PART TWO

NEWCASTLE, ENGLAND, _April 8, 1915_.

Well, old man, we have just been through something special in the way of foul weather, up north of Scotland. You must wonder what we are doing up there, as I wrote from Egypt that the _Pamir_ was going to transport men to the Dardanelles. As you shall see, it’s quite simple.

We remained at Alexandria just long enough to like it and to contract a few little habits--movies, bars, etc. Fourgues and I went to Cairo together and to the Pyramids. You have no idea how he can talk about all that. I don’t know where he was ever able to learn so much, and no hot air, you know, for I bought a guidebook afterwards to see if it was all true--the Pharaohs, the Turks, Bonaparte, and all that--and he had told it all just like the book. That reminds me, I want to thank you for the books you sent me. You are my father and my mother. I received them here the day before yesterday and I have begun with the maritime history of France. It is jolly interesting. I am not ashamed to confess to you that I don’t know much about it. But after what I have now read, it seems to me to be always the same story--frigates or battleships, sails or steam, you could say it was beginning all over again. Anyway, by degrees I will tell you what I think about it.

At Alexandria our crew spent all their savings in four days and painted the streets and pubs red. The police brought several back, but Fourgues wouldn’t jump on them.

“Leave them alone, my boy. Sailors aren’t archangels. Let the cops ship aboard the _Pamir_ for three months and see if they drink soda water after even that little while. When our beggars haven’t a cent left, they’ll be quiet enough and we’ll haul ’em up taut.”

That’s the way with Fourgues. At sea he makes them leap with a rope’s end if things don’t move fast enough. But when there is nothing doing he let’s them go hell in their glory. I believe it’s the best way, for all the reservists have fallen into his ways, and there isn’t one who wants to leave the _Pamir_, although work there is devilish hard.

After eight days in Alexandria we were ordered to Port Said. It was because of a cargo-boat from Bombay, filled with Indian soldiers for the front. Its condensers had gone to blazes and as the men must go and as the boat was in for a fortnight of repairs, they took the old _Pamir_, being free, to push along the six hundred men. As far as comfort goes, it was pretty poor. When it comes to freight, the _Pamir_ isn’t afraid of three thousand tons and even a little more crammed into the corners. But passengers! There is the deck and the hold, and you must make the best of that! Fourgues put two senior officers in each of the cabins of Blangy and Muriac and I don’t see how the four managed to exist. You know the cabins of the _Pamir_--they make splendid pigeon-holes! The other officers, the “subs” as the Bulls call them, we housed along with the non-commissioned officers, in the superstructure which served for the Boches last year. As for the rest, they were free to stuff themselves in anywhere, hold or deck, according to preference.

Fourgues and I hadn’t time to arrange anything for the poor devils. We were given only twenty-four hours’ notice and had to coal and revictual. Think of it! To take six hundred men when you’ve enough to feed thirty-five and not to know whether it is to be for ten or for twenty days, because no one could tell us whether they were going to Marseilles, to Havre, or to England! The shore authorities at Port Said told Fourgues that he would receive orders at sea by wireless. When he answered that he had no wireless, there was the usual palaver and they were polite to each other. Finally, they told him to call at Marseilles for instructions and that there they would tell him what to do. Fourgues profited by the incident to telegraph the owner and demand urgently that we be fitted with wireless because he had had enough of being called over the coals as though it were his fault. But all that is by the way.

We took from on board the Indian cargo-boat the entire provision of rice for six hundred men, as well as the officers’ provision of whiskey. The officers had with them cases of port wine and of sundry other drinks. It was lucky for them, for you know except for old brandy and rum, Fourgues doesn’t like to have us drink aboard. They had to have Fafa to make their cocktails and wait on them specially during the entire voyage.

The night we stayed in Port Said, Fourgues and I went to buy some eatables, preserves, jams, etc., with which to feed all those officers. The things were not easy to find, and whew--the prices! What enraged Fourgues the most was that we had to pay for everything in gold, but no one ever gave us anything but silver. As the same thing had happened in Alexandria, at Cairo, and everywhere we have been since the beginning of the war, he swears that it is another stroke of the Boches.

“You see, my boy, we pay in gold, and never set eyes on it again. Don’t worry! It isn’t lost for everybody! They have their agents everywhere. Our good money goes to Hun-land by way of Greece or Italy and with it they pay the neutrals for their victuals!”

Fourgues added some other things, but it is better not to tell you because you will imagine that I am grousing too much and you know I’m not made that way. The _Pamir_ steered for Marseilles first. We had fairly good weather, we rolled and pitched a little, as we were a bit light, but it was enough to lay five hundred out of the six hundred Hindus on their backs. Almost all the rice is left, for they couldn’t eat a thing. It was better thus, for I don’t know what our cook would have done with six hundred of them to feed. He had no time to waste as it was, though it is easy to take care of Hindus--all you need is some rice and water. A dozen of them had brought flutes or drums, and they did not once stop playing from Port Said to Havre. They played in relays, two at a time, installing themselves just at the foot of the bridge so that those in the hold who were seasick could hear, and all the time, night and day, they beat the drum and played the flute. You have no idea what that Oriental music can be. At first it seemed as though they played the same notes all the time, but it’s not so at all. It comes and goes like a thought! When I had the watch at night sometimes I longed to sleep, listening to them, and then sometimes I wanted to cry. There were times when I wanted to tell them to shut up because it was too stupid to feel so confoundedly blue. And then it would seem as though I must have it and I listened after all. I’m talking rot, old chap.

At Marseilles we simply went in and out again. An officer of the English Mission came to tell us to go to Havre with our Hindus, but the senior officers, who had had enough of it in the pigeon-holes of Muriac and Blangy and who had finished their port and their whiskey the day before, asked to leave at once. As they were lords, or little tin gods of sorts they went without waiting and the “subs” took their places.

The _Pamir_ went all around Spain and the Atlantic coast with the six hundred Hindus, who got seriously ill and arrived at Havre like rags. Fourgues said that it was just a little barbarous, the more so as nothing is really saved by the trip, for it will take a month at least before all those poor devils will be able to go to the front.

They were exhausted. Some of them almost died, they were bringing up blood. And as they were cold, bronchitis and chest complaints had set in. The only physician they had was Fourgues, and that’s all about it! He treated them with doses of rum in hot water, for our medicine chest had soon been emptied. Three of them died, which is not many, say the officers.

We buried them at sea with a weight at their feet to make them sink. All of us who were French felt pretty bad about it. But the others----. It’s plain that in India human life doesn’t count for much.

We were all glad to leave them at Havre. I wonder what use they’ll be at the front. If it came to being killed, I don’t believe they would hesitate, but when you have seen them shivering and crowding together under the melting snow of late February, it seems probable that they will die like flies in the trenches. And we were a little afraid they might have left some cholera in the _Pamir_, and Fourgues is not keen on it a bit, having seen a real epidemic in China. So he was glad when they sent us to Sunderland for coal, because he makes out that coal, although dirty, is the best antiseptic known for most diseases.

At Sunderland we loaded a good three thousand tons, and pretty smart, too. What is it going to cost France, all these hundreds of thousands of tons of coal which must be bought abroad? It won’t be a small price! I know that the Boches have bagged our northern mines, but there are other mines in France. Evidently they would not be sufficient for all needs; but if we exploited them and decreased our purchases by a quarter, at least, that much would not be going out and the value of our franc would not fall as it is doing. It is vexatious for a country as rich as ours to spend all that good French money and to see how they give you the change with five or ten per cent. discount. It will be nice if that goes on! I asked Fourgues why the coal was left in the earth when it would be so much better in the bunkers or the fireplace. He replied that this was because of a law of public welfare under the Revolution, made to prohibit illicit gain, and that the same law of public welfare did not permit us even now to take our underground riches. “It’s just as it was at H----,” he added; “the sub-soil of France constitutes a national reserve! It would seem that it’s better to be ruined than to touch it!”

But the coal we got at Sunderland was not for the French after all, for they sent us to the English Grand Fleet. The Bulls were getting expeditions ready for Africa, Mesopotamia, and the Dardanelles; they had no boats free, and as Jellicoe’s fleet was yelling for coal, we were sent in a hurry. I don’t tell you where the _Pamir_ went to find the Grand Fleet because it is most strictly forbidden. Even the English journals haven’t the right to mention it, and, anyway, you may be sure my letter would be censored. They don’t want the Germans to know where the English ships are.

The _Pamir_ made the trip up there from Sunderland twice, and, I can tell you, there are just a few of them--battleships and cruisers and all the rest! What are all I saw at Fano besides this? Nothing, my poor old chap! If the Bulls haven’t yet got going for war on land, I beg you to believe that they have one or two ships, and some beauties!

