“What do you think of it?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you believe that...?”
I dare not finish. He dares not answer, but disappears in the darkness.
I fix my eyes on this treacherous sea which never gives up its secrets. An anguish with iron fingers presses my heart. There is no more doubt of it, death has passed over one of our brothers. Each hour that slips by proves the magnitude of the disaster, and if no news ever reaches us, it will be because all at one stroke eight hundred men will have plunged into the sea. Leaning on the rail, I stroke the metal mechanically, and the wood and canvas which meet my hand. I enjoy feeling the good cruiser, alive and in motion, quivering under me. I realize how much I love her, and it seems to me, that in order to pierce the darkness, my eyes take on the acuteness of a father’s who scans the face of a child of his that is menaced by death.
A little later our wireless operator sends me a bundle of messages. With nervous fingers the ensign translator turns over his codes and dictionaries in order to transform these ciphers into French. Each minute I go to his shoulder to read the line, or the half-line, or the word he has transcribed. Heavens! How long it takes to spell out the horror!
It happened yesterday evening, during that fatal watch which I found so beautiful. The moon was quite round; the sea was transparent, and I saw nothing on it. Like me the officers on watch on the Gambetta were weary of their useless vigil; at the end of their route they saw the gleam of the lighthouse at Santa Maria di Leuca. In the distance passed the shadows which I should have seen if the Waldeck-Rousseau had cruised in the sector which it was to have had. These shadows were ships going along the Italian coast.
But another shadow, covered by the water, had been on watch for many days. It knew we were going by way of the Strait of Otranto. Advised by its accomplices, it awaited, motionless, the occasion for striking a decisive blow. For three nights, for four nights, the majestic cruisers passed too far from this shadow submarine, from this octopus with deadly tentacles. The moon, as it approached its full glory, became more and more luminous.
During these splendid hours, when I had almost disrobed to feel the caresses of the night near me, the submarine saw approaching a slowly moving vessel, with four stacks and graceful outline. It made ready, as it had the night before and the night before that, and hoped that the ship’s present route would permit it to cast its death thrust.