treaties, and revolts, have so confused the map of the East that it seems as if every passenger were provided with two or three spare countries.

“Now, Madam, will you explain for your husband, whom I do not understand? What is his nationality? And you yourself, are you Turkish, Egyptian, Greek or Russian?”

“It is very simple, Mr. Officer. My husband was Armenian, that is to say, a Turkish subject. At the time of the massacres he fled to the Caucasus and found it wise to put himself under Russian protection. His business called him to Crete, which became Greek while he was living there. I was born in Macedonia, a Turkish subject, but the last war has made me a Serb. We went to Alexandria because it was quieter there, for since the English are suzerains of Egypt, we intended....”

So goes the story. Adventuresses, spies, or wanderers tossed about in Levantine eddies, their talk is as picturesque as their papers. It would be absurd to persecute them in this maze where they are astray.

To what end, moreover? The real prize, the choice booty, is recognized by infallible signs: German faces, Teutonic accents, insolent or honeyed replies, stammered explanations. However much they may have garbled their names and submitted to us false ones in writing, the race of these Germans oozes from every pore. They are on their way to foment rebellion in Egypt or in Tripoli; they are going to work the Balkans, to pursue in India or China their secret intrigues. Invariably their passports derive from Switzerland or Holland, but their certificates of nationality, very new, just off the press, remind one of coins that are counterfeit and too bright. Suspects!... The officer goes down to their cabins; everything he finds in the valises, the steamer trunks, denotes innocence and sincerity. But he is nauseated by a strange odor. It cannot be defined, but whoever has smelt it recognizes unerringly the kind of flesh it comes from. With handkerchief to nose; he turns over the bed and ransacks the furniture. Under the mattress, behind the wash-basin, in the folds of a blanket, lies the fatal paper, the envelope or the packet.... Enemies!...

Now the affair must be ended decisively, elegantly, in the French style. Invested with discretionary powers on a neutral boat, the visiting officer conforms to courtesies which would satisfy the most exacting. His attitude, the tone of his voice, his words, affirm, in surroundings often hostile, always excited, the sovereign will of his country. The staff-officer of the boat, the crew and the passengers form a hostile jury of free witnesses who would jeer to the ends of the earth the slightest clumsiness. But we are at any rate vain enough not to imitate the ruffianly manners of our enemies.

The visiting officer stops before the German, calls him by name, lays a finger lightly on his sleeve or shoulder, and says, without raising his voice:

“I take you prisoner. Follow my sailor, who will carry your baggage and conduct you to the ship’s boat.”

Cries, bursts of rage, insults, are of no avail. One adds nothing. What is said is said. At the worst, if the scene becomes painful, the officer turns to the captain.

“Commandant, I direct you to use your authority to compel Monsieur to follow me. Otherwise I shall be obliged to use force. I take the responsibility for the order I give you, and I will draw up for you a report of the proceedings.”

That is enough. Protected by the owners and his government, the captain abandons the prisoner to his fate, and speeds the removal of his baggage. The German taken in the snare protests, sheepish and mortified. But the faithful sailor has already seized him and is hurrying him without much ado to the long-boat. The audience makes comments. The kodaks work their fastest. A few hands applaud, a few malcontents murmur. The circle opens deferentially before the officer, who copies on the log the formulas appropriate to the visit, recounts the incident, exonerates the captain, and signs the deposition which will go the round of the chancelleries.

Then, and only then, when the business is all settled, will he accept perhaps a cigarette, or a file of newspapers, or a cup of coffee. While the prisoner’s baggage is being somehow tumbled into the bottom of the long-boat, the officer takes a few steps along the deck. The crowd of passengers precipitate themselves upon his suddenly humanized person. “News! News!” implore all the voices. He repeats the wireless messages received from the Eiffel Tower, from Poldhu, and is careful to make no comments. As if by magic, the misses, the donnas and senoras of all the nations and of every type of beauty slide under his hand a pencil, albums, post-cards. He defends himself. They beg with alluring glances. Must he not yield? Feverishly he scrawls, signs, dates the cards and albums. He is promised photographs--which he never receives. Sly scissors clip from his coat a button to mount on a hatpin. Families invite him to the Ukraine, to California, to Buenos Aires, after the war is over.

Finally the sailor escort returns: “Ready!” he says, saluting.

The officer pushes his way through the crowd, throws his leg over the rail, commences his tumbling descent. On the seat of the boat the prisoner, quite still, takes up the least possible room.