Only, they don’t wear them out. The squadrons rest quietly at anchor and from time to time they go out and look for the Boches, or if the Boches come out, they pounce on them. In this way the engines and crews are not worn to bits like the French fleet. You bet the English officers, who were awfully bored, by the way, invited Fourgues and me over during the coaling and questioned us because we had come from the other end of the war! Honestly, they thought we were kidding them when we told them that the whole lot of you, but especially the cruisers and destroyers, were kept cruising up and down with your tails well up, for forty and fifty days at a time, trying to block up the Adriatic. They asked us if it was also the custom in the French army, when a regiment was not fighting, to have it march back and forth behind the lines for five and six weeks at a time. And then a lot of other questions by which we could see that they couldn’t make head or tail of it.

That’s not to say that the Grand Fleet does nothing. The cruisers and destroyers guard the coast of England and patrol as far as Norway. It’s ghastly to see the storms they have to face and the state in which they return. So they are given a rest--sent to port with leave for everybody! And you know it makes no end of difference slogging near your native land, feeling that you are protecting it and that when duty is over, you may go and pass a day or two with your family.

They are all as jolly as sandboys, except that they are a bit sick at not having been able to fight the big fight with the Germans. Apart from that, they feel that the English fleet is doing its duty, and they cannot understand why you are kept on the go as we described to them. I’m not saying this to rile you, old man, now that you are in the Navy and, as Fourgues says, infected with its spirit, but the English sailors are rather fresher than yours. And you should see the difference in age! When you go with your coal from one English ship to another and chat with this one and that, you might think you are talking to a pal even when it’s an Admiral. On the French cruisers the commander always has white hair and a white beard; it tires him to climb a ladder, and he is afraid of saying too much. Fourgues claims that the Brass Hats are even worse, but I have never seen them. At any rate, for the destroyers here they give them to quite young men, from twenty-five to thirty years old, while down there all I saw were well over forty with pepper-and-salt hair. It’s like that from the top down, ten or fifteen years’ difference. The keenness is in proportion. I don’t know what I shall be like at forty, but certainly with rheumatism and nice little liver complaint I should find it pretty tough to be set on a destroyer where one is drenched from the first of January until the thirty-first of December, and to command no more than seventy men. Whereas, if I could have that now, my word, shouldn’t I be pleased and go right ahead and laugh at being wet to the bones, because I should know that when I got to be forty or fifty, if I had served well, I should command a squadron with thousands of men and a lot of ships!... Maybe I’m wrong and the English too, but I wish you would explain to me why we don’t do the same as they.

I told you that the _Pamir_ made two trips between Sunderland and the Grand Fleet. On the second they sent us to hell and gone, up north into the midst of the islands where there was filthy weather, and where the _Pamir_ coaled flotillas of destroyers and scouts. These are on the go all the time--with intervals of leave in England, you may be sure--near German waters, and they say that the Boches will never come out for a real big battle, but that it isn’t worth while trying to get them out of their holes because their coast waters are full of mines and submarines and the game wouldn’t be worth the candle. The English would be blown up before getting anywhere near. Although this is not what the English and French papers say, I think we can believe those who have been there. “If there is a serious battle,” they say, “it will be a surprise; not because we shall have willed it.” The Boches, it seems, are informed from England itself, where a lot of their countrymen are at large, and as soon as an English ship puts to sea, Berlin is warned. Whereas when the Germans come to bombard the English coasts, no one knows about it until the shells begin to fall.

They also say that the Allies are a little too good about respecting neutral territorial waters and that the Germans don’t hesitate to borrow Danish or Dutch waters to sneak from Kiel over to Ostend or Bruges. This reminds me of what I saw off the coast of Italy the first time we coaled the French Fleet. While our cruisers and destroyers were stopping ships at sea, the _Pamir_ ran across lots of boats close to the Italian coast, going up to Trieste or in that direction, and they were well-loaded, believe me.

If that’s the way we are blockading the Boches, they won’t need to cry “Kamerad!” yet awhile! I wish you would tell me how many cargoes of contraband the Navy has seized. I ask you a lot of questions, but that’s because you wrote in your last letter that it interested you, too, to know what goes on outside of your _Auvergne_.

