Chapter VIII: Part III: In the Ionian Sea (3)

Sunday, March 28. Midnight: at 38° 02´ N. and 18° 7´ E. M. J.... bets with M. Z.... that the Viviani ministry will not last out the year 1915. Stakes: the two bettors being unmarried, the loser agrees to act as groomsman at the marriage of the winner, who agrees to choose him a pretty maid of honor.

The page is sprinkled with facetious comments. To tell the truth, I do not know which are wittier, those which mention the wager, or those which discuss the stakes. Between the fiancée and the Premier, the maid of honor, the winner and the loser, it is all humor of the cleverest kind.

Tuesday, March 30. 2.30 A.M. at 38° 10´ N. and 16° 23´ E. M. W.... wagers that inside of a month one of the seven Ionian cruisers will be sunk by a submarine and lost without anything’s being saved.

For this wager I see neither any stake nor opposing signature.

_4 April._

For seven weeks I have not been off the cruiser, but this morning I was given a new duty; namely, to land during our coaling; my turn has come to provide the food for my twenty-five comrades of the mess.

At no time is this a pleasant business; during our war campaign it requires an angelic patience, for supplies are difficult to get and the quality uncertain. Each one of us watches without enthusiasm the day approach when he becomes the scapegoat for the dyspeptics and those with ailing livers. But the implacable schedule, drawn up by lot before our departure from Toulon, appoints a new “chief of the mess” every two months.

You housekeepers who complain of the price of provisions and the bad quality of the eggs had better take passage on the ships which move in the Ionian Sea, and you will learn about unknown miseries. It is no mere question in our latitudes, of varying the menus, of serving such a fish or such a meat, nor even of calculating almost to a half pound what will feed the household without waste. The task is more difficult.

For fifteen or twenty days the cruiser has kept to sea without quitting it; she has done her coaling outside and has not revictualed anywhere. Fresh provisions are a mere memory; eggs, preserved in straw or lime, acquire with each meal a richer and more vigorous flavor. The wine, shaken about in warm casks, ferments. The fresh water absorbs the rust of the iron-casks, and tastes like the mephitic beverage of some invalid resort. Our bread is heavy and indigestible, for the bakers are seasick and the flour is mouldy. For dessert we nibble some empty or frost-bitten walnuts, dried raisins, excessively dried, and almonds which either cannot be cracked or are filled with powder.

Despite our work and weariness, we push aside these pitiful refreshments sweetened with coaldust. Our teeth crack lumps which have no taste of vanilla; these are cinders which have got into our sauces. Morning and evening we have to face one or two dishes of beef. And such beef! Battered by the wind and spray, tossed by the rolling of the ship which bruises their tender nostrils, the poor animals of the shambles trample listlessly the steel deck and sniff their fermented hay listlessly. After a few days at sea they have lost their fat. They have to be killed in time, for fear they will die during the night. For this maritime agony they avenge themselves upon our teeth; their flesh is like a ball of discolored twine, with the pleasant elasticity of rubber. I will not describe the chickens which survive a few weeks of the cruise. I should need the vocabulary of a cordwainer.

And then, in their distant campaignings, the sailors habitually provide themselves with some digestive or rheumatic complaint, which is quiet enough in hours of prosperity, and revives exactly at the moment when one wants to keep well. Seven entire months at sea under this régime have resurrected all these ailments. The martyrs require a light but nourishing diet of good food. Where can we get it? The chief of the mess cannot transform into fresh eggs these shells in which are stirring chicks anxious to hatch out, nor into fresh milk the viscous compound which comes in metal cans. Musty cakes, greenish purées, coagulated rice, become more and more common on our plates. Complexions become yellow, features drawn, and good-humor vanishes. Discussions on the war or the service turn bitter. Those who are endowed with unbroken health take the diatribes philosophically: “Take it easy, my poor friend,” they think. “Take it easy. I would reply to you, if it wasn’t only your enteritis that is speaking!”

One night a wireless arrives from the Commander-in-Chief.

“You will coal Wednesday at Dragamesti, with the cargo-boat _Marguerite_.” It is only Sunday, but a smile appears on a thousand faces. The whole cruiser takes on the alert pace of a horse which sniffs the relay. A sorry relay however! From morning to evening, in a harbor where the wind blows violently, the ship will be shrouded in coaldust; the sailors will wear themselves out, the officers shout themselves hoarse trying to hurry the filling of the sacks, and we shall leave more exhausted than at dawn, for fifteen or twenty days of pilgrimage. But we shall have made a halt. Sailors in any part of the world, you will all understand me!

The chief of the mess is happy, but becomes anxious. Between two watches he has a conference with the cook and steward. Both are neurasthenic; it is as disagreeable to them to prepare our little meals as it is to us to swallow them. But hope, invincible in the heart of man, cheers the trio:

“Captain,” says the steward, “buy some figs, some salad and some fresh cheese. That will improve the menu for a week.”

“Certainly,” replies the captain chief of the mess. “But shall we find any?”

“I want some lambs,” demands the cook, “some fish for two or three days, and if I can lay my hand on a good fat sheep, I can guarantee that you gentlemen will be satisfied.”

“All right. But I’m afraid we shall not find very much.”

“And then, I must have at least four hundred dozen eggs. The last time we only took two hundred; a good half of them were rotten, and we use six to seven dozen a day. So, in twenty days....”

“Oh! But, great heavens, my friend! Where am I to get the money?”

For it is a fact: in war times, and in almost impossible regions, the sailors have for their pay and food not a cent more than in times of peace. Upon this detail the chief of the mess has his own opinion, but keeps it to himself. Pencil and memorandum in hand, he wavers between fear of overspending his credit, and of incurring the anathema of his comrades. He opens his till and counts the notes and change, closes the lock with a sharp click and murmurs:

“I shall never get away with it....”

Monday and Tuesday pass. The general satisfaction increases. The furrows deepen on the brow of the chief of the mess. To-morrow is Wednesday, the fatal day. But at dusk another wireless message arrives:

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

At this delay which desolates all the others, the chief of the mess calms down and has a better sleep. He has just gained twenty-four hours. But his calm is shaken at table by the remarks which unanimously agree that the food is uneatable--they are right--and that the chief of the mess ought to be hung. Poor chief of the mess!

A third wireless follows:

“Remain in the third sector until next Saturday. You will coal Sunday at Santa Maura with the _Bayonnais_.”

Horror and desolation! The language of sailors is not unresourceful, but in desperate cases it becomes magnificent. This is one of them. Rabelais himself, the prince of truculence, would open his ears wide to hear the sailors--ordinarily civilized--comment on this third message. I dare not reproduce these explosions, but will keep to my hero, the chief of the mess.

The bitterest pleasantries have an end. Towards sunrise the ship finds its way to the appointed rendezvous and anchors there. I will not say it is at Santa Maura, or on Sunday, or with the _Bayonnais_. It may be with the _Biarritz_, at Antipaxo, on the following Wednesday. We are within neither a week or a hundred kilometers of the original order, but the cruiser lies still, with the collier alongside, and the crew have already plunged into a cyclone of black dust. With his pocket full, but with an anxious heart, the chief of the mess, accompanied by his two acolytes, reaches the shore in a steam cutter. There is nothing but ten houses and a small church. The horizon consists of solid rock, without a sign of cultivation. At each step the hope of provender diminishes. We touch the quay, if there is a quay; when there is nothing better we run up on the beach, and the trio makes for the cluster of houses. Some Greeks with intelligent smiles and unintelligible language are always to be found to conduct you to persons who will sell you eggs, poultry, groceries or animals. They take your hand and pull you by the sleeve. They show certificates from another cruiser which has left the evening before, and which, like the brigand she is, has surely taken everything! After many muddy puddles, many ruts, the three victims arrive in front of the herd, the poultry-yard, or the baskets of fruit.

I suspect the people of this region of having founded along their coasts sanatoriums of lymphatic sheep and tuberculous cattle. I suspect them of cultivating boxwood and fusain, cutting the twigs off with scissors, and calling them salad. I suspect them finally when they sell eggs at eight sous apiece, of wishing to give you your money’s worth, and of setting odor above cheapness.

“If you want to see better animals, there is another herd ten kilometers away, behind the marshes.”

“In that island opposite, I know a man who grows vegetables; go to him. It will only take you three hours there and back.”

“Yes, you could find fresher eggs at my neighbor’s, but he just left for the mountains last night.”

The chief of the mess devotes forty minutes to understanding these wily proposals. He has only a few hours in this remote region, and before night he has to provide for the food of twenty-five men for twenty days. Followed by the steward and the cook, he perspiringly visits the miserable shops and doubtful poultry-yards.

“We have no more figs or raisins. The Germans bought them all three months ago.”

“Yesterday one of your ships took the finest head of cattle. If you had only come the day before yesterday!”

Hours pass, but they do not in the least improve the quality of what we are offered. The agents become more and more cunning as they press you to buy, for they know that the cruiser sails at dusk, and their kind souls fear she will leave without provisions. In a creaking carriage or on a broken horse, the chief of the mess goes to see this herd, or that famous poulterer, and returns with a desire to slaughter his guide. Evening comes. The cruiser whistles, raises the flag of recall, and is to put to sea in half an hour. We must buy now, whatever the cost. Then pell-mell, in sacks or boxes, under the goad of the shepherds, on the shoulders of the boys, the eggs and suspect vegetables, the consumptive animals and the parchment poultry begin to move towards the cutter. The Chief’s spirit is haunted by dark presentiments, but he offers fresh blue notes and new gold pieces in exchange for these precarious victuals. The sons of Mercury wrangle over the change and the price, the porters demand their tip, and the market becomes an uproar of invective. But all that is nothing to what is in store on board.

At last everything is in order. The cutter leaves the quay, followed by pleasantries, and arrives at the ship, which weighs anchor and begins in the night its twenty days of cruising. In answer to the questions of his comrades the chief of the mess tries to put on a good face, but the evening meal gives him a hint of the refined torture he will endure until the next landing, and he invokes the god of resignation to his aid.

* * * * *

This afternoon, since I had used up my store of gold and silver, I gave a hundred franc note to some breeder of elastic chickens. I owed him fourteen francs. Instead of giving me back eighty-six francs, he made the entire change for the note in pieces of five, two and one drachmas. In the midst of a crowd of boys and attentive men he counted it, recounted it, and put it in my hand.

From these hundred francs which he gave me I took out two five-drachma pieces and two two-drachma pieces, making up the total amount. But he returned me the two five-drachma pieces, and I cannot describe the air with which he said to me: “Your two coins are bad. Give me two others.”

If I had been a German, I should have knocked him on the head. But I contented myself with throwing the two coins into a pile of mud that happened to be there, and jumped into my cutter without saying a word. As we returned, I examined the other coins. They were sound. And I could not help laughing, for if I had chosen two good coins to pay him with, this good breeder would have robbed me of ten francs.

I have traveled much, I have seen many swindlers; but this one takes the first prize.

_Strait of Otranto,
25 April to 1 May, 1915._

The cruisers on the Ionian Sea have received orders to go up as far as the Strait of Otranto. Perhaps the Commander-in-Chief, who is stationed towards the south of Greece, has learned that the Austrians are preparing certain naval operations and so sends us to watch the enemy at closer range; perhaps this movement corresponds to some play on the chess-board of war. Little do we care. We leave these desert regions, and go to find the friends of our early days: Santa Maria de Leuca, Fano, Corfu.

Again we encounter their charms and their graces. Autumn had decked them in soft colors; April envelops them in a virginal light. At the end of Italy the lighthouse of Leuca rises like a marble finger always white; and the islands and the mountains of Epirus are pink in the morning, blue through the day, and mauve at dusk. The air is so marvelously pure that the night itself does not rob things of their color. Violets and yellows remain, even under the moon.

We have plenty of time to admire these beauties, already so familiar. The cruisers move very slowly, for they must not use too much coal. Several times we have been surprised to find one of them wanting to hurry the schedule of coalings and do its provisioning two or three days earlier. So in order not to incur the reproach of stopping oftener than is necessary, the cruisers have taken a leisurely pace, and the consumption of fuel has become satisfactory. Especially at night, in the religious calm over which the hills of Corfu and the lighthouse of Leuca watch as sentinels, it seems that we are quite motionless.

The family of cruisers, which was formerly dispersed over the Ionian Sea, now meet each other continually, and play at puss in the corner. In the course of a day one sees three or four gently rise on the horizon, make a curve as they double the edge of their sector, and nonchalantly depart again. When they have something to say, two comrades approach each other: the _Ferry_ talks to the _Gambetta_ by wigwagging, the _Waldeck_ to the _Renan_ with flags and pennants; through the glass one recognizes friends; salutations are exchanged by waving caps or hands. When the conversations are finished, each one turns her back and goes to patrol her watery field. Every morning, from eight to nine o’clock, the ships signal information about the amount of coal remaining, their daily consumption, the number of sick on board, and the number of the sector they are patrolling. If one of them has done or sighted something interesting, she mentions it. We have a little daily chat; thanks to which we feel less lonely--within reach of a voice, so to speak. During their watch the officers consult the memoranda of the wireless messages, and read hastily the news from their neighbors, just as one listens, without paying attention, to the friend one meets in the street who gives one the bulletin of his family’s good health.

We have, moreover, plunged back into the great road of international traffic. Again the throng of steamers, freighters or sailing vessels, passes along the Italian and Greek coasts. We may not go too near them, for fear of penetrating the territorial waters, and of thus finding Italy or Greece, with whom the Entente is carrying on negotiations, touchy about their sea frontiers. If one of the cruisers visits some ship too near the limit, she is accused of having overstepped the line, and the affair, exaggerated, becomes disquieting. Better to evade the controversial line, and only accost, with a clear conscience, the ships that risk themselves on the high sea.

In order that the crews may not lose their skill in firing the guns, which sleep in a profound slumber during this disconcerting war, from time to time we practise firing at floating targets. Not shooting with a regular charge, for our guns make so much noise that an hour later all the telegraphs of the world would announce “the great naval battle in the Strait of Otranto,” but what is called in the navy reduced firing. With small charges and small shells we fire upon little canvas targets which float on the water like children’s toys driven by the breeze. This makes proportionately no more noise than a pea-shooter firing peas, but the entire organism of the ship--engines, system of direction and of firing, telemetry and rules of firing--functions as it would in battle. When we pick up the target the crew examines the canvas and the framework, counts the holes and the scratches, criticizes this parody of battle. A pitiful solace for our desire for action! One thought consoles us: the Austrians at Pola, the Germans at Kiel, the English in the bases where they wait, are tiring themselves with the same vanities as ourselves, with reduced firing and the pretences of battle. Yes, this naval war is indeed disconcerting.

These were my thoughts during the watch the other night, when everything about me was so fair. A full moon with soft features, but with a contour as sharp as that of a new medal, rode in a sky as pure as the face of a child. The stars were swollen with joy. Vague lightning illuminated first one part of the sky and then another, like vagrant smiles of the night, without arrière-pensée. The sea, drowsy with warmth, had a calm and fragrant breath, and it seemed as if our prow in cutting it was profaning a divine slumber. It was one of those moments when the most unhappy man feels love flood his heart, and as my eyes fell only on eternal things, my spirit absorbed all their blessing. The cruiser was patrolling the middle of the Strait of Otranto; on its left a comrade kept guard towards Fano and Corfu; on its right the _Gambetta_ in the Italian sector received from time to time the flashes from the lighthouse. During the afternoon we had come quite near the _Gambetta_; our boats had exchanged the parcels, the mail, and orders, and it is now the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ who will occupy the Italian sector after we separate. At the last moment some new order has given our place to the _Gambetta_ and kept us in the central rectangle. It is of no particular importance, and our turn to be neighbors with the lighthouse will come to-morrow.

I shall not try to describe the train of thought which haunts the officer of the watch when nature becomes kindly again and accords him a respite for his body. As he surveys the sea with unrelenting eyes, he makes the tour of the weather, of the world, of his ideas. The fluttering butterfly is less capricious than this reverie of his, but he rests at last on some flower of thought. I remember that on this night, towards the third hour of my watch, I was thinking of the contrast between the peace of Nature and the human agony of the war. I had taken off my cap to feel the caressing fingers of the night; I had even opened my vest, and felt almost on my skin the freshness of the reviving breeze. On the sea, so light that it seemed transparent, I saw nothing in particular; but that was undoubtedly the weakness of my vision, the fatigue from too long cruises, the lassitude which on this night all my comrades of the watch on the cruisers felt with me. Otherwise my mind was clear.

