Au Revoir!
Eve of departure, 5 September.
The crew and staff of the Waldeck-Rousseau are stirring to snatch a day, an hour, from the delay of her departure; already we have gained two weeks.
Stretched on its granite rests, the cruiser resembles some metal giant harnessed with machinery. With a great pounding of hammers, the cohorts of expert workmen are putting life into the great hull. Each day the Depot sends us marine reservists, with instructions as to the posts and offices where they are to labor and to fight. A thousand men are assembled now, and the engineers have given the ship over to us.
Shining and new she floats. Like a thoroughbred that after a sickness breaks her own record, the good cruiser has gained some tenths of a mile on her old speed. The steam runs freely in her arteries, the electricity through her nerves. From bow to stern a hundred and fifty meters of steel are aquiver. Off the Hyeres Islands, on a fine August day, the voice of her guns, so many months silenced, resounds again in celebration of her recovery. Woe to anyone who passes within ten kilometers of our cannon!
From hour to hour, little by little, officers and men extend their control of the vessel, and get better acquainted with her mazes. As their skill becomes surer, they adapt themselves to the particular moods of the ship, and to her caprices, which can only be mastered with prudence and with affection.
Our crew, an amorphous crowd collected at random from the four quarters of France, had lost that sense of discipline and responsibility which the humblest of sailors should have. We have had to drill them, direct their discordant forces, and make them a living being animated by a will. Each one in his place now applies his intelligence and his strength to his special task, and tries to get himself into trim. Time presses. In a few days we have put new life into the great torpid cruiser. After a few hours we shall depart, nor shall we cut the figure of poor relations or of cripples in the “naval army.”
Thank heaven, the decisive action has held off. We dread the telegram announcing an encounter of the fleets; but it has not yet come. Opening the chapter of Mediterranean events, the Breslau and the Goeben, German cruisers, have attacked Algerian ports, and fled towards the Dardanelles, where a miracle has turned them into Turks. Here is game for a later time. In the middle of August the French navy has sunk the Zepta, a small Austrian cruiser. But that’s a minor affair. We shall arrive in time.
On certain evenings we go to sleep on land. Friend of those who frequent her, the sea is execrated by the women who live on her shores; their mourning is harsh and bitter. War adds tenfold to their anxieties. Our comrades who left at the beginning of August suffered an uprooting that was short and sharp. We, who have remained too long, run the gamut of anxious concern. For those men from my cruiser who meet feminine affection on shore, each moment holds an unknown torture. Between a sob and a caress passes the phantom of naval hecatombs. Beneath his lowered eyelids the sailor sees his future glory, but the arms clasped about his breast are an embrace of despair. A sunset, a walk between dusty hedges or over fragrant grass—everything suggests agitation and dread. Eye and ear acquire a mysterious perceptivity. One longs to retain, like a viaticum, the voices of loved ones in their most inconsequential inflections. We can bid farewell to France, for the treasures of our hearts have been wrung dry.
To this feeling the sadness of the news from the front adds poignancy. When in the morning the officers study the map of operations, brought up to date according to the communiqué, a profound silence falls over the salon of the Waldeck-Rousseau. We cannot believe this sweep over Belgium, this tidal wave over the French provinces. We wish to depart, to do no matter what, to work, to die. Under our feet the cruiser trembles, our own child, our friend, our master. Each hour of delay irritates us. We are indifferent about the road to victory. Painful and tragic as it is, all Frenchmen accept it, and the sailors about to leave cherish no other thought. The other day, while a crew of gunners were loading shells charged with melinite, I overheard this exclamation from a man whose brawny arms held a yellow projectile: