To chase away these evil impressions we go to talk with the Captain and the officers of the collier. They come from Cardiff or from Newcastle, are familiar with the ports of England and France, have seen our French comrades and the British fleets; they bring us news of the vast world. We listen to them eagerly. They too belong to the great fraternity of navigators, and the tales they tell us are like the Odyssey we live. Up there, far up, between Norway and Scotland, the English cruisers are keeping indefatigable watch, and they are less fortunate than we. For there the sea is sinister. Around England, without pause or respite, in terrible storms, the Allied destroyers prowl everywhere. Covered with spray, laboring through the fog, they contend with the sea without meeting any other enemy; and the fleet of Admiral Jellicoe dances attendance like our own “naval army!” Ignominious and cowardly, the German enemy hides himself, just as here the Austrian burrows away. The proud descendants of Nelson await a new Trafalgar, and to them the prudence of the Germans opposes only hidden enemies, the submarines. As for our French brothers, the destroyers and Atlantic cruisers, they journey from Calais to Brest without adventure; convoyers of transports, policemen of the waves—customs-officers of contraband, they do not experience the excitements of the Adriatic hunts. Their task, more obscure than ours, is also more ungrateful. And since the happiness of man is measured by the unhappiness of others, we are happy in the Adriatic in spite of our disillusion and our exile.
But the day passes. The Captain of the collier offers us the latest papers, we give him the last wireless messages, and we must separate. Whether or not the coaling is ended, the cruiser never stands still during the night. We cast off the hawser, the screws turn; the crew, black with coaldust, go to rest their weary limbs after the crushing toil of the boilers, the engines, and the watch. And during the rest of the night the cruiser makes a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles. It matters not whether the sea is calm or disturbed, the sky clear or rainy. Men and officers observe the same vigilance as they did yesterday and will to-morrow; every boat that is sighted is chased, stopped, visited; one takes no account of weariness or sleep. One goes steadily on, always steadily on.
And if the thousand or twelve hundred tons necessary are not taken on in a single day, we return next day to the collier. The rendezvous is not at the same place, but in quite a distant roadstead or bay, for fear that the enemy, forewarned, will send us a submarine while we are practically helpless. In all haste we finish emptying the coal; the holds are full to the jaws, the sailors take courage and forget their weariness in a supreme effort. We fortify ourselves again for eight or ten days, for the excitements of the Adriatic, the dangers of the sea and the torpedoes.
Everything is impregnated with coal. There is no barrier or filter against this microbe. Bathing in floods of water, brushing and scraping does not chase it from its lairs. In our food our teeth encounter crunching lumps; our hair is tarnished with a black cosmetic; and the folds of our whitest linen conceal little hoards of soot. Our whitest linen! Is there a world where they know the pleasure of immaculate shirts? Of handkerchiefs pure as snow? When we set out, each one of us took along only what was strictly necessary. Our boxes are few, and in a day we soil more than in a week of peace. Where are the washes of other days? where the polite laundresses of the ports, who washed the linen and cambric in twenty-four hours? Our cruises last eight or nine weeks.
How many times already I have washed in my basin two handkerchiefs and a shirt so covered with coaldust that the white places spotted it! Like all my comrades I have a sailor at my service. But he is a good gunner, who only looks after me when his duties do not call him elsewhere. Every day he has ten hours of lookout and three or four of preparation of materials. Must he not sleep and eat? When he is free, I try to take a few hours of broken rest on my bunk, and he respects my sleep. When my cabin is empty, he is watching behind his gun. Each one of us washes what he can. The soft water we use does not come from clear fountains, but from the boiler tubes which distil the sea-water; it stands in great metal casks, it is filled with rust and retains the color of it. In vain we throw in soap and borax; the washed linen turns yellow as if powdered with mustard, and it is never quite dry. The falling rains, the smoke which sweeps the deck, do not permit hanging it outdoors. In my cabin my gunner has stretched two strings between the port hole and the moulding above my bunk, and up there the linen dries as well as it can. Sometimes, while I sleep or work, an idle drop falls on my face or my paper; other times the constant vibration of the cruiser throws the linen to the coal-stained linoleum, and the whole thing has to be done over again. In the “naval army,” as in the trenches, nothing is clean but the wind.
As in the trenches, too, we try to kill time, which lags so terribly. The study of the military map is misleading; we are accustomed, as each communiqué is received by wireless, to stick flags on the Western and Eastern fronts. The pins change every day by a quarter or a tenth of a millimeter; they have made so many holes in the paper that one can no longer read the names, and we have given up taking them out. Bundles of papers arrive in each mail, are quickly read and thrown aside; they feed neither our conversation nor our reveries. We brought no books from France because we thought them superfluous in a short war, and those we have ordered for these interminable cruises have not yet come. Letters are quickly written when one has nothing much to say and the censor forbids details.
What have we to do except play? Some spend their hours off in Patience; it is all one to them whether the combinations come out or not. Others bend over the chess-board, or become absorbed in bridge. But these are unusual kinds of chess and bridge; no one ever has time to finish a game. The service, the watch, meals, the time for sleeping, interrupt you; you leave the chess game or the rubber where it is, and another officer takes your place. A game commenced with certain partners ends with a completely new set. Winning or losing does not matter; one has time only to kill, and must think of nothing else.
Adriatic Sea, 16 November.
For several weeks now the monotony of our vagabondage has been broken by a pleasing distraction—divine service celebrated every Sunday. For the duration of the war the Government has appointed on every admiral’s ship and every hospital ship a volunteer chaplain. Ours arrived the middle of October. His name is Mgr. Bolo.
Without regret he has left his care of feminine souls, his delightful home in Touraine, and has sought the hard life of the sailors. After a long voyage he appeared at some bay in the Ionian Isles where we were coaling, and climbed the iron ladder of our ship in the thick of the rain and soot. For several days, while he was bewildered by the mazes of the cruiser, or breathless in his stifling cabin, he might have wondered into what world he had got. But a serene soul dwelt in his athletic body; he quickly got over his confusion, and in order to preach better to the sailors, he wanted to learn their trade.