The work of France and Russia, the enterprise of the Dardanelles and Gallipoli, all that had not been done, all that could be done, and ought to be done, everything defined itself in precise images. Around the cruiser was so much silence and so much silent light that my thoughts seemed to speak aloud to me. When my successor came to replace me on the watch, I quickly told him all the routine things, and then remained several minutes before going down to my cabin, in order to enjoy the marvelous night for a little while longer. There was not a single sound or light, and I left the bridge regretfully. I thought of the officers of the nearby cruisers, towards the right and the left of us, several miles away, feeling the same sensations, and I was consoled.

The arriving day brought dazzling beauty after the quiet charm of the night, but everything around the cruiser remained the same--calm, silence, warm air. After a heavy sleep, a listless morning and a short meal, I resumed at noon the interrupted watch. The same thoughts continued to accompany my duties. Between them there was only the difference of moonlight and sunlight. My reasonings were clearer, my rancor stronger, but the sparkling of the waves revealed nothing. As we had nothing to communicate to the cruisers on our right and left, we remained quietly in the center of our sector, and my only companions of the watch were the sun, the migrating birds and some dolphins in the water.

Towards two o’clock I received the sudden news of the death of a sailor on board. The news tore me from my peaceful mood. I know that in this far place the death of one man does not count, especially when one is acquainted with that man only by a number. Yet I could not refrain from a certain melancholy, and the train of my reveries became somber. You poor little sailor, who has given up his life in this iron prison, where will be your grave? The perfumed rocks of Greece, or the sands of Apulia, or a shroud in the Ionian deeps? Wherever it be, no hand will ever strew flowers on your white wooden cross, and those who write you to-day perhaps will not know to what part of the vast world they should direct their tears.

To the end of my watch I keep thinking of this destiny of the sailors, who do not even halt to die. Around me the faces of the lookouts and gunners show the same aspect of gravity which mine should have. This morning, it seems to me, touches us more than it should. Is there not going on somewhere a drama much more terrible?

In order to banish such reflections, I go to look in my cabin for my little dog Jimmino, with his cold nose, his soft eyes and silky hair. Since my last stay in Malta, he has exchanged the ease of his mistress’ home for the hard existence of a ship. At night he sleeps in the hollow of my shoulder, and when he wakes, he watches my slumber without stirring. When I work, he whines softly until I lift him up on my desk. He puts his head between his paws, and follows the course of my pen. He does not like me to remain too long without speaking to him, for I think he is of a jealous temperament. In order to let me know he is there, Jimmino rises and walks across my pages where his paws trail thick threads of ink. Then I give him a little tap on his cold nose and scold him:

“Get away, you horrible, badly brought up little thing! What would your mother say if she...”

“Well, well,” replies the little tail as it wags. “You have spoken, silent master, and you have struck me; so you must love me. I am not vexed with you any more.”

Jimmino lies down again within reach of the paper, his nose so near the sheets that at the end of every line I feel his warm breath on the back of my fingers. He watches my bent head, and thinks:

“I know very well you are bored, and that you brought me with you to distract you. I am very happy when you deign to think of me. But do you suppose that I am amused? Formerly, I played with the cat, on the stairs, under the furniture, and around the kitchen. Everything smelt good all around, and they washed me every morning. Here everything is full of coal and bad odors. The moving sea makes me dizzy. And then I have become the dog of an officer, and cannot go with the crews’ pets. What have I done that you should exile me? Listen to me, silent master. Speak to me.”

The paw stretches out cautiously to the edge of my freshly written line. “Back, Jimmino! You will make a bad blot!”

The paw draws back.

“Bah! You are right,” the master goes on. “It is late. In a quarter of an hour we shall eat. Come up on the bridge. We will take the air.”

I take Jimmino, warm and soft, up on my shoulder, where he weighs nothing. He settles himself, snuggles against my ear which he tickles. He trembles at my rapid course along the corridors, up the companion ways, to the height of the bridge.

The twilight is marvelous with its soft and delicate shades of color.

“What news?” I say to the officer of the watch.

“Nothing.... The same old story.”

“Any interesting messages?”

“None! Communiqués from Eiffel, Norddeich, Poldhu. The cruisers have nothing to say. Go read the memorandum.”

I hasten to read the book of telegrams, glancing over the hundred or two hundred messages of the day. It is the same strain as yesterday, and as it will be to-morrow. “Left Navaria at 2 P.M.,” says this one. “I count on finishing coaling this evening,” says another. “I am on my way to Bizerta,” says a third, and so on for four pages.

“Well,” says the officer of the watch. “You see there is nothing.”

“It’s queer. The _Gambetta_ has not spoken to-day.”

“There was probably nothing to announce.”

“It should have signaled its daily position this morning.”

“Wireless damaged perhaps.”

“Perhaps. All the same it has said nothing since 9 o’clock last night.”

“Have any of the cruisers called her?”

“Yes! And she has not responded.”

“You are sure?”

“Go and see. I will watch in your place.”

Five minutes later my comrade returns, after running over, examining and considering the four pages of messages.

“You are right,” he says. “It is strange. However, nothing has happened to her. She would always have had time to signal S. O. S. That doesn’t take two seconds.”

“That’s true. But all the same, she should have replied to the ships that called her.”

“She was wrong. We shall see to-morrow.”

I go down to dinner. On my chair Jimmino, crouched like a sphinx, is waiting for bits from my meal. Our assembly is not very noisy. We comment upon the end of the day, and the doctor receives placidly the usual pleasantries. The conversation turns listlessly on Turkish affairs. Why is there no animation? The officers who are going to take the watch rise to put on their uniforms for the night. We greet them in the familiar way as they pass out. “A good watch to you, old man! Keep your eyes open!” “Don’t delay us!” “You know I’m taking the Paris express this evening.” “If you see a submarine try not to waken me.” “And then,” I added, “let me know if there is a message from the _Gambetta_.”

“Why?”

“She has not spoken for nearly twenty-four hours.”

“The deuce!” murmured the assembly. “What has happened to her?”

The game tables are set up, for dominoes, chess, bridge; the smokers light their pipes; the readers open their paper; others stretch out on the cushions. Interpretations are offered concerning the silence of the _Gambetta_.

“Accident to the wireless....”

“She had nothing to say....”

“She ought to have signaled her daily position....”

“She should have replied when she was called....”

“We shall see to-morrow...!”

The cards fall, the dominoes grate, the newspapers crackle, and the pipes pull. All in this little world are silent, absorbed in their game, their reading or their reveries. But it is appearance only. Yesterday afternoon we talked with the _Gambetta_; last night she cruised in the sector where we were to go. For twenty-four hours she has been silent. In the cards, in the papers, and the smoke from the pipes, each one of us reads these disquieting thoughts. But no one speaks of it. I go to bed, for I have to take the watch again in the middle of the night.

Jimmino trots behind me, installs himself near the pillow, and sleeps with a dreamless slumber. But I await through the long hours some news of the _Gambetta_. Eyes closed or open, I cannot escape being haunted by her. All my comrades tell me they have passed a sleepless night.

In the shadow I go up to take the watch. My predecessor repeats the sacred phrases. I interrupt him:

“But the _Gambetta_?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you think of it?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you believe that...?”

I dare not finish. He dares not answer, but disappears in the darkness.

I fix my eyes on this treacherous sea which never gives up its secrets. An anguish with iron fingers presses my heart. There is no more doubt of it, death has passed over one of our brothers. Each hour that slips by proves the magnitude of the disaster, and if no news ever reaches us, it will be because all at one stroke eight hundred men will have plunged into the sea. Leaning on the rail, I stroke the metal mechanically, and the wood and canvas which meet my hand. I enjoy feeling the good cruiser, alive and in motion, quivering under me. I realize how much I love her, and it seems to me, that in order to pierce the darkness, my eyes take on the acuteness of a father’s who scans the face of a child of his that is menaced by death.

A little later our wireless operator sends me a bundle of messages. With nervous fingers the ensign translator turns over his codes and dictionaries in order to transform these ciphers into French. Each minute I go to his shoulder to read the line, or the half-line, or the word he has transcribed. Heavens! How long it takes to spell out the horror!

* * * * *

It happened yesterday evening, during that fatal watch which I found so beautiful. The moon was quite round; the sea was transparent, and I saw nothing on it. Like me the officers on watch on the _Gambetta_ were weary of their useless vigil; at the end of their route they saw the gleam of the lighthouse at Santa Maria di Leuca. In the distance passed the shadows which I should have seen if the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ had cruised in the sector which it was to have had. These shadows were ships going along the Italian coast.

But another shadow, covered by the water, had been on watch for many days. It knew we were going by way of the Strait of Otranto. Advised by its accomplices, it awaited, motionless, the occasion for striking a decisive blow. For three nights, for four nights, the majestic cruisers passed too far from this shadow submarine, from this octopus with deadly tentacles. The moon, as it approached its full glory, became more and more luminous.

During these splendid hours, when I had almost disrobed to feel the caresses of the night near me, the submarine saw approaching a slowly moving vessel, with four stacks and graceful outline. It made ready, as it had the night before and the night before that, and hoped that the ship’s present route would permit it to cast its death thrust.

What pen could describe this drama in all its fullness?

On the _Gambetta_, sailors and officers scanned this sea that was almost too bright; they had seen it raging or seething with billows, or tormented by the wind, or calmer than a sleeping eyelid. It was the ninth month! Flashes of lightning dazzled their eyes, and they moved, like the watchers on the _Waldeck-Rousseau_, in a confusion of gleams and darkness. It was the two hundredth night! They were weary. They had waited so long, they no longer expected anything. Their eyes met only illusion.

The submarine lay in wait in the bosom of the waves. It knew that some time or other its wonderful prey would pass within range of its torpedo. Through the lens of the periscope its commander saw the luminous circle where the moon danced, the surface of the mirrored water, and the phantoms which move in a night at sea. He heard on the submerged hull the lapping of the dark waves. All the sailors at their posts watched the gesture of his hand and the sound of his voice.

Suddenly this man’s heart began to beat as if it would burst. God of death, you were speaking in his ear! He had just seen in the funnel of his periscope two masts and four stacks. She rose in the midst of the lightning flashes, a phantom. Tense and still, the man asked himself if the vision would approach, or would vanish as on the preceding nights. She approached. She came, a vagabond, predestined, without knowing that a demon was plotting her death. With closed lips and moist hands, this man prepared his words. Twenty-five men watched him as if he were a destroying angel.

At the given moment he said: “Fire!”

The torpedo left the submarine like a breath in the water and as silently. For a few seconds, a few endless seconds, it rushed through the echoless water. Two flashes, three flashes, gleamed in the sky; the lookouts on the _Gambetta_ covered their faces with their hands. They did not suspect that this moment, which followed so many other moments, held in it the last breath they would draw.

Then a dull sound behind her made the cruiser tremble. She was seized with a sudden fever, and each of her metal plates resounded. Death spread through her limbs and muscles. In through a breach in her very heart rushed the dark water, leaped and broke everything before it. What happened then?

I do not know. I do not yet know. But some of the messages make it possible to imagine the details of the horror.

Filled with water on her wounded side, the _Gambetta_, lurched toward her sea grave, and the sailors who were not killed at once thrust out their arms to save themselves. Everything slid around them. To stand upright they had to lean over; their hands had to serve them for eyes, for darkness enveloped the cruiser. Naked and silent they rushed on toward the deck, but the slanting companion ways were now as perpendicular as walls. How many unfortunates perished in their suddenly interrupted sleep, without realizing that their ship was going down for the last time?

* * * * *

On the deck, a black chaos! Each second the cruiser sinks deeper. The gulf of the waves grows larger, and each moment perhaps will be the final plunge. By main force the sailors launch the boats and the cutter, which drop into the water wrong side or right side up. The officers are calm and have put aside their fatigue; they give the necessary orders for the rescue. In the sky the two masts and the four stacks sink lower and lower. The cruiser, with its apparatus damaged, can send out no signal for help, and all those who dwell on her plunge into the depths as if down a silent stair.

A handful of men have been able to enter the boats. Chilled, but struggling for life, they have taken the oars, and during the last hours of the night have rowed towards the friendly lighthouse. At the first gleam of day, with bleeding hands, but with a marvelous tenacity of will, they have made a supreme effort, and the Italian customs-officers take in sixty exhausted men almost at the point of death.

* * * * *

From Tarentum to Rome, from Rome to Paris, from Paris to Malta, and from Malta to the _Waldeck-Rousseau_, this story of the drama has been traveling for twenty-four hours. The good neighbor we loved to see in our meetings on the high sea has met the death which might have been our own. She has disappeared without a word, felled at the first stroke in an eddy of the sea, as befalls her pilgrims. The wound was muffled and dumb, for over there on the horizon I saw nothing. One of the flashes that played in the sky was perhaps the gleam of the torpedo which killed her, but I was deceived by the illusion of distance.

* * * * *

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

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

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

FINIS.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.