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.