And I must mention this other incident, which brings tears to my eyes:
Gauthier, Assistant Quartermaster of the Provence, having been taken on board a greatly overloaded raft, was hailed by a soldier asking for help; he jumped into the water to give him his place, saying: "A sailor's duty is to save the soldiers first of all."
He was picked up, twenty-one hours after the wreck, clinging to a plank.
I call attention also to the devotion and zeal—meriting our profound gratitude—of Lieutenant Sinclair Thompson, commanding the English patrol Marguerite, and of his officers and crew, by whose labours about 300 survivors were taken from the place of the wreck to Malta.
Pray pardon the form of this story, Monsieur le Président. I have written it hurriedly, with a bruised hand, and with a head still in a sad muddle. I wished, before my impending departure for Saloniki, to say to you with all my heart: "That is what these noble fellows did!"
Bokanowski.
Transcriber's Note
Obvious errors of punctuation and diacritics were corrected.
Inconsistent hyphenation was made consisent.