“If you want to see better animals, there is another herd ten kilometers away, behind the marshes.”
“In that island opposite, I know a man who grows vegetables; go to him. It will only take you three hours there and back.”
“Yes, you could find fresher eggs at my neighbor’s, but he just left for the mountains last night.”
The chief of the mess devotes forty minutes to understanding these wily proposals. He has only a few hours in this remote region, and before night he has to provide for the food of twenty-five men for twenty days. Followed by the steward and the cook, he perspiringly visits the miserable shops and doubtful poultry-yards.
“We have no more figs or raisins. The Germans bought them all three months ago.”
“Yesterday one of your ships took the finest head of cattle. If you had only come the day before yesterday!”
Hours pass, but they do not in the least improve the quality of what we are offered. The agents become more and more cunning as they press you to buy, for they know that the cruiser sails at dusk, and their kind souls fear she will leave without provisions. In a creaking carriage or on a broken horse, the chief of the mess goes to see this herd, or that famous poulterer, and returns with a desire to slaughter his guide. Evening comes. The cruiser whistles, raises the flag of recall, and is to put to sea in half an hour. We must buy now, whatever the cost. Then pell-mell, in sacks or boxes, under the goad of the shepherds, on the shoulders of the boys, the eggs and suspect vegetables, the consumptive animals and the parchment poultry begin to move towards the cutter. The Chief’s spirit is haunted by dark presentiments, but he offers fresh blue notes and new gold pieces in exchange for these precarious victuals. The sons of Mercury wrangle over the change and the price, the porters demand their tip, and the market becomes an uproar of invective. But all that is nothing to what is in store on board.
At last everything is in order. The cutter leaves the quay, followed by pleasantries, and arrives at the ship, which weighs anchor and begins in the night its twenty days of cruising. In answer to the questions of his comrades the chief of the mess tries to put on a good face, but the evening meal gives him a hint of the refined torture he will endure until the next landing, and he invokes the god of resignation to his aid.
This afternoon, since I had used up my store of gold and silver, I gave a hundred franc note to some breeder of elastic chickens. I owed him fourteen francs. Instead of giving me back eighty-six francs, he made the entire change for the note in pieces of five, two and one drachmas. In the midst of a crowd of boys and attentive men he counted it, recounted it, and put it in my hand.