We are here to get iron. You know it’s good in this country, and we
haven’t any left in France. But I will start again at Salonica where I
left off.
They had no idea what to do with the _Pamir_ down there. We should be
there yet if Fourgues had not annoyed all the big bugs of the Navy so
that they told him at last to get out and go to Malta, on chance, where
there might be something for us to do.
We left in ballast, nothing in the hold and a few passengers, young
fellows from nineteen to twenty-five years of age who were leaving
Salonica to finish their higher education in Spain, Switzerland, or
Holland.
All these young people were very pro-French and Venizelist, and
Fourgues was astonished at their going away from Salonica to study
elsewhere than in France, especially as they said with tremendous
gestures that the hour of Venizelos was about to strike and that he
would at last espouse the cause of the great and generous nation
which--who--of whom--and so on and so forth--and that they should form
an army in Greece to fight at our side and that Greece would come into
her own again.
Fourgues chatted with them in order to pump them and after a while he
understood.
“You see,” he said, “these tender hearts are skipping out of Salonica
because they are afraid they will be obliged to enlist if Venizelos
organizes an army. They are, as we say, brave, but not rash! They don’t
go into French territory because they think they might be called back,
whereas in a neutral country they will be perfectly safe. I don’t know
whether the ancient Greeks were as brave as the historians say, but
those of to-day look to me like heroes, in the sense that they love to
see others fighting.”
During the trip from Salonica to Malta we actually met some
patrol-boats off the coast by Matapan; the rest of the time--search me!
I wonder why there are people who ask what good it does for us to be at
Salonica. Such idiots ought to go down there and see how, if we had no
one there to keep Constantine’s mouth shut, Sophie’s husband would have
handed his country over to the Boches long since and opened all his
ports to their submarines.
And that would be a pretty business! Now that the submarines are
already hard at it--no matter what people say or don’t say--you can
see what it would be like if they could make use of the Greek ports
and islands. There would no longer be any way of getting through
down there; the route to Egypt and India would be cut and we should
practically give the Boches all that side of the map.
At Malta we arrived in the nick of time, but as the English don’t like
to have their ports too crowded, they told the French Mission to get
the _Pamir_ out of the way at once. As no one knew what to do with
us, they sent us to Bizerta where they said that perhaps we might
find orders. We left after one night in port, still empty, but the
public pays the bill. There was one woman-passenger who arrived with
a Gladstone at the last minute and begged us to take her. She was the
wife of a lieutenant in the Navy, and as he had been with his ship, she
had not seen him since August, 1914. Talk about adventures. Just listen
to this:
Ever since the beginning of the war the cruiser of the little lady’s
husband had rolled around, to Syria, Egypt, in the Indian Ocean, and
other places, and she had remained with her family in a village in the
Jura where she suffered acute anxiety to think of her husband so far
away. She is the daughter of a ship inspector, who knows as little of
navigation as I do of theology; on a boat she is like a fish out of
water. By every mail her husband wrote to her to wait, that his cruiser
would come nearer to France some day, and then he would let her know.
The first of March she received a telegram from Port Said: “Going Malta
ten days repairs come immediately.”
She received this in her mountains one hour before the train left
which connected with the express for Marseilles. Taking just time to
pack a bag, she started and reached Marseilles the next day, believing
that it was only necessary to arrive on the quay in order to take the
first boat, as in the Jules Verne story. All day long she trotted from
the Cannebière to the Government Docks, asking everybody, Customs
officers, police, sailors, etc., where one took the boat for Malta. She
understands nothing whatever about steamship companies, time-tables,
etc. Finally her cabman saw that she was not making any progress, so
he took her to Naval Headquarters. She says she can’t tell an admiral
from a station-master because their uniforms are so much alike; so
you can see how they must have laughed at Headquarters when she said
that she wanted to see her husband at Malta. Simply that and nothing
more. In short, they explained to her that the mail-boat had left the
evening before, and there would not be another for a week, so that
she could not reach Malta for ten or eleven days. The little lady
was beside herself. A man, you or I, would have said, “To Hell with
it!” But I believe that when a woman gets it into her head to see her
husband she would go all the way on her elbows rather than give up. She
took the train for Italy and went the whole way round, Nice, Genoa,
Rome, Naples, Reggio, the Strait, Messina, and Syracuse--three days
and a half without stopping and third class because she was afraid
her money would give out. She herself does not remember how she was
able to fix things so as to have the passports and that sort of thing.
All she remembers is that she showed all the authorities her marriage
certificate and her husband’s telegram. They tried everywhere to stop
her. Then she would start explaining and crying and it would end by her
being permitted to go on. Add to this that she can’t even say bread in
Italian! She ate as she could, afraid to get out of the train in a
station for fear it would go off and leave her. It made no difference,
she stuck it out and she reached Syracuse. The mail-boat was not
starting for two days and she hadn’t enough cash left to pay for the
passage. At the French Consulate they sent her away because she was
neither a pauper nor anything else, nor was she on Government service.
They told her to write home for money as the telegraphic money orders
no longer exist, and that writing would take a week or more.
Only a woman could get herself out of such a fix. On her beam-ends in
Sicily without a cent, unable to get anything from her husband or from
home, and nevertheless to arrive in Malta--it’s a mystery to you and
me who are, nevertheless, old hands at travelling. She pawned her gold
watch and a ring with a stone; then she found out in some way that
there was a sailing-vessel carrying cork and sulphur which would sail
for Malta the next day. By this means she made a day, as the mail-boat
stops at all the ports and the wind-jammer went straight across without
a stop.
I should like to know how she humbugged the old Sicilian skipper to
take her. Anyway, she brought it off. Besides she’s pretty, the minx,
although she’s only about as big as a pat of butter and she knows how
to use her eyes. She thinks and talks of nothing but her husband, but
in order to get to him she knows very well how to smile and jolly
people along. She says that with the Sicilian skipper she had only to
point to her heart and the word “Malta” in the telegram and that that
finished him! Well, I should like to have seen it.
At Malta she took a row-boat in order to make a tour of the port.
She had never seen her husband’s cruiser and all that she knew of it
was that it had three funnels, two masts, and a ram. She was sure of
this much from a poor snap-shot she carried. So she pointed out to
the boatman all the ships with three funnels and he went up to them.
As the names are painted out since the war, she asked everywhere,
“Is this the cruiser _Bayard_?” Then someone would explain that the
_Bayard_ was not at Malta; but she was afraid they were fooling her
and kept on searching. Finally she was forced to see that the _Bayard_
was not there. She was told that it had left three days before, but
that in time of war no one knew where a ship went and that only the
Admiral could tell her--if he happened to be in a good humour that day;
unfortunately he was more apt to be abusive. That didn’t matter; she
asked where she might see the Admiral! They laughed in her face, and
told her that this Admiral was a bachelor and nothing enraged him more
than to have his officers see their wives, because he said that war is
war and peace is peace. Finally she had the name of the Admiral’s ship.
Well, I should like to have seen the collision between the lady and the
Admiral!
All she will tell is that he asked her if she was clean off her
head, and said that her husband had done very wrong to telegraph his
whereabouts and that he was going to give strict orders that such a
thing must not occur again; that there was nothing for her to do but
make for France at once; that it was useless to chase her husband over
the “vasty deep” when the war would perhaps be over before she had
caught up with him.
Fortunately, on leaving the ship, broken-hearted, she found an officer
at the gangway to whom she said: “And you, monsieur, will you not
tell me where the _Bayard_ is?” The officer, whose job was to decode
despatches, was a friend of her husband and did know. He took her
quickly to his cabin in order that no one should hear them, and under
seal of secrecy told her that the _Bayard_ was at Bizerta for repairs,
that it would remain there eight or ten days and she could catch it if
there was a boat. All the regular service has stopped. There is nothing
now but military ships or ships that have been taken into Government
service and which must not take passengers. On these she could not go
except by fraud and with serious risk, if, indeed, anyone would take
her. But she said that no one could shoot her for that, and if they
dragged her husband into it just because she went to look for him,
she would make him hand in his resignation after the war and that was
all there was about it! She doesn’t lose her bearings, this little
lady! She had never seen the young officer, the despatch translator,
but she simply annexed him. She borrowed a hundred francs from him at
once in the name of her husband, and then she told him to inform her
immediately of any boat, no matter what, that was leaving for Tunis.
But the officer was obdurate, for he said if the Admiral found it out,
he would put him under arrest without hesitation. The little lady must
have given him the glad eye, for he gave in. And then she told him that
she would take up her quarters herself with her bag on a seat in the
Customs office for the night, so that the lieutenant wouldn’t have to
run to a hotel, and so that she would be ready to jump into the first
boat he pointed out to her.
In spite of his protests she did as she said and established herself in
the Customs house. The officers wanted to put her out, but she froze
on to a seat with her bag, and as she didn’t look like a dangerous
criminal, they left her there and she slept with her head against the
wall. In the morning one of the sergeants went to get her some tea and
toast and she made her toilet in the office of the Customs men, as
though she were at home. Just at this moment the sub-lieutenant from
the Admiral’s ship came to tell her that the _Pamir_, having arrived
the evening before, was to sail at eight that morning for Bizerta, but
that the skipper of the _Pamir_ was notorious for his disagreeable
temper and that he would send her to the right-about. Much _she_ cared!
Ten minutes afterwards, as we were weighing anchor, she climbed our
ladder, which was still down, bounded on to the bridge as though she
had never done anything else all her life, and went straight up to
Fourgues, for all the world like Jeanne d’Arc before the Dauphin.
Fourgues made a face, and while she got off her little speech, assumed
the expression he wears before a head wind. That would have been enough
to silence me, but she went on and on! She begged, she smiled, and
finally, as Fourgues kept on saying nothing and examining her from top
to toe--but I could see his hands fidgeting behind his back as they do
when he is enjoying himself--she burst into sobs, sat down on her bag,
patted her eyes with a handkerchief the size of a nut, and kept saying
over and over:
“How unhappy I am! Oh, how unhappy I am!”
Well, Fourgues took off his cap, went over to her, put his hand under
her chin like a kind papa, and said:
“So it’s true, little girl, all this stuff that you have been telling
me? Well, you’re in luck--there’s an empty cabin! Go and wash your
face! I don’t want that fortunate husband of yours to think you are
ill!”
Old man, she fell on his neck and hugged him! Fourgues let her do it
and returned the favour. And then, tapping her on the cheek:
“It’s all right, little woman! I have a daughter of your age, and
I only hope she’ll do half as much when she is married. And now,
go and make yourself pretty and you can tell us all about it at
luncheon--twelve sharp.”
Well, old man, we had the most charming trip--lady’s weather, bright
sunlight, and that little woman radiating happiness from her hair to
her heels. Her little bag was a proper bag o’ mystery; out of it she
pulled ribbons, bits of lace, and all sorts of fal-lals, and when she
came out of Blangy’s cabin at noon, you would never have believed it
was the same person who had arrived in the morning with her hair coming
down, wearing a shabby dust-coat. How we laughed at table when she told
us her misadventures! Fourgues could hardly contain himself for joy.
She stayed on the bridge all the afternoon and I explained everything
to her--the compass, the charts, the signal lights, the handling of
the ship, and whatnot. She couldn’t have understood a thing, but she
smiled and nodded her head. If I had spoken Chinese to her, she would
still have smiled, she was so happy. That night at dinner, Fourgues
seized the occasion to give Villiers and me a sermon on love, in order
to encourage us to marry soon. Can’t you just hear him? He went through
the whole gamut. As far as I am concerned I didn’t need so much--I’m
only waiting for the chance. But Villiers tried to have him on and
interposed all sorts of objections. And then the little lady took a
hand and laid him out in five secs., and Villiers ended by confessing
himself beaten and begging her to find him someone who resembled her as
closely as possible. And so we were happy and on the best of terms. She
went to bed and slept a full fourteen hours. When the _Pamir_ reached
Bizerta, about ten o’clock in the morning, she came out of her cabin as
fresh as a rose, and by Jingo her sub-lieutenant of a husband must find
her more agreeable at night than a cutting wind in his face in ugly
weather! It happened that the _Pamir_ was sent to Sidi-Abdallah, right
where the _Bayard_ was in dry-dock, and that we anchored close to land.
