It has to stop. If it shows any inclination to pursue its way, the first blank shot warns it not to play with fire. If it pretends not to hear this reprimand, a shell falls in its path to inform it that we are not joking. If it insists upon proceeding, a few shots straight at its hull assure it that the matter is becoming serious. It always stops in time.
The cruiser halts within range of the suspect. In an instant one of our long-boats has been lowered and its crew seizes the oars. An officer, armed with sword and revolver and carrying a big record-book, jumps into the boat, which puts off from our vessel. A sailor accompanies him. When the wind is rough and the sea choppy, the boat bounds, plunges and rolls on this passage which seems interminable; the seven sailors struggle with all their might at the oars; buckets of water drench the heads of officer and men; in a few minutes they are soaked through.
The long-boat accosts the steamer, from the rail of which hangs a rope ladder, sometimes merely a knotted rope. Why are they always too short? I don’t know. Anyway the officer, hampered by his sword and his register, and strangled in a uniform which was never meant for jumping, stretches out his arms and tries to grasp the ladder. But the swell rolls back and forth and tips the boat. As he approaches the ship, there is the ladder swaying two meters above him; as soon as he is high enough to seize it, the ship lurches off. It is like a skittish horse that refuses the mount. At these gymnastics the passengers and crew of the ship smile maliciously. The officer rages. He puts his sword between his teeth, his register between coat and shirt, waits for the least unfavorable moment, launches himself headlong—and grasps the ladder. For a few seconds he performs on this flying trapeze. A playful wave laps his knees, his hips, his chest. Recovering himself, he makes a few rungs, hoists himself up the slippery ropes, throws his leg over the rail, and at last puts his foot on the deck.
This adventure, thank heaven, is not always so unpleasant! Some visits seem like pleasant duties. But what has the bad winter weather in store for us?
It would be demanding superhuman virtue from the captains to expect them to like these visits on the high seas. We delay them, we bore them, and sometimes we turn them away from their route. Ordinarily they show us a very surly face; too polite a mien, on the other hand, is to be distrusted. The officer readjusts his disordered uniform, controls his ill-humor, assumes an impassive air, and gives a military salute.
“Captain,” he says, “have the kindness to show me your papers.”
This formula is pronounced in English, Spanish, Italian or French. Grammar sometimes suffers, but not all the world is polyglot. When the visiting officer has exhausted all his vocabularies without anyone’s understanding him, he contents himself with a gesture, reinforced by a contraction of his brows in the direction of his revolver. Thereupon intelligence comes to the most obtuse. A little procession forms. The captain looking important, the officer severe, the commissary obsequious, the sailor escort bringing up the rear; by means of the passage and stairs these four actors in the little drama reach the navigation room, where are kept the regulation papers. The more luxurious liners sometimes set a table with cigars and liqueurs in the first cabin. Such an attention arouses double suspicion.
The passengers line up along the deck. This episode makes a pleasant interruption in the monotony of the voyage, and gives their pacific minds a slight shuddering taste of the great war. Every man begins to feel like a hero, and to invent a tale which will astonish his future hearers. The men search the face of the French officer, but read little on this cold mask. The women, bolder, solicit his glances, his smile, press themselves on his attention. “Vive la France!” cries one. “He has a real revolver!” whispers another, shuddering. “Stop, officer, and let me photograph you!” begs a third.
The visiting officer does not reply, does not stop, but hastens on his mission. In his register he consults the original of all the documents he has warrant to verify; text, stamps, signatures are exactly reproduced, and not one word of the ship’s papers must differ from the original. If they are in Arabic, Norwegian or Japanese, the officer’s pencil compares them line by line. In curt phrases he approves or objects.
The civil status of the ship seems correct; its name, its country, its record, reveal nothing ambiguous. The captain is then questioned. Whence has he come, where is he going, and where has he stopped? What are the owners’ orders? The chart and the log, the dates and hours of calls at ports, certified by the official authorities, are all verified. The slightest inaccuracy requires explanations, proofs. In such times as these, all movements at sea must be above suspicion, and the least evasion renders one suspect. To help his captain the ship’s commissary bustles about, pours a glass of liqueur, uncorks a bottle of champagne, introduces a foaming glass between two incisive questions. But the French officer courteously waves aside these seductions.