The night falls. Up among the islands, enveloped in mist, the Austrians can observe our contemptuous evolutions and our dignified departure. Not one of our movements displays any disquietude. Let this sorry enemy dare to rouse us, and they will find, at any hour of day and night, something to talk about! But we are learning to know them. Lazily the battleships and destroyers spread over the broad surface of the Adriatic and begin their majestic descent. This morning the cruisers were to northwards, in the vanguard. This evening they are deployed to the south, where their vigilance will win them some consolation for the afternoon.
Off Bari, 3 November;
four o’clock in the morning.
Thank God, I was on watch during the dark hours of the night. I should never have been able to abandon myself to sleep. For the disappointment of yesterday left me full of an exaltation there was no real battle to exhaust, and a thousand disconnected ideas raced through my brain. Even yet, after four hours of watching disturbed by alarms, I cannot find an instant of repose on my bed. I rise and come to talk with the confidante who is always ready, this notebook, which has received the confession of all my moods. Perhaps after this one-sided conversation my mind will become calmer and forget itself in sleep. But I am not sure. For we do not really know how to put ourselves to sleep.
I envy the soldiers on the solid land, confronting an enemy present before them. Whether he hides or reveals himself, the conflict is not slow in coming. They rush forward, they sing and shout; they thrust out their bayonets, they bite, and trample with their feet. At the moment of killing it is delicious to become a beast, to think no longer, to dry with a single gesture the sweat from one’s brow, and the blood from one’s wounds. But the sailors spend their energies in a long silent waiting. The more active they are, the more profound is their silence. The nearness of death makes them machines of precision.
I envy the soldiers who salute while charging their fallen enemy. They have seen him coming. Their short duel ends either in the intoxication of victory or the repose of death. Our long journeys are furtive steps in a temple of phantoms. Those who want to slay us crawl in the heart of liquid shadows. Those who defy us refuse an encounter, and entice us into the snares of the sea.
Night lags on the Adriatic. Nothing seems to live except our dreams. With elbows on the rail, eyes lost in the vastness, the officers of the cruisers keep somber and silent. Near their guns, motionless as statues sculptured out of shadow, the gunners watch in vain, and reflect on the disappointments of yesterday. In the distance there is a splendid thunderstorm. Forks of light leap from Italy to Austria; not a thunder peal echoes, but the air is alternately vivid and dark. The lightning comes and goes ceaselessly, like the winking of an electric giant. Black and white, white and black, the Waldeck-Rousseau glides through a gleaming sea. Are there enemies about us? Is the sea safe? How can our eyes tell, as they pass from an illumination whiter than the sun into an opaqueness blacker than nothingness? Every electric shock jangles the strings of our taut nerves. A reflection on the water takes the form of a destroyer; the straight path of the lightning shoots like a rocket of the enemy; the shadow has the thickness, the consistency, and almost the odor of smoke from a hostile ship.
O demons of the atmosphere, how you play with the sailors! Over there, towards the north, the watchers on the battleships have felt their hearts expand and contract with each of your shining caprices. But even greater is the disquietude of the cruisers who precede and protect the squadrons. Yesterday Austria saw us. In a grand gesture she refused us battle. To-night we feel it coming, we are sure of it. She has despatched her atrocious submarines. They blockade the Adriatic and watch for us. When shall we fall into their claws? In a minute, an hour, a day? We are illuminated like specters by every flash, but they are buried in the black waves. Both the cruisers and the battleships who trust themselves to our vigilance are lost in an ocean of illusion.
Early in the morning an ensign translates a wireless from Malta. By way of numberless cables this message brings news from the Pacific. Under the massive shadows of the Cordilleras of the Andes, three English cruisers were swallowed up in the Chilean twilight. They fought against stronger vessels, but the German guns a eu raison de leur valeur. Twelve years ago, from the height of the American peaks, I had looked over the infinite expanse where this passage at arms took place. A few years ago, during a cruise to China, I had visited these same British vessels. I remember their appearance; faces that smiled at me then are now, no doubt, sleeping over there on the threshold of the madrepores; fingers which pressed mine are twisting the dark sea-weed, the sailor’s shroud. I envy those ships. I envy the dead of the battle of Coronel. A few weeks later, we shall know the details of their glorious end, but from now on I shall envy them, for they have fulfilled their destiny. It was not vainly that their torn flag shone in the sun. They struck, they perished, their eyes have carried with them into the deep the vision of battle; their death transmits a heritage of vengeance to which all British sailors are the heirs.
Why does fate give us in the Adriatic a felon enemy that only runs away? Certainly I hate the Germans; but at least you find them when you look for them. Whereas to draw from the depths of the sea the only adversaries that Austria sends against us we should need picks and rakes. Our magazines are full, our engines are quivering, our guns thrust out their jaws, but all that crawls in the Adriatic desert is the submarine.