“There is your ship, little girl,” said Fourgues, “and your husband is
on it. Greet him for me if you remember. And be assured nothing will
happen to him. With a little wife like you he is under a lucky star!”
She trotted off without waiting for anything more--fairly dancing--just
fluttering a good-bye with her finger-tips--except that she gave
Fourgues another hug.
You must forgive me for having told you all this. But you see on the
_Pamir_ we have so few distractions and it was worth more than all the
worries in the ports and the mooching around at sea. No doubt about it,
that little woman had nerve! If everybody had as much the war would
last six months less.
We had no time to find out what happened to her, for the _Pamir_ was
immediately packed off to Bilbao--still empty--which means that the
Government will have paid the owners a voyage from Salonica to Bilbao
for doing nothing. But that’s no business of ours, is it? We sail, we
carry out orders--even when there aren’t any!
So we stopped at Sidi-Abdallah two days, just time enough to provision,
and started for Bilbao, where the _Pamir_ was to get iron ore. The
voyage seemed rather dismal to all of us after the passage from Malta,
and we spent the time going over what she had told us. Fourgues says it
is stupid to forbid officers and men to telegraph where they are going.
If it’s because they are afraid of leaks in the telegraph offices, they
have only to employ people who are above suspicion, mobilize them, and
bind them to secrecy; whereas, especially on the foreign lines, they
still keep many who come from no one knows where and among whom there
are evidently spies. But the Naval authorities, instead of getting rid
of those who are no manner of use and who may let things out, prefer to
imprison sailors who get drunk because the sailors can’t move and can
be punished if they make any objection. That was the first point. He
then said that it was pretty tough that in the Navy no one gets regular
leave such as they have in the Army, and that it’s a good way to make
the sailors grumble. And then, what advantage is there in repairing
boats at Bizerta, where there is practically nothing in the way of a
plant and no spare parts, instead of sending them to Toulon? The route
to Bizerta and to Toulon is almost the same coming from the East and
there’s no saving of coal, while all the material for repairs and
refitting must be sent to Bizerta, as well as coal and everything else
necessitating the employment of a lot of boats which cost their weight
in gold like the _Pamir_. He says all this means delays of loading
at Toulon and unloading at Bizerta. Whereas, if the battleships and
cruisers went to Toulon, everything would be right there and at the end
of railroad and telegraph lines. What with one thing and another, this
little establishment must have cost some hundreds of millions without
a single battleship having gained a day, while not a little material
coming to it will have been sunk by submarines.
Speaking of submarines, we wish you would tell us how long they are
going to keep up that farce of having the big ships sail in broad
daylight on routes which are supposed to be secret but which all the
Germans know. That they should send the _Pamir_ and others of her class
out to be sunk is comprehensible, because officially, of course, there
is nothing to be feared from the submarine warfare; but battleships or
cruisers which cost fifty and sixty millions with a thousand men on
board--Fourgues thinks that’s a little too much. Here are his own words:
“It’s all very pretty,” he says, “to maintain that the German
submarines are a joke. But it would be better to take common-sense
precautions. I’m not a submarine officer, but I have seen several
such officers, and they say that at night they can’t see anything
through their periscopes and are obliged to navigate on the surface.
Consequently they are much less dangerous at night. So there’s
nothing to do but have the big war-vessels sail at night and hug the
coast in the daytime, or better, anchor in port, especially in the
Mediterranean, where there is no lack of coast or ports. The trips
would take a little longer, but surely it’s worth it to save fifty
millions of francs and a thousand men being sent to the bottom. It’s
the same for the transporting of troops and material. To start with, I
don’t understand why they make them start from Marseilles for Salonica,
instead of from Taranto or Brindisi, the Italians being our Allies.
That would make three or four days less on the water, that much less
risk, and not a few millions saved. But if at any price they must go
by sea, it’s a mystery to me why they don’t sail by day quite near
the Italian, African, or Greek coasts. In the first place, there is
less danger of being torpedoed, for the coasts are easier to patrol;
and then, in case of torpedoing, there would frequently be time to
beach the ship and she might be saved. The lifeboats would not be lost
either. They would make the coast and the crews would be saved. It’s
all childishly simple, but it would take the Devil himself to make
the responsible people understand that war is not peace. When it is
merely a matter of annoying one, the big bugs know well enough how to
say that ‘war is war!’ but when it’s a matter of doing something, they
prefer to cough up Forms and Forms and still more Forms! This submarine
business is going to cost them dear. But, you know, my boys, when the
ships begin to go down like ninepins, they’ll let up a yell and say
that the Boches are pirates; that everything had been done that could
be done, but no one knew they were as wicked as all that! Because the
public and the Members of Parliament are in total ignorance, the big
bugs will receive universal sympathy and will anoint themselves great
men--while the boats keep on going down. After a year we’ll be in an
unholy fix, to say nothing of the country having to tighten its belt
because there will be no way of feeding it--steel and everything else
short. The public will raise Cain, but as no one will really know how
it came about and the Censor will keep on choking off all those like
you and me who see what ought to be done, the submarines will clean us
out completely.”
When he once starts in, Fourgues fairly lets rip. But Villiers thinks
he is right and so do I, and sometimes we wonder if all these people
haven’t gone balmy. Well, who lives will learn and we can die but once.
If the _Pamir_ goes down and we go to Davy Jones’ locker, at least we
know whose fault it is.
We reached Bilbao after a bit of a shaking, from crossing in ballast
and because as we ran up the coast of Portugal, the weather was awful.
I will pass over the beastly trouble Fourgues had finding out where
and how to get his ore. It looks as though the representatives France
has here pass their time playing bridge instead of looking after their
business. They must have sent down fellows whose friends at court keep
them well out of danger and who prefer to have a good time at a safe
distance from the front, but who know as much about tramp-steamers and
materials as I do about the organ. And you should see how attentive
the Spaniards are to the Germans and to all the Germans do down here.
Practically the Boche is boss! The Huns know everything, see everything
that sails, and inform their ambassador at Madrid, who must direct at
least fifty thousand Boches with a nod of his head. There are Hun spies
everywhere, but we haven’t any anywhere. Good Lord, it’s lucky for us
that Germany’s geographical position in relation to the sea is what
it is--in a sort of blind alley! Only to see how she has succeeded in
making fools of us at the sea, at arm’s length, as it were, one can
be certain that if we were in her place and she in ours, we should
have been cleaned out long since and shouldn’t be getting an ounce of
merchandise from outside.
Almost everywhere, down here, there are wireless stations and spy
stations on the coast to inform the Boche submarines. They have only
to listen and then go straight for their object. Neither Fourgues nor
anyone else on board can understand the talk about stores of oil
which the Germans, according to French papers, are keeping in neutral
countries. They say that the Boches have supply-bases in Greece, Spain
and elsewhere, and that without these they could not work as they do.
That’s all sheer humbug. Every time anyone looks for these bases they
aren’t to be found--because there aren’t any. The Boches carry as much
as fifteen or twenty days’ supply in their submarines. People told
us that in Bilbao, as they did in Norway last year. Well, then, will
you tell me where they would need to get more? From Zeebrugge to the
Mediterranean doesn’t take twenty days, and in the Mediterranean they
have Pola and Cattaro, the Bulgarian coast and Constantinople, Syria,
the points of Tripoli which have been retaken by the Turks, and those
parts of Morocco that we haven’t got. No matter what they do, they are
never more than three or four days from a friendly base, so they don’t
need to go to the neutrals. We are making fools of ourselves, accusing
the neutrals of things of which they aren’t guilty and which can’t be
proved, when there are so many frightfully obvious things that we don’t
dare mention. All this would be a joke if it didn’t prolong the war,
but it will end by costing us dear.
Well, this time the _Pamir_ doesn’t sail empty--she has three thousand
tons of good ore which the Boches won’t get. We don’t know yet where we
are going, but we shall hardly leave before a week, the loading is so
slow.
And now, old man, shake hands! I hope we go to Bordeaux because at
Bordeaux there’s a train for La Rochelle. Good-bye.