As you added that my mind was improving with the war, I address myself to my sometime lieutenant, if you please, in order to form my little judgment! You know I tell you everything that comes into my head, just as I used to do when you said that I talked hot air. Anyway, it’s something if I’ve learnt to listen! Good Lord, how stupid I must have been, only two years ago! Fourgues, too, claims that I improve.

That old rascal did play me a dirty trick. When we got back to Newcastle he nailed me to the ship and ran up to London for a change of air. I must tell you that on returning from Scotland we ran into one of those little spring gales which put two boilers out of business and loosened the collars of our broken shaft, which we have trundled about ever since August. Then, as the _Pamir_ ha’n’t been out of commission since Alexandria, Fourgues said he wouldn’t go another step till they put the ship in the dock, examined her hull, retubed the boilers, and changed the shaft. The Bulls wanted to send him up there again with three thousand tons of coal for the Fleet, but Fourgues answered that an old fox like him knew when a boat has had its bellyful, and that he didn’t intend that the _Pamir_ should break down like a silly, when he was the one to catch it and not the rest of them.

In order to get things his own way in peace, he took the train that very evening. While he was packing his bag he called me into his cabin:

“Look, my boy, here is a paper. I hand over to you command of the _Pamir_ and of the whole show. Have her put into the dock and thoroughly repaired. I shall see if you can cope with an emergency. They played the same trick on me in Melbourne on my boat when I knew less than you. When the hull is repainted, the boilers retubed, and the shaft replaced, telegraph me at the Charing Cross Hotel, London. I give you ten days. Put it through!”

“But, captain, to whom shall I address myself?”

“You’re in charge and you have a tongue. As for me, I’m going up to London to raise hell to get the wireless, and if the owner won’t put it in, I’ll go to Paris. But I don’t want to hear a word from the _Pamir_ until you wire me ‘Ready!’ Do you understand?”

“Certainly, captain, but----”

“Rubbish! Here are the keys, the papers, the cheques, and everything. If you are ready in ten days I shall see that you get your skipper’s ticket for foreign trade, because then they can give you a ship all to yourself. Otherwise, you’ll whistle for it.”

He shook hands and was gone. So for the last four days, old man, I have been muddling through. It is just as though you had been put in command of the _Auvergne_ and being master is very different from receiving orders. There are a lot of things in which you have to make a decision, instead of merely listening and carrying on. Before, I used to think that Fourgues had rather a heavy hand, but now I think that to make things go you have to have an eye on everything and not spare your men. Most of the time I am in overalls rummaging around the boilers and in the tunnel of the screw. Things are coming on. The _Pamir_ has been scraped and will get her second coat of paint to-day. One boiler and half of another have been retubed. Fourgues calculated the business very well. It can be done in ten days by not losing an hour. We are hard at it. The crew is all right. You know what it is to fall in love with a boat; and then when you see that you are of some use--say, old man, if we are ready in ten days there’ll be no holding me.

MALTA, _June 17, 1915_.

DEAR OLD MAN,

I believe the _Pamir_ really is engaged this time in the Eastern affair. We have been here for a month and a half and it doesn’t look as though it were going to be over right away. I ask nothing better, because at present this is the only place where interesting things are happening. Fourgues also is pleased. We get about, we transport stuff. We are not doing the big work, sure, but at any rate the Merchant Service is doing all it can and the old _Pamir_ wastes no time.

She runs all by herself now, since the shaft and tubes were changed--which is to say that she is entirely refitted. At Newcastle I wasn’t ready in ten days after all, but in eleven. But as we were well advanced the tenth day, I wired Fourgues “Ready!” and then shook in my shoes for fear he would get there before it was all done. I made them work night and day the last twenty-four hours, but the crew never flinched. In short, when Fourgues arrived they were letting the water into the dock and an hour afterwards the _Pamir_ was alongside the wharf. Of course he saw I’d cheated a little, but said never a word, for his little trip had put him in a good temper.

“Very good, my boy. I will send a report to the owner and say that he can give you a boat when one is free--which won’t be yet awhile, you may be sure.”