“You may continue your voyage!” cries the visitor to the captain, who is awaiting his release.

More questions, and farewells; a waving of scarfs and handkerchiefs. But he is already in the hollow of the waves; he wipes the spray from his face, and, raising his cap, makes a fine salute of farewell to all these passengers whom he will never see again.

Ten minutes later the boat with its prisoner is hoisted on board. The officer reports to his commandant, and at once draws up his statement. The cruiser begins to move, heading west; the liner recedes to the south, and soon we see nothing but her smoke. For several hours we prowl about, expecting the same ceremony to recommence. Five or six times a day we stop, make a visit, permit them to go on, or show our teeth. There are some amusing and some dramatic adventures, but for a few profitable visits how many futile ones there are! Yesterday in battle; always on the watch; a beast hunting for prey; the customs-officer of the high sea; traveling ceaselessly; never in port--such is the lot of the cruiser. Who of us reckoned on this as war? No one, I swear.

_North of Corfu, 30 October._

Was it not a dream from which we have just emerged? For several days--no, I must be mistaken--for a few hours the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ has been lying in the harbor of Malta, and our feet have trod the ground, the shore, the sidewalks. Fifty-three days at sea had persuaded us that everything in the world is in motion. One has to be a sailor to appreciate the delights of the shore.

It was in fact a dream. To-night finds us again on our patrol, between the coasts of Epirus and Corfu. Our rest is brief, we move very slowly, the screws seem almost asleep, and during my watch, from ten in the evening until two in the morning, the cruiser has slipped through magnificent shadows.

This sea is too lovely. Anxious to solace our exile with her feminine caresses, she shows us from hour to hour a delicious and ever-changing countenance. In moments of alarm and trial she succeeds in pervading us with her gentle consolation. But to-day, far from the Austrian coast, everything seems kindly, and the sailor can abandon himself to the magic of the shadows. Not a sound, not a breath, in these happy moments. Nature never slumbers so softly as on the sleeping waves, and the most smothered words are too noisy to express this silence. The sea opens languorously at our prow, and receives us amorously, so to speak, in her watery arms, which embrace us tenderly along our hull. The reflections of the stars, which ordinarily rock without ceasing up and down the ridges of water, stand motionless in it like nails of light. The coast is mirrored in the black element, reversed so perfectly that the land and its image seem cut from the same block. Epirus, Corfu and Merlera surround us in an immense circle, enclosing us almost as in a lake. But this lake is filled with a limpid water that extends from the shores of yesterday to the cliffs of to-morrow.

Enlarged in the transparent air, the stars seem to have come down nearer to us; the moon does not disturb the happy shadow. The star Sirius rises in the heavens, detached suddenly from the mountains like a slow rocket. She is round like some heavenly fruit, and the beacons on the coast are dim before this queen of our heaven.

On the Balkan cliff, halfway up the side of the mountain, flames a red light. Evidently it is a conflagration; in some little valley a wretched village is burning and expiring. Is it Albanian, Greek or Epirote? Some bandits with torches have set on fire the first barn on their path; the thatch, the mud walls, the dim huts, are consumed in whirlwinds, and the starlight is stained with streaks of smoke. The herds up there bleat and bellow in the flames; disheveled mothers carry off their nurslings; the men load their guns and unloose the dogs. To-morrow, in reprisal, another hamlet will be burned.

We are so far away, so lost in the night, that this sinister fire does not affect us at all. Why pity or curse, when distance smothers all sound? Yet how can we help being carried back to the obsession of the war, which the sea, the sky, and the stars, had banished from the present moment? Have not these distant flames been lighted by the incendiary of Berlin, and do they not portend the track of murder that will soon soak the East in blood?

But on this night I do not wish to abandon myself to sorrow. I wish to let my whole being slip into the rich blackness, and to ask of it the serenity demanded for the coming danger. Before dawn a velvety freshness creeps up, and banishes my insidious fatigue. This freshness of the end of night seems to make still smoother the surface of the sea, in which are sunk the reflections of the stars, clear, numberless, white as wax. Sparkling above each taper, every star recalls the flame which trembles on Christian altars at dusk, when the tardy penitent cannot distinguish the dim wick between the wax and the fire. Among the unreal columns of this Adriatic temple glides the cruiser.

