A shock went through the first ship. The sailors on deck thought there had occurred an accident to the machinery; those below thought that a gun had been fired.... Everyone listened. Under the brave fellows’ feet the ship turned, lazily at first, while the waves boiled impatiently about her. Then they understood, all of them; they knew that death was near. Before they sank into the sailors’ grave, they looked again for the enemy who had destroyed them without granting them the joy of battle. Their staring eyes fell upon their comrade of the patrol, and filled with fear, for the Aboukir was lurching too. Both had been stung to death by the stealthy advance of the submarine vipers. Generous still in their very death-agony, the two wounded ships hoisted warning signals, that their comrade might evade the deadly track. But she, as generous in her pity, raced to save the lives of the sailors in the engulfing waters. She too received her mortal wound, without being able to fire a single gun, although, clearer-sighted in the face of death, she was able to discern the submarine under its white streak of water.
As the chill of the hemlock poison rises to the heart, the water rose in the three ships. The boilers choked with it, the machinery was drowned; one by one the watertight compartments, exploded by the pressure of the waves, burst with the noise of thunder. The electricity failed everywhere at once, and the sea became a tomb where men struggled and were buffeted by the waves. On the deck, drawn up in line, the crews gazed straight into their doom. The triple choir raised a hymn which they had learned on their English Sabbaths, and they sank to meet their God.
Farewell, sailors of the three cruisers, fallen perhaps through the same fate that is in store for our Adriatic cruisers! Your anguish, your vigils, your last thoughts, we feel here on the Waldeck-Rousseau. Your end was noble, even if no one around me envies it. For we pray the God of Battles, if he sends us death, that we may at least exact a heavy toll from our enemies!
Strait of Otranto, 8 October.
How can one describe the atmosphere of the Adriatic? For that marvel our most delicate adjectives are inadequate. It is more than diaphanous, better than translucent; it dreams. It seems to exist only to contain pure color.
How many times has this immaterial air deceived the officer of the watch! How many miles away is a certain steamer? In how many hours shall we skirt the island that rises amid the clouds?
Formerly we solved these problems without thought, for our eyes had learned to gauge the density of the air and its deceptions. The Adriatic atmosphere has lowered our conceit. Skies or sails, lighthouse or shore, each object is always further off than we suppose. Prudent now, we hesitate to say whether Corfu is thirty miles away, or that this pale line of the Otranto coast is not a cloud resting on the water. We are not wrong to mistrust ourselves. Corfu is fifty miles away, and this imagined cloud is the coast of Italy.
The officers on the bridge struggle with these illusions. The sea itself multiplies their difficulties. Formerly the sailor dreaded only what moved above the surface of the sea. He noticed at almost any distance traces of smoke, indistinct masts, and all the signs by which a ship reveals her presence. But the sailors of to-day level their gaze upon that surface which was once so innocent.... Between two crests floats a dark speck.... Is it not a mine charged with explosives? Those shining lines, like the trail of a snail, are they not the oily tracks of a submarine lying in wait for us?
But sailors learn secrets. Formerly, they contemplated the waves and ripples carelessly, as queer old comrades whose every mood one pardoned. But now they keep them under a stern inflexible eye. The play of a wave, the alternate strips of light, the shadows of a cloud—we grapple with everything, and never relax our vigilance. For everything is illusion.
The lookout wavers between a fear of being ridiculed and a fear of having seen amiss. There is never a day that some wireless message does not come from one of our sentinels of the sea, telling the “naval army” that a submarine is in sight. From Saint Maure to Lissa, from Tarento to Corfu, all the French ships are anxious about the outcome of this encounter, and hope that the comrade engaged will be victorious. Minutes slip away, we imagine the whole drama; a noble envy stirs every heart. And then the second message comes over the sea. “It was not a submarine!” it declares. Then the Adriatic and the Ionian Sea resound with a burst of mocking laughter, one of those bursts of laughter which only the descendants of the Gauls know how to give.