These were my thoughts during the watch the other night, when everything about me was so fair. A full moon with soft features, but with a contour as sharp as that of a new medal, rode in a sky as pure as the face of a child. The stars were swollen with joy. Vague lightning illuminated first one part of the sky and then another, like vagrant smiles of the night, without arrière-pensée. The sea, drowsy with warmth, had a calm and fragrant breath, and it seemed as if our prow in cutting it was profaning a divine slumber. It was one of those moments when the most unhappy man feels love flood his heart, and as my eyes fell only on eternal things, my spirit absorbed all their blessing. The cruiser was patrolling the middle of the Strait of Otranto; on its left a comrade kept guard towards Fano and Corfu; on its right the Gambetta in the Italian sector received from time to time the flashes from the lighthouse. During the afternoon we had come quite near the Gambetta; our boats had exchanged the parcels, the mail, and orders, and it is now the Waldeck-Rousseau who will occupy the Italian sector after we separate. At the last moment some new order has given our place to the Gambetta and kept us in the central rectangle. It is of no particular importance, and our turn to be neighbors with the lighthouse will come to-morrow.
I shall not try to describe the train of thought which haunts the officer of the watch when nature becomes kindly again and accords him a respite for his body. As he surveys the sea with unrelenting eyes, he makes the tour of the weather, of the world, of his ideas. The fluttering butterfly is less capricious than this reverie of his, but he rests at last on some flower of thought. I remember that on this night, towards the third hour of my watch, I was thinking of the contrast between the peace of Nature and the human agony of the war. I had taken off my cap to feel the caressing fingers of the night; I had even opened my vest, and felt almost on my skin the freshness of the reviving breeze. On the sea, so light that it seemed transparent, I saw nothing in particular; but that was undoubtedly the weakness of my vision, the fatigue from too long cruises, the lassitude which on this night all my comrades of the watch on the cruisers felt with me. Otherwise my mind was clear.
The work of France and Russia, the enterprise of the Dardanelles and Gallipoli, all that had not been done, all that could be done, and ought to be done, everything defined itself in precise images. Around the cruiser was so much silence and so much silent light that my thoughts seemed to speak aloud to me. When my successor came to replace me on the watch, I quickly told him all the routine things, and then remained several minutes before going down to my cabin, in order to enjoy the marvelous night for a little while longer. There was not a single sound or light, and I left the bridge regretfully. I thought of the officers of the nearby cruisers, towards the right and the left of us, several miles away, feeling the same sensations, and I was consoled.
The arriving day brought dazzling beauty after the quiet charm of the night, but everything around the cruiser remained the same—calm, silence, warm air. After a heavy sleep, a listless morning and a short meal, I resumed at noon the interrupted watch. The same thoughts continued to accompany my duties. Between them there was only the difference of moonlight and sunlight. My reasonings were clearer, my rancor stronger, but the sparkling of the waves revealed nothing. As we had nothing to communicate to the cruisers on our right and left, we remained quietly in the center of our sector, and my only companions of the watch were the sun, the migrating birds and some dolphins in the water.
Towards two o’clock I received the sudden news of the death of a sailor on board. The news tore me from my peaceful mood. I know that in this far place the death of one man does not count, especially when one is acquainted with that man only by a number. Yet I could not refrain from a certain melancholy, and the train of my reveries became somber. You poor little sailor, who has given up his life in this iron prison, where will be your grave? The perfumed rocks of Greece, or the sands of Apulia, or a shroud in the Ionian deeps? Wherever it be, no hand will ever strew flowers on your white wooden cross, and those who write you to-day perhaps will not know to what part of the vast world they should direct their tears.
To the end of my watch I keep thinking of this destiny of the sailors, who do not even halt to die. Around me the faces of the lookouts and gunners show the same aspect of gravity which mine should have. This morning, it seems to me, touches us more than it should. Is there not going on somewhere a drama much more terrible?
In order to banish such reflections, I go to look in my cabin for my little dog Jimmino, with his cold nose, his soft eyes and silky hair. Since my last stay in Malta, he has exchanged the ease of his mistress’ home for the hard existence of a ship. At night he sleeps in the hollow of my shoulder, and when he wakes, he watches my slumber without stirring. When I work, he whines softly until I lift him up on my desk. He puts his head between his paws, and follows the course of my pen. He does not like me to remain too long without speaking to him, for I think he is of a jealous temperament. In order to let me know he is there, Jimmino rises and walks across my pages where his paws trail thick threads of ink. Then I give him a little tap on his cold nose and scold him:
“Get away, you horrible, badly brought up little thing! What would your mother say if she...”
“Well, well,” replies the little tail as it wags. “You have spoken, silent master, and you have struck me; so you must love me. I am not vexed with you any more.”
Jimmino lies down again within reach of the paper, his nose so near the sheets that at the end of every line I feel his warm breath on the back of my fingers. He watches my bent head, and thinks: