On the bridge my successor in the watch comes to replace me.
“Speed, twelve knots,” I say to him. “Route, to the south. We have passed the light at Bari. Range of the guns, fifteen hundred meters. Deflection, forty-four and fifty-six. Light wind from southwest. Storm continues on the whole horizon. Nothing in sight. A good watch to you!”
And I go down to my cabin. Perhaps after two hours of confession on paper, I shall find oblivion for this chaos in which my dreams are tossed. But I must sleep, for in six hours I stand watch again, and the folly of the mind must not be allowed to weaken the body.
3 November,
four o’clock in the afternoon.
Well, no! Sleep did not come this morning, and all these dreams came near ending in a fatal nightmare.
After a few hours of unquiet rest, I had to rise, make a hasty toilet, and swallow what food I could before resuming the lookout. In the middle of the day I found myself on the bridge I had left in darkness a few hours before. The sea was silvery in a bright sun. In a spreading line the three cruisers continued their course towards the southern end of the Adriatic. Behind us, almost invisible on the horizon, the smoke of the “naval army” made a black smudge. On board, everyone not on watch was taking a siesta, getting consolation in sleep for the disappointments of the preceding day. But dozens of eyes were watching this calmest of seas. Light mists, idle as the feathers of birds, moved here and there on the blue sea. A few thousand meters away the Ernest Renan followed a parallel course.
Suddenly in the streaks of foam appeared something whiter. My glass at once followed this wrinkle on the water; one would have said it was a jet of steam, glistening in the sunlight. I hesitated a few moments. Perhaps I had been deceived by the fin of a porpoise swimming at the surface. But the memory of drills during peace-times set before my eyes the wake of a periscope, and I hesitated no longer.
“On watch! To port! Range, eight hundred meters! Deflection, forty! The three engines ahead full ahead! Close the port stanchions! Open fire!”
The cruiser leaps. Below, the men on watch close the port stanchions. The volley of guns goes off, and the shells fall round that white moving spot. They burst like balls of snow on a blue wall. All the men wake from their siesta, the officers come on deck. At several meters from our hull passes the flaky line of a launched torpedo. It has missed us, but a big 194 shell, fired from one of our turrets, bursts just above the periscope, which rises, sinks, rises and sinks again, like a wounded animal which lifts itself and falls back. And then we see nothing more. The blue water shows only its usual indolence. From the Ernest Renan comes to us a burst of hurrahs across the air; they have seen the shell tear up the water, and have decided that the explosion destroyed the submarine.
We move rapidly, so rapidly that in a very few moments the cruiser is far away from the deadly spot. The guns turn and follow, ready to fire again, but nothing more appears.