This made me rather sick, though, as you can imagine I’d have liked to have a tub of my own during the war! Then Fourgues explained. He had had time to go to Paris and had brought back a lot of information. It seems that in France all construction is suspended because the war will be over before the end of the year and we should think of nothing but war-work and munitions. As all the merchant-ships are being used at the present moment, I shan’t get a command for the deuce of a time. Fourgues also saw the owner and had rather a hot encounter because he would not pay for the wireless, saying that the _Pamir_ had got along like this for nearly ten months and that it was not worth while undertaking the expense, for whereas wireless was good for the illustrated papers that tell tall stories about it, at bottom it wasn’t much use. There was nothing to be done with the owner, so Fourgues went to the Admiralty where they said much the same thing. It seems that we are quite safe on the sea, that we’ve got the upper hand, that the German submarines are all bluff, and that, anyway, the Germans haven’t any. Fourgues is not of this opinion, not exactly. He says that the Germans aren’t so stupid as to leave us in peace on the sea and that they are preparing one of their extra-specials for us. But all the official Johnnies wouldn’t hear of this, so there was nothing to be done--the _Pamir_ went out as before. The owner told him to add nothing, not even a lookout at the masthead. But Fourgues had one installed under the pretext that fifty francs more or less would ruin neither the owner nor the shareholders. They don’t lose their time, those gentlemen! The _Pamir_, which is nearly twenty years old, is chartered at about fifty pounds a day, without counting the coal, repairs, insurance, freight, and everything. The shareholders have only to open their pockets--the money tumbles in! At that rate, in a year they will have enough to pay for two or three other _Pamirs_, but not enough, of course, for them to spare a few thousand francs for the wireless!

But I nearly forgot to tell you about another fuss. You will remember that we struck the cruiser _Lamartine_ on the occasion of our first coaling at sea and that we smashed her davits and one of our lifeboats. It wasn’t Fourgues’ fault, you remember, and he said that it must all be repaired at Newcastle. But the owner refused outright to pay anything, saying that that sort of damages were not included in the agreement. The Navy also refused, under the pretext that it is not responsible henceforth for a ship on which the captain is not in the Government service. They demanded a report from Fourgues and will also ask the _Lamartine_ for one. All that will mean filling up forms and complications without end. Nevertheless, we sail with two lifeboats, as Fourgues preferred to pay out of his own pocket for the new one rather than do without.

At Newcastle the _Pamir_ took on field-guns for the English Expeditionary Force in the Dardanelles and shells for the big guns of their battleships. They are of a different calibre. We put the guns in the hold forward and the shells aft. As we had a good deal of room left aft, because the twelve-inch shells, though heavy, take little space, they told us to go by way of Gibraltar to fetch the supplies and baggage of a company of soldiers bound for Gallipoli who were to leave at the same time as we, but on another boat. All this was a little complicated, but we have seen plenty of complications since the war began. Moreover, the English aren’t fussy. The officers who supervised the loading would come around for five minutes every day, take a look and go away.

This is the first time that the _Pamir_ has carried shells--real ones, charged with high explosive--and you can imagine how scared we were that one of them would fall into the bottom of the hold and blow the old hooker to blazes! Fourgues seized the opportunity to have all the cables of the winches and the steel-work of the derricks changed, saying that they were a little old and that he could not guarantee their strength. The English made no bother at all about it, but gave us a fine cable, brand-new, of high quality steel. We even had two or three hundred yards left! Didn’t I tell you, the _Pamir_ sailed refitted fore and aft?

It took ten days to get to Gib., which is rather long, but as we ran into a lot of fog, with that kind of cargo Fourgues was not anxious to have a collision so he slowed down. Think of it! We had the munitions of two big English battleships, and if the _Pamir_ went down, they would have had to wait at least two months before they could send the Turks a single shell! Really, Fourgues knows his business. When we have a cargo of rubbish he doesn’t care at what speed he goes or into what weather, but with this stuff aboard he keeps inspecting the holds to see if all is safely stowed and that no cases of cartridges are broken or shells lying around loose.

The English stowed it all very well, however, with good oak and new pine. There was no danger of it shifting. The _Pamir_ is rich! We shall have all that timber, and Fourgues hopes they will give him more munitions to transport, now that he is fitted up for it, because that seems more like real war-work.

At Gib. the company of soldiers for which the _Pamir_ was to carry supplies waited for us until the night before. But as we were held back by the fog and as the company was wanted in the East in a hurry, they went, piling their stuff on the deck of their boat. But the English didn’t wish to waste the hundred tons we had at their disposal, so they dumped in a great lot of preserves and jam and chocolate which was waiting on the dock. English soldiers feed jolly well, and the war must be costing England a pretty penny. We bought tobacco at Gibraltar and cards and Spanish wine. It is cheap and of good quality. But the place is as dull as ditch-water. It is apparently because of the war. There’s nothing worth seeing there except the landscape with the rocks. For the rest it might be a penal settlement.

