“We will continue alone. We will not leave until daybreak. There is almost nothing left to unload.”
They did as they said! They did even better. How did they find means to increase their strength, to make up for the flight of the Montenegrins? They did not even think they had done a big thing, but at dawn the holds were empty, and on the wharf were heaped to the last one the bales that had been in their charge. Ah! the brave sailors!
9 February.
Long hours flow away. The January nights seem eternal when one has to live them wide awake. But at last the sky pales in the East, the lights of Cattaro sink into the grayness and a sharper cold revives the watchers a little. It is dawn.
Empty or not, the cargo-boat casts off its hawsers, and as clumsily as it entered the night before, it leaves in the morning. On the wharf are heaped the supplies for Montenegro; more will be brought in a few days. The stevedores go back to the destroyers, and exchange their night’s fatigue for that of the engines and the work of navigating the ship. The procession forms again in the mist, and goes down the coast of Albania in good shape. Without ballast, the cargo-boat dances in the midst of the convoys like a cork. At a great distance the cruisers continue their proud vigil until all this little company is out of harm’s way. Then they feed their fires, stretch their legs, and limber up with a little gallop as far as their Ionian sectors.
Or else between sunrise and twilight, they coal in some hidden bay. And if chance favors them, they receive letters, and bundles of papers which have wandered in pursuit of them over the vast sea. Although it has left France so many weeks ago, and is already old, and made stale by events, the news is read and commented upon with passion.
The sailors are not turned aside from the great drama by any mediocre or banal concerns. Among all the people of the world, it is they who vibrate most strongly to all the joys and troubles of France. Their clear vision, free from passion, judges calmly the conflict of the two parties. Better than anyone, thanks to the patience of their pilgrimages, they discern in the future the reasons for victory and the heavy ordeal of attaining it.
Bent on their secret task, they do not heed the dazzlement of victories. They know that their collaboration, decisive as it is, will be effaced by the future prowess of the soldiers. The gunfire, the charges, the final drama for which the land will be the theater, will relegate their silent labor to oblivion. But to overthrow Germany both will be needed, and the glorious army can hold out a grateful hand to the Navy.
Already our fleets are closing the doors of the world upon our enemies, and keeping them wide open for the resources that will feed our victory. As yet it is nothing; but hour by hour we forge a new lock. When Germany and her allies, foaming with rage in the prison to which our ships are the bars, suffer the tortures of famine; when the one hundred and ten millions of Germans, howling at death’s door, demand pity, and beg a bit of bread, when this menagerie tears itself to pieces in the struggle for food; when revolt, insurrection, and the frenzy of civil war shake to its foundations this manufactory of murder; then, Russia, England and France will let loose their bulldogs and their tamers. From their bridges the marines will hear the footsteps of the soldiers’ charge and the barkings of their 75’s. Their hearts will leap with joy, and, gazing at the sea, the companion of evil days and luminous sunrises, they will say to her: “It is we two together who have made it possible for all this to happen.”
Why does my vision wander to those happy days, our recompense? Is it because of the contrasting melancholy of winter? Or else, have I not been conducted thither by a natural path, through the letters of comrades, the illustrious marine fusiliers in Belgium? Since their wounds have got better through hospital treatment and convalescence, they have commenced writing again. Nearly all my friends over there are dead. Those who remain describe in simple language the trip to Antwerp, the return in the horror of the conflict, the resistance so savage that our enemies will never acknowledge that it was this handful of brave men who blocked their rush. History will reward these officers, these sailor-soldiers whom we knew on the deck of the men-of-war. Where they have been, we should all like to have fought. The entire “naval army” is jealous of this naval brigade. Exiled from the sea, they were acquainted with the cyclones of the struggle. Separated from the hurricanes at sea, they did not lower their heads before the mysterious thunderstorms of the Yser and Flanders. They paid the price of their courage in a terrific hecatomb; the barrier where the German invasion was stopped is built on blue collars and red pompons.