Sunday, March 28. Midnight: at 38° 02´ N. and 18° 7´ E. M. J.... bets with M. Z.... that the Viviani ministry will not last out the year 1915. Stakes: the two bettors being unmarried, the loser agrees to act as groomsman at the marriage of the winner, who agrees to choose him a pretty maid of honor.
The page is sprinkled with facetious comments. To tell the truth, I do not know which are wittier, those which mention the wager, or those which discuss the stakes. Between the fiancée and the Premier, the maid of honor, the winner and the loser, it is all humor of the cleverest kind.
Tuesday, March 30. 2.30 A.M. at 38° 10´ N. and 16° 23´ E. M. W.... wagers that inside of a month one of the seven Ionian cruisers will be sunk by a submarine and lost without anything’s being saved.
For this wager I see neither any stake nor opposing signature.
4 April.
For seven weeks I have not been off the cruiser, but this morning I was given a new duty; namely, to land during our coaling; my turn has come to provide the food for my twenty-five comrades of the mess.
At no time is this a pleasant business; during our war campaign it requires an angelic patience, for supplies are difficult to get and the quality uncertain. Each one of us watches without enthusiasm the day approach when he becomes the scapegoat for the dyspeptics and those with ailing livers. But the implacable schedule, drawn up by lot before our departure from Toulon, appoints a new “chief of the mess” every two months.
You housekeepers who complain of the price of provisions and the bad quality of the eggs had better take passage on the ships which move in the Ionian Sea, and you will learn about unknown miseries. It is no mere question in our latitudes, of varying the menus, of serving such a fish or such a meat, nor even of calculating almost to a half pound what will feed the household without waste. The task is more difficult.
For fifteen or twenty days the cruiser has kept to sea without quitting it; she has done her coaling outside and has not revictualed anywhere. Fresh provisions are a mere memory; eggs, preserved in straw or lime, acquire with each meal a richer and more vigorous flavor. The wine, shaken about in warm casks, ferments. The fresh water absorbs the rust of the iron-casks, and tastes like the mephitic beverage of some invalid resort. Our bread is heavy and indigestible, for the bakers are seasick and the flour is mouldy. For dessert we nibble some empty or frost-bitten walnuts, dried raisins, excessively dried, and almonds which either cannot be cracked or are filled with powder.
Despite our work and weariness, we push aside these pitiful refreshments sweetened with coaldust. Our teeth crack lumps which have no taste of vanilla; these are cinders which have got into our sauces. Morning and evening we have to face one or two dishes of beef. And such beef! Battered by the wind and spray, tossed by the rolling of the ship which bruises their tender nostrils, the poor animals of the shambles trample listlessly the steel deck and sniff their fermented hay listlessly. After a few days at sea they have lost their fat. They have to be killed in time, for fear they will die during the night. For this maritime agony they avenge themselves upon our teeth; their flesh is like a ball of discolored twine, with the pleasant elasticity of rubber. I will not describe the chickens which survive a few weeks of the cruise. I should need the vocabulary of a cordwainer.