After a few hours of unquiet dozing I arose, made a summary toilet,
ate I know not what food, swallowed hastily, before going on watch.
In the middle of the day I found myself on the bridge again. A bright
sun was silvering the distance. The three cruisers, deployed in loose
order, continued their course toward the south of the Adriatic;
behind, almost invisible, the smoke of the naval forces formed a black
mane on the horizon. On board, every one who was not on duty was
enjoying a siesta. Every one was finding consolation in dreams for
the disappointments of the day before, but a few scores of eyes were
watching the very calm sea. The _Ernest-Renan_, a few thousand yards
away, was following a parallel course.
Something very white suddenly appeared in the furrows of foam. My
binocular immediately followed this wrinkle on the water; you would
have said a jet of steam, slipping along just under the surface. For a
few seconds I hesitated. Perhaps the fin of a porpoise swimming close
to the top deceived me. The remembrance of training in peace times
brought back to my memory the track of a periscope, and I hesitated no
longer.
"Quick! All on the left! Raise to eight hundred meters! Declination,
forty! All engines at full speed ahead! Close the bulkheads! Begin
firing!"
The cruiser bounds. In the hold the men of the watch close the
bulkheads. The artillery fires. The shells fall around the white,
moving streak. They burst like balls of dry snow on a blue wall. All
the men, awakened from their siesta, all the officers come up on
deck. A few meters from our hull passes the fleecy track of a torpedo
launched against us. It has missed us, but a big 194 shell (7¾ inch),
fired from one of our turrets bursts immediately above the periscope.
It plows the water and splashes it up in the air; the stem of the
periscope rises, falls, rises again, falls again, as a wounded animal
tries to stand and falls again. Then nothing more is seen. The blue
waves show only their habitual indolence. Across the void a storm of
cheers comes to us from the _Ernest-Renan_; they have seen the shell
tearing up the water, and they are certain that the explosions have
crushed in the submarine.
We are going fast, so fast that in a few seconds the cruiser is far
from the place of death. The guns turn and follow it, ready to fire
again, but nothing shows any more.
"Cease firing! As you were! Open the bulkheads! Resume your course!
Engines at sixty revolutions!"