This temple has neither nave, organ, nor pavement. The chandeliers have burned there since the first breath of things. The tabernacle is the immensity wherein swing the divine planets. The nameless architect is God, who has sown the stars near His throne in order that the humble regard of men shall be lifted to Him.

_Among the Austrian Islands, 2 November._

It is dawn. We are moving in a long file towards the Austrian islands. From cruiser to cruiser the cocks are calling and answering each other. As their clear call salutes the dawn, it is accompanied by the cackling of our poultry-yard. In the fresh air the melancholy cattle are lowing, and the restless sheep are bleating; each of our dinners diminishes their number. To the officers on watch there rises the country smell from the henhouses, the cattle manure, and the hay, their fodder; and the air is filled with all the sounds of an awakening farm. Into the preoccupations of the watch creep precious memories and nostalgia; one would like to be in some country place, surrounded by meadows and woods, and one wants to close one’s eyes so that nothing may destroy the dream.

But it is the green sea that forms our meadows; and the Dalmatian Isles, which emerge from the mist, are the groves of our horizon. The three big cruisers with six stacks are in the upper Adriatic, at the approaches to Lissa, a bastion of the Austrians on that sea, over which we sail without opposition. Further south, toward the isles of Lagosta or Pelagosa, the armored squadrons move at reduced speed. Once again, the tenth or twentieth time--we have lost count--the French “naval army” emerges from the dawn and offers the challenge they will not accept.

Only a short distance away, Lissa wakens under our eyes. Pleasant wooded slopes clothe this island; a tiny town, the principal place, surrounds a quiet harbor. We do not need our glasses to count the houses or even the windows; the people who come into the streets raise their hands to Heaven at sight of us and retreat behind their doors, which they barricade. The ribbon of water separating us from the shore is hardly broader than a river, and without taking aim our guns could pulverize houses and people. The Germans, in our place, would assure themselves a tremendous triumph, which their journals would celebrate in the list of German victories. But the French are incorrigible; they will never learn these illustrious methods, and will never destroy defenseless cities and men. Think what you will, our gospel contains no such precept.

Our division is accompanied by two squadrons of destroyers; they make their presence known by doing legitimate damage. The lighthouse of Lissa might assist the movement of Austrian ships at night; the cable can transmit to the arsenals news of the movements of the French fleet. Our destroyers do not hesitate to destroy these tools of war. Their guns thunder against the lighthouse; their dredges search for the cable at the bottom of the sea. To emphasize the ease with which we approach the enemy, small French vessels enter the harbor of Lissa with a haughty air. The fisherfolk and other people on the coast are terrified; no one expects mercy; everyone commends his soul to God. From the bridge the officers of the cruiser observe all this excitement; they see swarms of people fleeing into the country, where our guns could nail them like flies against the wall. It all makes us smile. Our sailors are quietly washing their linen, or gaily chattering. Like their officers, they are savoring the deliciousness of this quiet morning, in front of this island filled with sunlight and with terror. Their generous souls do not desire the destruction of this defenseless town. But at the bottom of their hearts and their talk lies a question which three months of naval warfare had not solved--“What must be done to these Austrians to make them revenge themselves? Will they make us no return for our insults?”

An officer and some sailors from the destroyers set foot on land. The population is humble and suppliant. We ask them the names and addresses of the two principal notables of the island, and immediately the notables are made known to us. No threats or revolvers! Everything goes off admirably. The two notables are brought before the chief of the French detachment; they tremble at first, but the courteous firmness of the all-powerful sailor reassures and conquers them. When it is announced to them that the Navy will hold them as hostages, they are not afraid to deliver themselves over to the good faith of men who do not abuse the rules of war. When we demand from Lissa a contribution of twenty-five thousand francs, they give it themselves, in hard cash of full weight, convinced that this gold is not passing into the pockets of highwaymen. When they are asked to deliver themselves up on board the torpedo-destroyers, they are given time to dress in their best clothes, to embrace their wives and children, and to assure the city that the enemy cruisers will not bombard it. In this little corner of the world where fate confers upon us these extraordinary powers, a few hours are sufficient to make the people our friends. If by any chance French victory should mean that the tricolor is planted on this island, it will float on friendly soil there.

Morning passes. Halted before the harbor of Lissa, the three cruisers wait while the destroyers finish their task at leisure. Midday sounds. Beyond doubt, the Austrian bases of Cattaro, Pola, and Sebenico have been notified of our action. The early hours of the afternoon pass. No enemy squadron appears to take up the challenge. Will our armed forces below the horizon have to wait in vain for the wireless announcing that our enemy will avenge the insult offered their territory? Is France really at war with Austria? The commander of the squadrons comes to make his report to the rear-admiral of the _Waldeck-Rousseau_. He tells of the terror of the inhabitants of Lissa, their meekness, the taking of two hostages on board his destroyer. Our wireless requests supplementary orders from the Commander-in-Chief. Suddenly, emerging from the maze of the Austrian islands, appear at last two columns of smoke. All the glasses and telescopes are turned towards these longed-for shadows. Our hearts leap; our eyes fear they are mistaken. But no! The enemy is replying to the insult. Numerous masts are graven on the horizon. Everyone sees them rise, and whenever a new one appears utters a cry of joy. Five! Ten! Fifteen! Eighteen! The great Day has come.

The sun shines brightly. Not a ripple breaks the sea. Our rear-admiral hoists signals of chase and combat, the division of cruisers and two squadrons of destroyers advance with all speed toward the hostile smoke. As yet we do not know the strength, the number, the armament, of this enemy who offers battle. What matter! The tops of its stacks cover the northwest sky. We must hasten to the fray. If our first engagement is not victorious, the wireless calls we send to the battleships will bring them hurriedly to the victory we have led up to with our first attack. Joyous trumpets sound to clear the decks for action; the ships of France hoist the shield of battle, the national flag, perfectly new, at the junction of two masts. In a few minutes all the men are running to their posts. They laugh, they sing, they are crazy with excitement. But hardly have they reached their apparatus than they have regained the silence of duty. Firemen at the fires, engineers at the engines, gunners at the guns, have prompt arms, steady spirits, and alert eyes. Along the hull the spray leaps and glides, like the road beside an automobile. In the turret the commandant, the firing officers, and the maneuver officer, await anxiously the moment when they will recognize the enemy as he presents himself to us. They want to increase the speed of the ship, but our screws are already turning madly; they cannot add a millimeter to our speed. At last, on the curve of the sea, are clearly drawn the outlines of our enemy.

Alas! They are nothing but destroyers! Rapid and powerful destroyers, indeed; but Austria could have afforded to offer us antagonists equal to ourselves. Let us be content with the windfall. Too many days have been squandered against invisible enemies. These are real, living, and full of fight. They gallop towards us, with torpedoes leveled. We point our guns, which cannot yet reach them. The match is even. Like us, they have hoisted the flag of battle; and the _Waldeck-Rousseau_, springing over the water like a full-blooded steed, leads the cruisers and the two squadrons to the adventure where death awaits.

A few minutes of anxious silence pass. Shut in the cells below, the men listen, trying to catch the heavy sound of the first broadside; they would be killed in an instant if a well-aimed torpedo should touch the cruiser, but they devote their stalwart souls to the machinery and the engines, that no one may be wanting in this crisis. Through their telescopes the gun-pointers watch the distance vanishing as if by miracle. Twenty thousand meters.... Eighteen thousand.... Fifteen thousand.... Fourteen thousand.... Only two thousand more, and the rattle of our artillery will rain upon the enemy. In three parallel lines the Austrian destroyers throw out torrents of smoke, which seem to merge; each line glides over the blue water like a shining serpent. Around us our own destroyers have closed up, and are plowing up clods of spray silvered by the sunlight.

But what is this! The Austrian lines swerve, deflect; their head makes a great curve! Is it possible? They would retreat! They would refuse an engagement! We are so angry that our eyes refuse to believe the retreat. It is an illusion of the light; a jest of the wind that makes the smoke bend. Not at all. They complete the circle, turn their backs on us, and fly off at top speed like three trains along their rails of foam.

Oh! To have this revenge in sight for so many futile weeks, and then to see it escape just at the point where our guns cannot reach! To feel that the great engines under our feet, strong as they are, are unable to catch the prey, because its legs are too long! To measure the distance, and feel it increase a little with every second, like an elastic band of air stretched between us! Fourteen thousand meters!

Fourteen thousand one hundred.... Fourteen thousand two hundred. Ah! we should like to be able to control the waves, to throw into the air a sudden squall, to chop up a sea of billows and swells. Our own powerful keels would not be slowed down, but the destroyers would run foul of each crest of the waves, would slacken, become exhausted, and our mettle would triumph over their cowardice.

They make speed towards the labyrinth of the Dalmatian Isles, which loom before us as a family of marine monsters might emerge from the water. We continue the pursuit. Sixteen thousand meters.... Seventeen thousand meters.... Perhaps remorse or faintness will seize the cowards. But no, their confusion is a premeditated ruse. Up in the sky, gliding and descending through the transparent clouds, an aviator drops toward the French ships, enfilades them, and lets fall on us bombs which only the cleverest tacking evades; they burst against the hulls. One of the cruisers catches the wake of a periscope on the surface of the water. It may be that some prowling submarine has already fired its torpedoes, and our speed has deluded it; no one is affected. We shell the path of this streak of foam, which immediately vanishes. The submarine flees below the water, the aeroplane is already out of sight, the destroyers are nearing the entrance to the islands. Eighteen thousand meters.... Nineteen thousand.... Each second of pursuit increases the danger, the useless danger which has no chance of reward. It is becoming evident that this Parthian flight leads us into the zone where other submarines are prowling, and other aviators lurking, where slumber dangerous mines, which can inflict slaughter without stirring from their position. Why excite ourselves? We are rushing towards a death that will bring no glory to the Navy, no benefit to France. Austria will have a victory which will not even have _achetée son courage_.

The rear-admiral has the signals hoisted. While the Austrian destroyers are hidden in the straits into which they hope to draw us, our cruisers and destroyers make a wide detour in the offing; our engines carry us disdainfully away from these coasts which shelter no gallant enemy. One by one, from the depths of the ship, the men who have been enclosed during the combat come out again. They have seen and heard nothing, and they eagerly ask the news. The sailors on deck talk to them in a low voice. Their cheeks turn pale, they clench their hands, their eyes flash with rage. The dejected crew moves silently up and down. Their faces are melancholy, their hearts sore, their nerves seem to have lost their spring.

At twilight, a few hours later, we call together the “naval army.” By means of the wireless messages sent during our chase, the ships have followed with passionate interest the enthusiasm, effort, dangers, and disappointments we have been through. Ready enough to help us, and to give the Austrian fleet a good reception had it come out, they are awaiting us for still another descent of the Adriatic, also to be unfruitful, like so many others. For half an hour, under the golden beams of the setting sun, the squadrons go through the usual maneuvers and get their sailing orders for the night. The majestic, supple lines cross one another, approach and recede upon the parade ground of the sea. Every movement is perfect; the scene resembles a procession of moving cathedrals. In the evening light the hulls take on all the colors of stained windows. The water is strewn with azure and purple flowers. The signals run up and down the masts. Into the sky rise curls of smoke. A religious silence prevails.

The night falls. Up among the islands, enveloped in mist, the Austrians can observe our contemptuous evolutions and our dignified departure. Not one of our movements displays any disquietude. Let this sorry enemy dare to rouse us, and they will find, at any hour of day and night, something to talk about! But we are learning to know them. Lazily the battleships and destroyers spread over the broad surface of the Adriatic and begin their majestic descent. This morning the cruisers were to northwards, in the vanguard. This evening they are deployed to the south, where their vigilance will win them some consolation for the afternoon.

_Off Bari, 3 November;
four o’clock in the morning._

Thank God, I was on watch during the dark hours of the night. I should never have been able to abandon myself to sleep. For the disappointment of yesterday left me full of an exaltation there was no real battle to exhaust, and a thousand disconnected ideas raced through my brain. Even yet, after four hours of watching disturbed by alarms, I cannot find an instant of repose on my bed. I rise and come to talk with the confidante who is always ready, this notebook, which has received the confession of all my moods. Perhaps after this one-sided conversation my mind will become calmer and forget itself in sleep. But I am not sure. For we do not really know how to put ourselves to sleep.

I envy the soldiers on the solid land, confronting an enemy present before them. Whether he hides or reveals himself, the conflict is not slow in coming. They rush forward, they sing and shout; they thrust out their bayonets, they bite, and trample with their feet. At the moment of killing it is delicious to become a beast, to think no longer, to dry with a single gesture the sweat from one’s brow, and the blood from one’s wounds. But the sailors spend their energies in a long silent waiting. The more active they are, the more profound is their silence. The nearness of death makes them machines of precision.

I envy the soldiers who salute while charging their fallen enemy. They have seen him coming. Their short duel ends either in the intoxication of victory or the repose of death. Our long journeys are furtive steps in a temple of phantoms. Those who want to slay us crawl in the heart of liquid shadows. Those who defy us refuse an encounter, and entice us into the snares of the sea.

* * * * *

Night lags on the Adriatic. Nothing seems to live except our dreams. With elbows on the rail, eyes lost in the vastness, the officers of the cruisers keep somber and silent. Near their guns, motionless as statues sculptured out of shadow, the gunners watch in vain, and reflect on the disappointments of yesterday. In the distance there is a splendid thunderstorm. Forks of light leap from Italy to Austria; not a thunder peal echoes, but the air is alternately vivid and dark. The lightning comes and goes ceaselessly, like the winking of an electric giant. Black and white, white and black, the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ glides through a gleaming sea. Are there enemies about us? Is the sea safe? How can our eyes tell, as they pass from an illumination whiter than the sun into an opaqueness blacker than nothingness? Every electric shock jangles the strings of our taut nerves. A reflection on the water takes the form of a destroyer; the straight path of the lightning shoots like a rocket of the enemy; the shadow has the thickness, the consistency, and almost the odor of smoke from a hostile ship.

O demons of the atmosphere, how you play with the sailors! Over there, towards the north, the watchers on the battleships have felt their hearts expand and contract with each of your shining caprices. But even greater is the disquietude of the cruisers who precede and protect the squadrons. Yesterday Austria saw us. In a grand gesture she refused us battle. To-night we feel it coming, we are sure of it. She has despatched her atrocious submarines. They blockade the Adriatic and watch for us. When shall we fall into their claws? In a minute, an hour, a day? We are illuminated like specters by every flash, but they are buried in the black waves. Both the cruisers and the battleships who trust themselves to our vigilance are lost in an ocean of illusion.

Early in the morning an ensign translates a wireless from Malta. By way of numberless cables this message brings news from the Pacific. Under the massive shadows of the Cordilleras of the Andes, three English cruisers were swallowed up in the Chilean twilight. They fought against stronger vessels, but the German guns _a eu raison de leur valeur_. Twelve years ago, from the height of the American peaks, I had looked over the infinite expanse where this passage at arms took place. A few years ago, during a cruise to China, I had visited these same British vessels. I remember their appearance; faces that smiled at me then are now, no doubt, sleeping over there on the threshold of the _madrepores_; fingers which pressed mine are twisting the dark sea-weed, the sailor’s shroud. I envy those ships. I envy the dead of the battle of Coronel. A few weeks later, we shall know the details of their glorious end, but from now on I shall envy them, for they have fulfilled their destiny. It was not vainly that their torn flag shone in the sun. They struck, they perished, their eyes have carried with them into the deep the vision of battle; their death transmits a heritage of vengeance to which all British sailors are the heirs.

Why does fate give us in the Adriatic a felon enemy that only runs away? Certainly I hate the Germans; but at least you find them when you look for them. Whereas to draw from the depths of the sea the only adversaries that Austria sends against us we should need picks and rakes. Our magazines are full, our engines are quivering, our guns thrust out their jaws, but all that crawls in the Adriatic desert is the submarine.

Silent lightning flashes, alternate shafts and shadows burn our eyelids. The four hours of the watch pass. My eyes are fixed on the blackness; my dreams encircle the earth every moment. A procession of memories has accompanied the storm. Perfumes from Indo-China, the theaters of Paris, negresses of Guadeloupe, Madagascar cyclones, idylls of the West and tragedies of the East, tropic homesickness, and the English countryside--the whole procession of the past glides through my watch. Smiling, mystical, dim, it hastens to respond to my mood of nervous fatigue. It leaps upon the bridge to companion my solitude. About all my comrades, about the officers, who like me have become hermits of the deep, there crowds in the same way the phantoms of the past. We do not summon them. They run to us, form in line, yield place to others; the train of our dreams is more mobile than the sea. Meanwhile duty does not suffer. The round of memories never deflects our eyes or our ears from the surface of the waters. When necessary, we can scatter the memories with a single gesture, and do whatever is needful.

In the freshness of the early dawn the breath of the breeze calms all this fever. My mind pauses on the last rung of the ladder of memory. There it rests, and at the end of my watch I find myself back again in a garden of Malta. According to the calendar this episode dates only eight days back, but it seems to me that our life has thrown it into the remote past.

