Chapter VI: Part III: In the Ionian Sea (1)

_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._