The _Pamir_ steered straight for Mudros, where they told us to report and get our orders on the spot. In the Mediterranean the weather was not so very bad, but all the same, Fourgues is right--one never knows what’s going to happen in the way of weather; the wind changes without one’s knowing why and the sea rises in an hour. The _Pamir_ had a roughish time, all the more so as Fourgues wouldn’t go fast because of the explosives in the hold. But it wasn’t worth the trouble carrying those shells, because when we reached Mudros they told us that of the two ships which were to take them, one had been sunk by a submarine the week before at the Dardanelles, and the other, after just escaping the same fate, had returned to Malta to be repaired. But how damned stupid it is to have known nothing at all about it simply because we had no wireless! We looked as though we had come down from the moon with our shells for the ---- and the ----, and everybody was laughing at us.

If we had been informed, Fourgues would have put in at Malta to learn what to do with the ammunition, as it was of a special kind and couldn’t be used by the other English ships that were there. Well, so we kept the ammunition and left the jam and preserves! There was no difficulty about them--everybody wanted them; they were unloaded before you could say “Jack Robinson.” As for the field-guns, no one was willing to take them off because it seems that they were done at the front and the written instructions were not sufficiently clear. We lost two days waiting for orders from Egypt, from English Headquarters. Finally they told us to go to Alexandria where the guns would be assigned to a brigade that was forming. During this time the troops in Gallipoli were crying with all their might and main for guns and we had only to carry them over--we were so very near! But our order was imperative and we went to Alexandria. When we got there they said that the English brigade had already started and that we must catch up with it immediately at Gallipoli, without which it would have ammunition and no guns. We set out again at once and arrived on that part of the coast where the troops they call the Anzacs are stationed. They unloaded the guns as quickly as they could. Since its arrival the brigade has been shelled a good deal without being able to reply, having no artillery, and they went for us a little about it, but it was no fault of ours. We stayed there five days, as the lighters were few and the coast pretty difficult. The Turks fired some big shells at the _Pamir_--they fell all around but never touched her. Fourgues was as happy as a god. He stood, leaning against the taffrail with his field-glass, watching the shots:

“There, my boy, that one’s too short! That’s too far! They’ll never get the old _Pamir_!”

Alongside there was the steamer _Terre-de-Feu_, which was carrying fodder and near which we stayed for two days. Old Man Plantat, a friend of Fourgues, commands her and came on board the _Pamir_ for a meal. Plantat has been up and down the Ægean Sea ever since the beginning of the Dardanelles show and he told us all there is to know. I believe you’ve met him; he said he remembered you. He is just the same devil-may-care sort as ever. He said that the whole business in the East is foredoomed, and that we shall never get to Constantinople because we didn’t do what we should have done at the very beginning, and now it’s too late; the Turks won’t let themselves be taken unawares and are sending out mines and submarines all the time.

He also said that at the beginning, when the _Bouvet_ and other boats were lost, there was nothing to do but push right on without looking back; that we should have squeezed through and that Constantinople would have been reduced by our guns, except for a lot of diplomatic delays beforehand and a lot of wobbling at the time; but that now there is no use worrying ourselves about it any more. We shall only lose men and ships and money and be obliged to go away in the end without having done anything.

I repeat this as Plantat said it. But I omit his arguments, which you must understand better than I, on the _Auvergne_, where you get all the wireless news. This is the first time that Fourgues and I have heard anything serious about Eastern matters, for we have only the newspapers and the statements of official persons who all keep saying that Constantinople will be taken to-morrow. Ever since I began the Naval History you sent me, I have been saying to myself, as I read the accounts of the Admirals and Ambassadors of the old time, “What humbugs!” But I forgot that no one perceives this until one or two hundred years afterwards on searching the records, and that at the time they seemed to be “It.” Now, as I ponder and listen to men like Fourgues and Plantat, who are not easily fooled, I see clearly that in this war it is the same old business. The more newspapers there are, the less one knows of the truth. Of course, it’s not the _Pamir_ that will win the war, but I’ll be hanged if ever we know why or for what reason they send us here, there and then away again!