In the midst of the arid rocks of Malta there is a garden, enclosed with high walls. The parterres of black soil, imported from Sicily, are cut by alleys of gravel. On the terrace bloom the rarest flowers under the sun. They are not European, they are choice specimens from America and Asia. The corollas which grow in this garden come only from certain Southern archipelagoes, but human skill has made them live in Malta.

Arbors shelter benches of ancient stone. Here and there arches of perfume brush the dreamer’s head. Since it is a place of quiet and sovereign beauty, human beings do not frequent it. Every evening, before returning to the noisy streets of Malta, I spend a few solitary hours in the company of the flowers. Only the gardeners disturb my revery, but they early become acquainted with me. The third evening one offered me the bouquet that still perfumes my cabin, and refused my grateful reward.

That evening I was walking at the end of the garden, by a fountain with a brim of stone and two basins of green water. In it the twilight reflections dissolve. The fragrance that lingers there is enchanting. On this little lake float two white swans. They know that their prison will never be larger; the paddles of their feet are still; their dazzling wings, rose-tinted in the setting sun, open like a sail to the breaths of the breeze, and they glide very gently, bending their necks as if to breathe in the exquisite sweetness of the evening.

A little dog, tawny and silken, ran around the fountain, barking at the swans when they skirted the rim, at their disdain when they moved towards the center of the pool. On a bench a woman dressed in mauve was reading a book, turning the page slowly. The air held only the last vestiges of light. When this woman raised her attentive eyes towards the dog, she revealed a sorrowful face and eyes heavy with passion.

I am slightly disturbed by these neighbors, but I sit down and abandon myself to the witchery of the colors and odors of the dying day. Sorrow is solaced by an excess of sorrow, and the exile finds joy only in an excess of exile. Solitary, between the past and the future, I am at peace.

There in the fragrance of the garden, the sea, the war, the how and why of things, all disappear. My thoughts float, without support, like the exhalations of flowers which hasten to give out a sweet odor before falling asleep. But the little tawny dog, excited by the play of the swans, leaps towards the nearest ones, and falls into the water. He keeps himself up, paddling round in the same place; he scratches at the slippery rim of the fountain. Unable to climb out, he whines piteously. I fish him out by his silky ears. He shakes himself, shakes water on my shoes, and the lady in mauve rises to thank me.

Who ever remembers words spoken at twilight? She spoke the soft Italian tongue, and I replied in kind. Why, as I came from the shores of Malta, should I forget French in favor of the tongue of Dante and d’Annunzio? The little tawny dog followed us. I learned that he is called Jimmino.

Deep eyes, a face which was not pretty but which I thought to be more beautiful than beauty, was sometimes raised to mine. We walked along together, both weary. Our words were vague, and yet each one found its mark. I understood my own fatigue; but what was this woman’s with the tragic face? We had not told each other our secrets, and yet it seemed that for each other we had no more secrets. She was beautifully dressed, in rare and simple material. Her jewels were real. Night had enveloped us when we reached the gates of the town. You wish to know what we said to each other on the way? I do not remember. Under an electric light in the street, we pressed each other’s hands; her eyes dominated her pale face, and I thought her fingers trembled. Who is this passer-by whom perhaps I shall never see again, and will she take her place in the company of the shadows who people the life of the sailor? I do not even know her name.

On the bridge my successor in the watch comes to replace me.

“Speed, twelve knots,” I say to him. “Route, to the south. We have passed the light at Bari. Range of the guns, fifteen hundred meters. Deflection, forty-four and fifty-six. Light wind from southwest. Storm continues on the whole horizon. Nothing in sight. A good watch to you!”

And I go down to my cabin. Perhaps after two hours of confession on paper, I shall find oblivion for this chaos in which my dreams are tossed. But I must sleep, for in six hours I stand watch again, and the folly of the mind must not be allowed to weaken the body.

_3 November,
four o’clock in the afternoon._

Well, no! Sleep did not come this morning, and all these dreams came near ending in a fatal nightmare.

After a few hours of unquiet rest, I had to rise, make a hasty toilet, and swallow what food I could before resuming the lookout. In the middle of the day I found myself on the bridge I had left in darkness a few hours before. The sea was silvery in a bright sun. In a spreading line the three cruisers continued their course towards the southern end of the Adriatic. Behind us, almost invisible on the horizon, the smoke of the “naval army” made a black smudge. On board, everyone not on watch was taking a siesta, getting consolation in sleep for the disappointments of the preceding day. But dozens of eyes were watching this calmest of seas. Light mists, idle as the feathers of birds, moved here and there on the blue sea. A few thousand meters away the _Ernest Renan_ followed a parallel course.

