Will you believe that I almost saw your battleship? It was just as we
entered the Adriatic south of Leuca. At dawn I was taking the watch and
I saw some smoke in the north--the kind that only warships kick up.
Afterwards I saw the masts and smokestacks of three big ships which
were going along line ahead. Fourgues thought it was a division of
the big fellows bound for Malta to coal. He is pretty smart--for at
Liverpool I received your letter dated in Malta five days after this
encounter. I will speak of your letter later, but first let me tell you
of affairs on the _Pamir_.
I thought we should never be done loading coal at K----. Fifteen
hundred tons isn’t very much. In England or America it wouldn’t have
taken more than a morning. There you are made fast to a wharf, the
waggons come, you capsize them into the hold, and when one train is
empty another pulls up.
At K---- it took three full days. We put it in with a teaspoon, as
it were. In the first place, they tied us to a buoy out in the very
middle of the harbour and the lighters came now and then in a sort
of happy-go-lucky fashion. They had gangs on board of the kind that
doesn’t get blistered, who stuffed the coal into sacks with shovels and
then hove them with a windlass, ten at a time. There were other men in
the hold who unhooked the sacks, emptied them by shaking them out, hung
them on the hook and sent them out again. While the emptying was going
on the windlass kept on running just the same. I understand now why
coal costs the Navy so much!
That was not all. The port told us that we were to carry coal in
briquettes especially for torpedo-boats, so of course I expected
briquettes. Not at all! Ten lighters arrived loaded with lump coal. I
say lump coal, but I might more correctly call it dust. It must have
been there for several years, rotting in the yard. I shouted to the
captain of the tug that there had been a mistake and that his dust must
be for some other boat.
He asks me if I am the _Pamir_. “Looks like it,” I said, “can’t you
read the name?” Then he answered that his written instructions were for
the _Pamir_. He added that the briquettes would arrive later.
The moment there is a written instruction I go ahead: briquettes or
coal-dust, they’re all cargo! It took two days for a thousand tons and
the foreman of the gang thought that was going fast! What would he
catch from the owner, I wonder, if the _Pamir_ had to pay two days’
harbour dues for four shovelfuls of coal?
“But,” I asked, “isn’t this coal for the torpedo-boats and isn’t it
true that they use nothing but briquettes?”
“You’re sure to find cruisers and warships down there. They burn
anything. And anyway, these ten lighters were ready and we had to send
you a thousand tons, so we took the first thing at hand.”
They don’t worry about things at K----, believe me! The briquettes
arrived the third day and it was necessary to flatten out the
coal-dust, which was piled up like a sugar-loaf, so that they should
not tumble to the bottom of the hold. We mustn’t break them, said the
foreman, because that spoilt them. But only the tops of the lighters
were stowed, shipshape, with whole briquettes. (It was splendid coal,
too, Grand-Combe Lens, the very pick of the basket.) But after two or
three layers there was nothing but leavings, pieces as big as your
fist, and in the bottom--mud--which we had to take just the same
because the order was to send the lighters back well scraped out. If
everybody scrapes them why should there be any mud? It will be nice in
the furnaces of the torpedo-boats! Do you remember the cases of oranges
we bought at Carthagena: the top layers A1 Lloyds, the bottom rotten?
So it was with their coal.
Fourgues came at seven that evening and we left at eight. Now he don’t
care a damn about anything. He saw his people at Orange and found
everything all right and brought back with him a lot of macaroons they
make at Aix, preserves from Apt, and a cask of _extra_ brandy. He has
not lost his hair once during the whole voyage, and what is more, he
has promised me on his word of honour that it will be my turn next
time. With all his faults he is not a liar! In three or four months
I shall make a trip home and perhaps I shall have been able to save
enough to get married. We shall see.
Things are going better all the same. At K---- the Navy gave us a
reservist chief quartermaster. He is the owner of boats on the Seine
and caught on quickly. As far as Liverpool we divided the watch among
the three of us and so could breathe. During the trip I taught the
tram-driver the rules of navigation, lights, whistles, etc. From
Liverpool to Cardiff he took the watch under Fourgues’ supervision.
He’s fairly on the spot. He will take the watch by himself on the
return trip and you can see your old chum beginning to revive.
At K---- there was an engineer who came to look at our broken shaft
and repairs. He found it rather rustic (as he termed it) and had a
new collar made for us, all polished and well-turned with a guard and
friction band. It was a bit too fancy to be solid and has already
started shaking loose. At the first dirty sea we get the two pieces of
the shaft will begin to twist apart. Fortunately I have kept Muriac’s
collars.
The _Pamir_ was ordered to go to Anti-Paxo. She made her ten knots
and arrived without too much trouble. The reservists are beginning
to tumble to it. I forgot to say that the burst tubes of boiler 3
have been changed. It isn’t perfect, but if we don’t drive her too
hard we can wait awhile for new tubes. We arrived at Anti-Paxo at two
o’clock in the morning. Why do they make us sail with all lights on
when the ships of war have all lights out? We are game for the Huns
as much as they, and you can’t tell what you may blunder into. During
the last night, with the sky so overcast that you couldn’t see the
bows, suddenly I smelt smoke right in my face, on the starboard bow.
Well, old man, it was one of your thirty-six funnel cruisers which had
just cut across our course a cable’s length ahead and which sent its
bloomin’ cinders into my eyes. I hadn’t seen a thing! You could have
knocked me flat! Really, they might show a light when they are going to
play stunts like that. I know that their officers watch, but just the
same, one of these days there’ll be a smash, my boy.
Before Anti-Paxo a T.B.D. came down on us full speed. We hoisted our
signal. She stopped to port side ten yards away. The commander looked
furious.
“Are you the _Pamir_? You ought to have gone to Fano.”
“At K----,” answered Fourgues, “they said Anti-Paxo!”
“It’s the _Marguerite_ which should come to Anti-Paxo. We have been
calling you all night.”
“But just look, sir, I have no wireless!”
“Yes, I quite see. All you hookers are alike! Well, come along, follow
me. How much coal have you?”
“Fifteen hundred tons.”
“Good! You are to coal the cruiser _Lamartine_, there behind the point.”
“Yes, but the top of my hold has briquettes for torpedo-boats!”
This did nothing to soothe the commander’s feelings. He reflected
awhile and then swore.
“Well, so much the worse. The _Lamartine_ has been waiting since
yesterday and she has to sail north to-day. She’ll take your briquettes
and to-morrow you can give your lump coal to some other ship.”
“All right,” said Fourgues.
And off we go to hail _Lamartine_ which was waiting below the
promontory, drifting without having cast even the smallest anchor.
At a thousand yards they made us stop because an officer from the ship
was coming aboard in a launch to help us to handle her. They might
just as well have kept him. We have only one screw, not three like
a cruiser, and the _Pamir_, with three thousand tons in her hold,
won’t turn like a teetotum. The officer wanted to show us what to do.
Fourgues began by cursing aloud and then bethought himself that in time
of war the Merchant Service must contain itself. When he saw that the
damage would not be serious, he let the officer go ahead.
“Go ahead! Astern! Hard a-starboard! But your ship doesn’t answer the
helm! She’s broadside on! Astern! Astern! My God--”
_Bump!_ You bet she stopped, the old _Pamir_! It was lucky the
_Lamartine_ was armoured! Otherwise we should have walked right into
her as far as the steps of the masts! Anyway, we rammed her. We broke
the two first hawsers, new steel ones, and we scraped her a little.
Ah, oh, my! what gadgets you do have sticking out all over your
ships--turrets, guns, catheads, bridges!
The _Pamir_ took the whole bump with her starboard lifeboat which
tumbled between us and cracked like a nut. This deadened the shock
somewhat, but our davits were twisted and we can’t hang another
lifeboat up there in a hurry.
The cruiser began to load her coal at seven in the morning and by
three in the afternoon, including the lunch interval, had swallowed
her thousand tons, briquettes first, lumps next. How the crew did it
I can’t think. Some crew, eh? Just think, they had been thirty days
at sea and yet they grubbed that out in seven hours! If you have that
kind on the _Auvergne_ you can be proud of them. What I want to know
is if your naval constructors spend their time trying to make it more
difficult for the coal to be taken aboard? They certainly never could
have handled briquettes themselves or they would not have made it
necessary to go about it as if one were trying to get furniture into a
house through the chimney.
I tried to follow the course of a load of coal from the hold of the
_Pamir_ into the hold of the _Lamartine_, but it was like trying to
find the exit of the maze at the Crystal Palace--only there it was
dirtier!
And then, do you trail your coal around on the _Auvergne_ in hampers,
like those in which the negroes of the Antilles carry bananas? It
is like trying to empty the Mississippi with a cocktail straw. The
hampers break--this breaks the backs of the men--and as for dust...!