When we are in one place, the authorities say that there is evidently a bit of a wash-out round there, but that it’s all going to straighten out soon, and that, anyway, everything is going well everywhere else. We are reassured. And then the _Pamir_ arrives somewhere else--and she gets about a good deal, as you can testify--and we hear the same old story. What does it mean? They are a lot of liars and Tommy and Jack are the ones who suffer!

And who can think that everything is going for the best in face of a job like ours after Gallipoli? I wrote you on another page how that brigade without guns was shelled for two days. The coast is as hard as marble, the Turkish guns are on the heights, and there is no way of sheltering yourself from them. When they had got the range and things began to fall too close, there was nothing to do but move away if you could, since you can’t stop those shells with your hand. So there were not a few wounded, without counting those who had caught fever or colic before they had been there forty-eight hours and were half dead. And not a hospital-ship in the roads!

As the _Pamir_ was proceeding to Malta to carry those shells to the battleship that was being repaired there, they sent aboard a hundred broken arms and legs and as many sick. Fortunately, we had the planks left from the Morocco Boches and from the stowage of the field-artillery. We were able to manufacture a whole set of cots on the deck and in the forward hold. It was splendid the way the crew worked. Engine-room men, firemen, deckhands--everybody--nailed, screwed, and hammered for four days. You can do anything with fellows like that! Fourgues could grumble and say it was not going fast enough, but all the same there were tears in his eyes, especially when, almost before a cot was finished, it was filled with a poor devil who looked as if he were dying but smiled as soon as he was at rest. Sometimes three or four would come at once, and we put them where we could while we nailed on the last boards of their cots. The hammer-strokes gave them headache, but they waited smiling.

Finally the _Pamir_ set out, with her explosives in the aft hold and her sick in the forward hold and everywhere else. They were able to give us a young doctor and two hospital orderlies. I don’t know why the three aren’t dead of fatigue, with their two hundred sick and wounded. For medicines and antiseptics we had a single chest which was emptied before Matapan. The fever patients and those who had colic began to improve, and as it was necessary to set them on their feet again, the crew of the _Pamir_ asked me to give them their ration of wine and meat if there wasn’t enough to go round. How can you punish jossers like that when they break loose on land? For four days the men of the _Pamir_ drank water and ate beans or the rice that was left from the Hindus, and nothing besides, for the storeroom was cleaned out. Fourgues gave all his rum, his brandy, his cigarettes, and his cigars. I, who hadn’t anything, turned over my handkerchiefs and shirts for dressings. We were lucky to have not one die in the crossing, because it was fine weather all the way and because Fourgues went very slowly in order not to shake the wounded.

They were nearly all fellows from Australia or New Zealand--bony and long and lean. Those who got better told us something about themselves. They had thought they were leaving the Antipodes to defend old England on the French front and they didn’t at all expect to fight the Turks in a country where it can’t be done. Even though mere privates are paid five or six francs a day, the fellows still find that it was a rotten trick to give them a job “without any chance of success,” as they say. But they’ll deal with all that later; for the moment they are happy because after Malta they hope to visit London, which they have never seen.

At Malta they were all landed in a jiffy. It can’t be denied, the English squander money and consider war a sport instead of a vital matter as we do, but they have absolutely princely medical and other services. Where they’re at home, in Gib., Malta, and Egypt, one is obliged to recognize this. The _Pamir_ had scarcely made fast when we were invaded by doctors and nurses by the dozen, and if we were not able to nurse them much on board, I have no fears about how they will fare at Malta. But I find that country most uninteresting and can’t understand why all the fellows are so enthusiastic about it. It may be because after fifty or sixty days at sea they would enjoy Patagonia or Timbuctoo. The whole island is rock, no vegetation, hardly two good walks, and at night a dirty concert-hall where you are packed like herring. You must be better acquainted with it than I, for you are known--to your advantage--by the waiters of the squealing-shop where you broke several saucers, who laughed when I asked them if you had passed that way. It looks as though I shall never meet you, for there were not a few big French ships in the port, but not a sign of the _Auvergne_.

They told me that you were flying the Admiral’s flag now, the Admiral’s ship having gone into dry-dock, and that you were mooching along the coast of Crete. Better luck next time, old man.