Suddenly in the streaks of foam appeared something whiter. My glass at once followed this wrinkle on the water; one would have said it was a jet of steam, glistening in the sunlight. I hesitated a few moments. Perhaps I had been deceived by the fin of a porpoise swimming at the surface. But the memory of drills during peace-times set before my eyes the wake of a periscope, and I hesitated no longer.

“On watch! To port! Range, eight hundred meters! Deflection, forty! The three engines ahead full ahead! Close the port stanchions! Open fire!”

The cruiser leaps. Below, the men on watch close the port stanchions. The volley of guns goes off, and the shells fall round that white moving spot. They burst like balls of snow on a blue wall. All the men wake from their siesta, the officers come on deck. At several meters from our hull passes the flaky line of a launched torpedo. It has missed us, but a big 194 shell, fired from one of our turrets, bursts just above the periscope, which rises, sinks, rises and sinks again, like a wounded animal which lifts itself and falls back. And then we see nothing more. The blue water shows only its usual indolence. From the _Ernest Renan_ comes to us a burst of hurrahs across the air; they have seen the shell tear up the water, and have decided that the explosion destroyed the submarine.

We move rapidly, so rapidly that in a very few moments the cruiser is far away from the deadly spot. The guns turn and follow, ready to fire again, but nothing more appears.

“Cease fire! Watch ended! Open the port stanchions! Return to course! The three engines at sixty revolutions!”

In a few seconds the cruiser resumes its watch. It has just proved that it cannot be caught napping, and everything falls back into what appears to be somnolence, but a somnolence with eyes wide open. Have I sunk an Austrian submarine? I shall never know. This deceitful enemy that hides itself to strike, and hides itself to die! One at least will not attack the precious battleships which follow us.

Towards the east a few minutes later the _Jules Ferry_, a cruiser with four stacks, which has been reconnoitering on the other side of the horizon, signals that a torpedo from an invisible submarine has passed a few meters from its hull. So there were at least two of these invisible enemies, and it was the cruisers that baffled their attempt. The Commander-in-Chief can descend fearlessly the path which we have just swept clear.

What does one feel on learning in the space of less than a minute that a cruiser worth fifty millions and carrying a thousand men has been dependent for life on the promptness of an order or the intelligence of a maneuver? I know nothing about it, and all those who have known great responsibility in this war will understand what I mean. A little later on, it seems to me, one feels afraid of the peril that is now past. It presents itself under terrifying colors which in the moment of action one did not see at all. Courage is easy enough; you need only get out of yourself, think of others, and everything becomes simple. Afterwards you are much fatigued. After yesterday’s disillusionment, I doubted my being able to sleep. To-day, after this danger, I am sure to escape insomnia. The phantoms of the past will not knock at the door of my memory, for I have lived through a great moment of my life. I may have saved the _Waldeck-Rousseau_!

_Otranto Canal, 11 November._

Outside or near the shore, in a peaceful harbor or in a roadstead whipped by the winds, a naval collier speaks the _Waldeck-Rousseau_. For several hours coal by the hundreds of tons passes from the collier to the ship. After so many days of watching and weariness, and of stoking the fires, this is the rest which our crews taste. We coal in front of Corfu or Paxo, or in some cove of Epirus. Each week our insatiable furnaces demand a thousand tons of coal; each week we burn them up in our futile promenades across the Adriatic sea.

From dawn to dusk our sailors fill sacks in the bottom of the collier’s hold; their shovels and picks labor in the bosom of the black stuff; windlasses raise the clumps of sacks, and cast them on the deck. There other gangs take charge, lower the sacks by chutes into the bowels of the _Waldeck_, dragging them by hand through the labyrinth of passageways, and into the gaping jaws of the stores; at the edge of the store-room two men with powerful muscles turn out with one stroke a hundred kilos of coal which fall down into the darkness amid a cloud of blinding dust. Crouched at the bottom of the store-room, other sailors receive this dark avalanche, pouring minute after minute; they direct it, pile it up in empty corners, and, stumbling on the piles, their eyes burned by the tar, their mouths poisoned with soot, prepare the way for the new torrents which are coming.