The English and the Germans do things better than this, it must be
admitted. With their Temperly the coal goes up a sort of lift and their
ways of getting into the hold are less outlandish. I may be wrong,
you’ll put me wise anyway.
_Lamartine_ sent us to anchor for the night on a submerged reef, saying
that another cruiser would come on the following day to take what was
left. Before you could say “Jack Robinson” she was gone in the mist.
Fourgues lost no time about anchoring, very glad to draw breath and
smoke a pipe in peace.
We cleaned up and he had a lot of brandy sent to the bridge; we put it
in our coffee to get the coal out of our mouths, and then we yarned
till supper. The fog lifted for the sunset and we were both struck
dumb. You are lucky to be seeing that every evening! Fourgues wanted
to swank and say that in the Rhone Valley and at Marseilles, when the
mistral’s blowing, the sunsets are better than that. All brag! As for
me, I know this beats the Antilles and the Gulf of Bengal to a frazzle.
There was not more light and not so many bright colours, but it was
like velvet. You must be grateful to me for telling you all about it
when you have seen it every night for three months! But I should be
happy to go back there again to look at those sunsets while I think of
home.
The next morning we expected a cruiser for our lump coal. Instead there
arrived a flotilla of destroyers who hooked themselves on all round
the _Pamir_. It was neatly done--a cable here and a fender there, and
there they were, like good children, all fast, lashed for’ard and aft.
The Commodore boarded us and asked for Fourgues. He couldn’t have had
his boots off for a long time nor washed either. His beard was full of
cinders, his eyes red. When he found out that the _Lamartine_ had taken
the special coal and that there was nothing for him but coal in bulk,
he fairly let go:
“This is the third time! It fouls my gratings and it smokes like hell!
And they want us to make twenty-five knots with that dirt!”
But he had to get off at noon in order to go on patrol duty in the
evening--I forget where--and so he took the coal. Those fellows on the
destroyers, I pity them even more than the ones on the cruisers. They
haven’t room to swing a cat, and they must ship some awful seas!
We had a hundred tons of coal left when the six of them had finished.
Fourgues would have liked very much to return empty, for there’s no
sense in carrying freight home again. But no ship would coal there for
five days, and as it was hardly worth while for the _Pamir_ to go
north with so little, the Commander-in-Chief ordered us by wireless
(received by the Commodore) to proceed to our destination.
“You see, my boy,” said Fourgues, “the cruisers took the coal intended
for the destroyers and the destroyers the coal for the cruisers. Such
is life!”
The destroyers gone, we filled our forward ballast-tanks, for you can
imagine how our twenty-five hundred bales of cotton weighed us down
by the stern, and got under steam for Liverpool. It was a regular
joy-ride. Fourgues had no fear of running short of coal with the
hundred tons we were carrying gratis, and there were three of us for
the watch, including the Johnny of the Paris boats, who, by the way,
has a little fund of stories that leave Fourgues’ a long way behind.
At Liverpool the pilot delivered a telegram from the owner, who said
that according to agreement with the consignee, we must hand our cotton
over to the _Karl Kristian_, a big Norwegian cargo-boat, moored near
Birkenhead. When we were able to make fast to her, can you guess what
the captain said to Fourgues? Guess again, my son! That the _Karl
Kristian_ was going to carry the twenty-five hundred bales with four
thousand more to Copenhagen! You bet that stuff’s going to stay in
Denmark! This was the first time Fourgues lost his hair since K----,
and he said that if he had known he would have pitched it all overboard
in Morocco and carried furniture for a hundred thousand Boches,
rather than hand over to them material with which to furnish shells
for a whole Army Corps. You must have read the articles of the Hague
Conference, old man, on your battleship, so if you can tell why it is
forbidden to sell coal to the Boches and why cotton is not contraband
of war, you will do both Fourgues and me a favour. If the Germans were
in our place on the sea and we in theirs, I think an embargo on cotton
would not have been so long delayed.
The _Pamir_ soon hooked it from Birkenhead. During the day the _Karl
Kristian_ scraped out our twenty-five hundred bales, and Fourgues
profited by the occasion to have the builder’s diver--the _Pamir_ was
built there--take a squint at our screw, which did not seem to be
turning true. It was then we learned that a good chunk of metal from
the propeller was lying in the Atlantic, as well as three nuts broken
off from the nave. Fourgues would have liked to have it repaired then
and there, but the people at the yard told him that they were overrun
because the Admiralty was rushing construction, and that if the _Pamir_
could go as far as Cardiff, we should find another screw at their
branch establishment and some one to mount it. As it is only a short
trip we left that evening in ballast, and this morning they had her
down by the bows and installed a raft under the propeller, just at
water-level. To-morrow they will be through. We shall load up coal and
get off again.
