IN THE IONIAN SEA
_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._
The _Waldeck-Rousseau_ has left the Albanian waters and reached its
cruising sector. The Ionian Sea is divided into rectangles of vast
extent, each one of which represents the territory of a cruiser. There
she patrols for several days, reaches the next sector, and so on until
she comes near land. Then she coals in all possible haste, goes to the
farthest rectangle and begins all over again. Our post for the day is
far in the west near the strait of Messina, at the end of the Italian
boot, and we do not reach it before twilight. We take a route outside
the cruising zones.
Two masts and four smokestacks rise on the horizon like a play
of shadows. It is the _Gambetta_ prowling about. She sights us,
approaches swiftly, assures herself that we are friends, turns back and
disappears. For several hours we see nothing but the surge of water and
the clouds of shifting slate. And then the _Michelet_ looms up in her
turn, having just recognized us. We profit by this proximity to perform
a telemetric exercise. In the course of this exercise the two cruisers
execute a hundred movements which bring them together, and separate
them, by anywhere from five to fifteen thousand meters; the gunners
at their places, the telemetrists at the measuring apparatus, at the
proper moment note the distances. Ships which meet by chance do not
fail to indulge in this practice. A signal rises to mark the end of the
exercise.
The _Michelet_ returns to its patrol, and we push towards the west. By
evening a great wall bars our horizon. Later a light gleams out with
a pale track across the water. The lighthouse is called Rizzutto, and
shines at the base of the Calabrian mountains. If the weather were more
favorable we could see the summit of Etna in a clear atmosphere. Its
beautiful outline would make us forget the proud heights of Albania,
in front of which, this morning, we parted from the _Gay-Lussac_. But
the sailor must be satisfied with a gloomy evening and a sullen sea;
his only friend at night will be the light of Rizzutto, which we shall
lose and find again as we move towards the offing or towards the coast.
We have another companion in the wind, which whistles itself out of
breath, perhaps for fear we should think it asleep.
Early in the night, as the cruiser nears Calabria, a sort of luminous
halo plays over the land. We recognize the aureole of a town. Over
there, human beings are at rest, or amusing themselves, or talking
pleasantly before sleeping. Here, dressed in leather and rubber, the
sailors struggle with the gale and defy shadows in which danger may
lurk. This contrast haunts the minds of the lookouts. Are they happy in
their sentry duty in the rain? Do they envy the Italians sheltered in
their peaceful homes? The two ideas alternate, and in order the better
to curse the Calabrians who are giving them not so much as a thought,
the sailors look for the name of this troublesome town on the map.
It is called Crotona. In the days when Rome was weak and Athens
powerful, she waged repeated and bitter war against her rival Sybaris.
Softened by too much luxury, the Sybarites could not defend themselves
against their powerful enemies, and Crotona, after effacing her
voluptuous enemy from the world, survived throughout the centuries to
show the light of her lamps this night to some passing French sailors.
Have we not a right, we officers, companions of the darkness, guardians
of a crew of gallant men--have we not the right to send our dreams
across the war to the regions of antiquity? The carefree Sybarites left
a name which serves only for jesting. The map is almost ignorant of the
exact places where they ignominiously disappeared, and the pick of the
excavator exhumes only chalky debris. The people of Crotona bequeathed
the future to proud descendants, because the sweetness of life did not
make them disdain war. A stern lesson which we repeat in the biting
north wind and the rolling waves; a parallel which forces itself upon
one in these hours when France gathers herself together against the
barbarians. But I have no doubts about her. The men of the _Gay-Lussac_
who went this morning towards Cattaro, the men of the _Curie_, who were
stopped by the glorious net at Pola, the men of the “naval army” who
since August have lived in company with hardship, the men who freeze
in the trenches of Artois and the Vosges, the men who have fallen on
the plains of Flanders and Champagne--these men will not play before
posterity the rôle of Sybarites.
_25 February._
Like feudal barons, who lance in hand ride over their empty manors
ruined by war, the cruisers traverse a lifeless waste. During the slow
succession of days, they are glad to sight, by chance, the stacks of
their companions of the patrol. As she comes to the boundaries of her
rectangle, the sister ship seems to give us a nod and a good-day.
Suddenly our world is alive again. Our thoughts are directed toward
our neighbor, and her’s toward us. Whether it is the _Renan_, the
_Quinet_, the _Gambetta_, or an entirely different one, we follow her
and accompany her movements; the sailors abandon their work and their
reveries for this reality which wavers before them.
“She is approaching!”
“I see her bridge!”
“Look, the forestack is pouring out black smoke. They are stoking up
the fires!”
“Ah! She is coming on the left. Her masts are passing one after the
other.”
“Are we not a good twenty-two thousand meters away?”
“She is farther away. Do you still see her masts?”
“Yes! No! Yes! No! No more.”
The cruiser vanishes and our world becomes empty again. This lasts a
day or a week. Sometimes between two clearings of the weather some
darker spot appears in the distance, cloud or mountain, cliff or play
of the clearing storm, no one can say. But the mechanics and the
stokers, the hidden hosts of the depths, who come on deck between two
watches ask curiously in the darkness:
“What do we see over there?”
The gunners and seamen, with a grand manner, repeat the scraps of
officers’ talk they have overheard and remembered. They announce the
oracle: “It is Epirus;” “it is Apulia;” “it is the Peloponnesus;” “it
is Albania;” “it is Etna;” “it is nothing at all; we are a hundred
miles from land.” The baffled men store up these complicated names, and
in the next letter to their fathers or to some women in the country,
each will write them down painfully; the strange words will carry to
French cottages the echo of our geographical Odyssey. I should like to
know the impressions made by these sonorous names, full of dignity,
but without meaning to the ignorant. What do our brave sailors see
in this fresco of coasts which we never approach? They are like the
imaginary forms created in sleep; wavering, rising, disappearing on the
borders of the horizon, they pass like Edens where we shall never land.
The cruiser goes and comes on its rectangle of water, and while the
officers strive to guess the meaning of this formless nothingness that
emerges from the rain, the sailors pursue their dreams, the rain falls
or is blown away in the caprices of the gale.
Yes, we pay to the hilt the ransoms for our patrolling! Nothing moves
on the sea any more that carries an enemy flag. Nothing suspect
approaches us. Masters of the seas, we have made it a desert for those
who do not work for our side. If I dared, I should say that we have
done our task too well, for everything which our country gains through
our vigilance, we lose in boredom. The days of visits and searches is
over; even these small distractions have fled from our daily labors. If
there are contrabandists, they stick like woodlice to neutral shores,
and carry to Austria or Turkey, at the price of increasing risks, the
precious goods which become rarer every day. Their detours are long
and laborious, but we cannot harass them so long as they frequent the
territorial waters. Sensitive to their sovereign rights, Greece and
Italy, by the regulations of war, do not permit us to approach their
coasts; we are condemned to remain in the offing which our persistent
surveillance has devastated. Doubtless Austrian submarines are moving
under the waves. The hour for one of us will perhaps strike. Woe to the
ship that becomes careless through lassitude!
But at least, on the great routes from Gibraltar to Suez or Saloniki
the English and French transports are sailing without impediment.
Formerly their fleet moved westward carrying to Marseilles or the
Atlantic ports the men and products of the East. But for several weeks,
since the entry of the Turks into the war, a second route has been
established and is more frequented every day. Bases of operations are
being installed in the Ægean Sea, in the Greek Islands; naval forces
are assembling there; a few detached cruisers watch the coasts of Syria
and Asia Minor; and multitudes of active troops are congregating down
there.
_2 February._
All these movements go on in silence, the silence that is the proper
preparation for enterprises of war. The world does not yet suspect
what is going on; its ears have not heard those names which, unknown
to-day, will before long become famous. But the sailors pursue the
task, and their souls quiver with joyous anticipation of these military
glories in the East.
Sometimes, from a cloud charged with lightning, there is slowly
detached a massive shred, that one can scarcely distinguish as it
glides upward to some clear portion of the sky. The cloud swells,
extends and forms into a new storm which rages, far away from the
clouds which engendered it. Thus, born from the European War, a new
war is in secret ferment; before the thunderbolts fall on the lands
of Islam, we are preparing them in the mysterious and silent seas. We
are acquainted with the daily effort, the cautious approach of the
Allies, the legions of gallant men who caress their guns during the
long Mediterranean crossing. But we take no pride in this knowledge. We
expect to go on protecting the march of the soldiers towards glory. And
we hope for the supreme joy of sharing their risks, hand in hand, so to
speak, they on land, and we on the restless element of the sea.
At present the seventh week of our pilgrimage is closing in hail and
frost. Since our trip to Malta, before Christmas, we have experienced
all the evil moods of the weather, which grows angrier and angrier. At
night, one falls and hurts oneself on the sleet-covered steel decks, as
on a hard mirror invisible and yet in motion.
_5 February._
Like seed thrown by some terrible hand, the hailstones bounce on the
cruiser, which rings like a tambourine; and the sea, whipped up by
these projectiles from the sky, makes a noise like a boiling liquid.
The organ of the winds harasses our watches. Dismal and raucous, they
stride breathlessly over the miles of water; their rage vents itself
on the ship, and on our bodies, in icy handfuls of spray; when they
strike against the cordage and metallic structures, they whistle and
sing like evil geniuses filled with mirth. We know the harmony of each
cord, of each halyard, of each cable, as they vibrate above our heads.
Whether short or long, thick or thin, made of hemp or twisted steel,
they have their share in the tireless orchestra. Certain ones give
out in the north wind a clear and joyous sound, like a fife, bagpipe
or flute. Others, melancholy strains like cellos and oboes, reminding
one of the bells of one’s native village, of beloved distant voices,
of all the sweetness of France to one forlorn in nights of exile. But
the hollow, tolling notes that are thrown from the heavy, wet cordage,
sound a perpetual knell that is heard above everything. If one stops
one’s ears, their sinister bass penetrates one’s fingers and head. They
are always there. They are triumphant. To the cold of the body they add
the chill of the soul.
_6 February._
Montenegro is dying of hunger. From the top of its barren mountains its
people can see the Adriatic, and imagine the prosperous lands in the
distance, Africa and Italy and their crops. Towards these bountiful
harvests they stretch their appeals and their greedy hands; but famine,
following war, is devastating their homes.
Despite her own agony, France does not suspect into what horrors the
present tragedy can plunge the peoples who are cut off from the world.
In Paris and in the provinces there is food, and subsistence. Whatever
the price, meat and bread can be bought at the butcher’s and baker’s.
Montenegro has nothing. Walled up in a dungeon, its women and its
soldiers scatter to the four winds appeals which do not feed them.
From the north, Austria is waging against it that same campaign of
devastation which she began against the Serbs. To the south, Albania,
that courtesan of pillage; only waits the command to throw her bands
into Cettinje. To the East, Serbia, hemmed in, remains alive only by a
tenacity which will amaze the future. And, finally, towards the West,
the sea, closed to the nations without navies, leaves deserted the
harbors of Montenegro, and empties her granaries.
In spite of that, she does not hesitate. At the first insults hurled
against her by her Slavic cousins, each man took his cartridges, wound
around his legs the puttees of war, and went to the frontiers to fight
in defense of honor. If I had not forbidden myself to inscribe here
events which have nothing to do with the Navy, I should tell of this
drama of skirmishes, raids, night assassinations, in which a handful
of mountaineers, without arsenals or foundries or commissary supplies,
or routes or guns, renews every week, against the immense armies of
Austria, the exploits of Leonidas against Xerxes.
But this perseverance, invincible to the attacks of men, has to yield
to the sufferings of the body. To conserve energy in his muscles,
precision in his eyes, firmness in his will, the Montenegrin has to
have food. They call for help. Since snow and mud have taken possession
of their kingdom, Prince Nicholas and his ministers send out wireless
messages of supplication. Smothering their invincible pride and the
shame of yielding to hunger, they tell us every day the story of their
distress. Just now, in some district that had been bombarded by heavy
artillery, the storehouses were burned, and the meager provisions of
a year destroyed. Another day, Croatians and Bosnians, pursued by the
Austrian butchers, took refuge in ruined Montenegro; as gifts they
brought only their hate and their hunger.
Nevertheless, this little agrarian population opened their arms, and
for these people without a country they deprived themselves of a pinch
of wheat from their own pittance. Our wireless poles receive a new
story of distress every moment; the children are dying, the soldiers
have no more shoes, the cartridge boxes are empty, and the mules are
dying along the roads where they find nothing to eat but snow.
Who will feed these unfortunates unless it be generous France? For
months the “naval army” has supplied Montenegro. In the Ionian Sea
cargo-boats come to get orders from the Commander-in-Chief, and then go
to the ports of Antivari or Medua. They bring wheat, corn, equipment,
munitions, and empty them in haste on the wharves, fearful of these
dangerous waters.
These are enterprises for contrabandists and pirates. The Austrians
know our least movement, spy upon the arrival of our cargo-boat; and
their submarines, and aviators, and destroyers, make any unloading by
day impossible. Everything has to be done at night, between the setting
and the rising of one sun.
Far from the coasts a squadron ascends the Adriatic. It is composed of
a precious battleship, some destroyers and large cruisers. We keep a
careful lookout, for the enemy lies in wait. At the fall of evening,
the squadron arrives off port; the cargo-boat and the destroyers turn
aside; the cruisers push farther north towards the approaches of
Cattaro, in order to prevent the first attack. At a little distance
from the roadstead where they unload, a line of destroyers cruises
about all night, ready to repulse any sudden attacks. In the harbor
itself are anchored one or two other destroyers, motionless sentinels
of the affair. The cargo-boat approaches the wharf.
There is nothing to be seen. The rain, wind and hail fall in avalanches
from the icy heights. We must not show a light. Montenegrin soldiers
try to offer their assistance, but they know little about delicate
maneuvering, and in the darkness they get in the way. Somehow or other
the commander of the cargo-boat manages to get it alongside the wooden
jetty; he strikes it, tears his hull, breaks the hawser, swears and
storms. The sailors of the destroyers come to help; they find their way
to the wharf in small boats. With agile fingers and feet they grip the
uprights, take hold of the cables and gropingly make them fast. The
boat clings tight to the quay, and immediately a stream of sacks, cases
and bales pours out. The Montenegrin soldiers come up, seize the black
things in the darkness, drag them up the bank, run, stumble, fall. One
must work quickly and keep silent. Up above, the camps and the huts are
waiting.
But a noise in the air makes us prick up our ears. It comes from the
north, a droning which is louder than the wind. It grows, and intrudes
itself into the darkness like a sonorous wail. Another sound, duller,
from farther off, accompanies it and draws near. Others follow, like
dark wasps. These are the aviators from Cattaro. The sound of their
flight rolls in the air above the harbor, diminishes and descends,
makes a circle about the wharf, diminishes and descends again, directly
above the cargo-boat. The target is indicated by the heavy sound of the
bales and the hurried steps. A shower of bombs falls.
It is impossible to respond. The Montenegrin coast is not organized
against aviators. The projectors that one could light on board would
only draw the shots with greater precision; the crews, handicapped,
occupied with the unloading, cannot fire guns or cannon. On the wharf,
in the water, on the deck of the boat, the bombs burst, setting fire to
the woodwork and the cases, mixing with the storm a suffocating smoke.
Terrified by this unaccustomed enemy, the Montenegrin soldiers grow
slack; the sailors, however, pursue their perilous task humming a song.
Sometimes a shell falls into the hold which is being emptied. If it
bursts, some men are mowed down; if it rests harmlessly on the piles
of sacks, hands seek it in the dark, seize it, throw it into the
water, and the work continues. Exhausted by past watches, the crews
work through this night without losing a second, and find means to
stow neatly the sacks which will be of no use to them. No matter which
destroyers and cargo-boats take part, the same business goes on at the
wharves of Antivari and Medua every three or four nights.
While this is going on, the destroyers maintain a defense at the
opening of the bays. The hearts of the men are anxious when they hear
the fall and see the bursting of the bombs over their toiling friends.
But their own turn is not long delayed. Before returning to Cattaro the
airmen do not hesitate to drop their visiting cards on the sentinel
squadron. But for fear of betraying their position, the latter do not
reply. At their post on the sea, wiping the spray from their faces, the
sailors hear the descent of the bombs, screaming in the north wind, and
keep their spirits equally high whether the shells touch or miss the
mark.
_8 February._
Further out, further north, the cruisers scout between Cattaro and the
menaced harbors. Towards the end of one of their Ionian cruises, the
Commander-in-Chief designates them in succession for this work; they do
not care for these expeditions in which there are blows to receive, but
none to give.
For from beginning to end of these voyages to succor Montenegro danger
is present. Every time the cruisers ascend the Adriatic, they meet with
mines set loose by the Austrians, which trail adrift, like evil beasts
too lazy to run after their prey. On our last cruise the _Waldeck_
and her comrade saw several, though the brown speck is scarcely
distinguishable upon the blue carpet of the waves. We approached them
at a respectful distance, for fear they might be bound together like
beads, and that other mines, invisible, would hit us as we passed. We
demolished them with gunfire, without halting; they burst and sank,
throwing off an inoffensive sheaf of yellow smoke. But what will happen
to the ship that strikes one of them in the thick of the darkness,
where one sees nothing?