As there was nothing to do while this work was going on, Fourgues gave
shore-leave to the whole bunch, who did not need to be told twice, and
invited me to dinner at the Welsh Lino! It bucked us up to drink cool
beer and eat fresh bread. As we were in such a good temper, I read
him your letter from Malta which I had had in my pocket ever since
Liverpool. I hope you don’t mind. Anyway, he said:
“They are lucky on the _Auvergne_. With a young chap like that on the
bridge the commander ought to be able to sleep easy.”
Believe me, it made him sit up to learn that you watch in a turret and
that when you set foot on the bridge you cease to call your soul your
own! All that you wrote interested him greatly. Fourgues has an abrupt
manner, appears rather off-hand, and talks little except to swear; but
when he really unbosoms, there is nothing to do but listen, for I have
observed that sooner or later you find he was in the right.
“Your friend’s letter is not at all bad,” he said when I had finished.
“He is interested in what he is doing and there’s nothing else worth
while in the world, except home and family. But he seems to me to
believe that the world was created on the _Auvergne_. That’s a way they
have. And he believes in nothing but guns and dreams of nothing but the
damage they’ll do. Very good, but we’ve still got to see if there’s
going to be nothing but guns in this war at sea! By the way things are
going, I have a sort of idea the Germans don’t figure it that way. As
for the Austrians! Well, we shall see. Come on, Sonnie, let’s play
English billiards and have a drink of whiskey. That’ll stretch our
fingers and legs a bit. You can tell me what you think of the letter
and see if we agree.”
You know I’m a mug at billiards, especially on those enormous English
billiard-tables. Fourgues gave me a hundred points in five hundred and
won in seven breaks. I stood around and watched him do it and never saw
him look so pleased. I tried to get in a few words about your letter,
but he held the floor the entire time. I can’t tell you all he said,
for it lasted an hour, but he asked a lot of questions and as I could
not answer them--“Ask your gunner,” he would say, “this and that and
the other,” chalking his cue.
And so, old man, I obey, and you may answer direct to Fourgues if you
wish. I shan’t be jealous and it will please him.
“One of two things,” he said--“either the Navy wants to fight the
Austrians or it don’t. If it wants to, why blockade the Strait of
Otranto? If you want to shoot a rabbit, you let him come out of his
hole first, then you get between the hole and the rabbit and then you
fire! But you don’t get in front of the hole in the first place or
he won’t come out. I don’t know where the Austrians are--at Pola or
Cattaro or somewhere else--but I know they’re not going to come out
with our Navy parading up and down in front of them, in strength four
to one. It would be better if we were to stay in some port near by,
with only one or two ships in the Strait--which is not so broad--and
let them make a sortie if they want to and then fall on them.
“The thing would be decided in an hour and the blockade would be over.
Instead of that, we wear out our ships and our men while the Austrians
remain at home, keeping their engines in A1 condition and sweating at
target-practice so as to be right on the spot when they choose to move.
“And what good does it do to go up and down the Adriatic in full
war-paint? Everybody knows that nowadays warships can’t get near an
enemy coast because of the mines. The commander of the _Lamartine_
told me the other day that they’re not allowed to go in beyond the 55
fathom line and that means from ten or twenty or thirty miles out to
sea. They certainly won’t bombard the Austrian arsenals and invade
Austria from that distance. All they’ll get will be a floating mine or
a torpedo from a submarine. I can’t see any other result. Fact is,
with the apparent intention of fighting, they all seem to me to be
doing their utmost not to get any. What’s more, if you have read the
English papers, you can see that it’s the same over there. Well, who
lives learns. Write all that to your friend with a greeting from me and
ask him what they think about it on the _Auvergne_ and the other ships.
Perhaps all this is only the imagining of an old duffer who hasn’t
worried around books on tactics, but it ought not to be very far from
the truth.”
Fourgues said a lot more, but this is enough for to-day. To-morrow
three thousand tons of coal and off by night! If we have no new
instructions we go back to coal the Fleet. But perhaps a telegram
will come during the day. Good-bye, old man. I’m going up to play the
mandolin on the deck and you may bet I shan’t be thinking of you!
ALEXANDRIA,
_February 12_.