As for us, we left our shells, although the English warship had sailed for Portsmouth to be dismantled, as it would have taken a good six months before she could fire a gun again. She got a nasty jar. The Bulls wanted us to go back to England with the ammunition, but Fourgues wouldn’t go! He said that with the heat and without any means of ventilating the holds, he would not keep the shells on the _Pamir_ for fear one of these days she would blow up without warning. The authorities kicked, saying that the ammunition would be on their hands in Malta, no other ship having guns of the necessary type. But when Fourgues gets anything into his head and feels sure he is right neither God nor the Devil will make him change his mind, so they were obliged to unload all the ammunition. Now we are empty, but it is probable that they will send us to the Levant again where everybody says that decisive operations are to take place which will put the thing through this time. Fourgues isn’t sure of that and, speaking for myself, neither am I. It would be better if they knew more clearly what they were going to do. Here is the _Pamir_, which for eight days has earned a thousand francs a day doing nothing! Don’t you call that good money wasted?

And now there is a sirocco blowing which is laying us all on our backs. Fourgues and I spend our time on the bridge, fanning ourselves and watching the movements of the great hookers which come and go. One has to acknowledge that it’s pretty work. Fourgues is very enthusiastic, and you know he can handle a ship a bit himself. It’s like Paris in front of the Gare Saint-Lazare, there are so many little and big boats and never a collision.

To speak again of myself, I have had a letter from La Rochelle and my fiancée writes that, as the war seems to be dragging on, there is no reason why we should wait for the end--that we could be married at the first opportunity. I should like to very much, but I want your advice. Do you think it is better to wait for peace and not marry on the spur of the moment? I have saved a thousand francs, although the owner doesn’t give us a sou more now than in time of peace. With this we could start. We should try to get you in France for the wedding! Write me what you think. Sometimes I get the hump a bit, being always on the go and never knowing when it is going to end. I wish I were like Fourgues. When he is down in the mouth he blackguards everyone all round and gets rid of it like that. But I’m not that way. He has just gone ashore because the French _liaison_ officer wishes to give him orders. Perhaps to-night we shall know where we are going. But the mail-boat for the Navy is sailing at once and I don’t want to miss it. Take care of yourself, old man, and write.

ARCHANGEL, _September 15, 1915_.

DEAR OLD MAN,

If you received safely three or four post-cards that I have sent you during the last three months, you may well have asked yourself where the _Pamir_ was going to stop. Cabes, Brest, Trondhjem--they are not precisely in the same latitude! And now we are even higher up, but there is nothing beyond this and you needn’t fear that we shall try to rediscover the North Pole. As a matter of fact all those places fit in quite well, as you will learn. We have seen interesting things; it’s not too warm in summer here, and the old _Pamir_ and all of us are pleased with our little saunter. At Malta, Fourgues came back with the order to leave immediately for Sfax in Tunis. He wanted to know why, but was told to obey orders without asking questions. So we got up steam and ran out of the barrage by night. The English know how to protect their harbours and ports. Wherever there are warships or loaded merchant vessels at anchor, they don’t make them waste time watching for submarines. Nets, buoys, an effective screen of trawlers on guard--and the people inside can sleep soundly. I wouldn’t say that all this is sufficient to drive off submarines, but it does save unnecessary watches. In any case, it’s better to guard against under-sea boats, acknowledging their existence, than to say publicly that they do not exist and actually to keep all sailors on the lookout all the time.

But that’s only my view. The _Pamir_ set out for Sfax. In the morning we passed two French warships which must have been coming from Bizerta. Fourgues noticed that they were steaming straight ahead on their course and said that was a good way to be torpedoed. I reminded him that the Navy doesn’t believe in submarines, so it isn’t worth their while to zigzag and retard the run. Then he asked me why, if they don’t believe in them, they keep everybody on the lookout with all guns loaded and all the rest of it; that they ought to choose, and if there are any, not to say that there aren’t and annoy all sea-going folk. I pass the problem on to you.

At Sfax we found a battalion of Algerian riflemen, Turcos, and other little niggers, which we were to transport to the south of Tunis with their horses and all their outfit. It seems that since the Italians entered the war, things haven’t gone very well in Tripoli. The Touaregs fell on them and pushed them back towards Tunis, and so France is forming an Expeditionary Corps down there in the south to teach the Arabs what’s what. That makes one more place where transports are needed. They take whatever boats pass within reach, so the _Pamir_ was called from Malta. At first they made us carry whatever we found wherever we were, though we never found anything where they sent us. But this time we left and arrived with a purpose.

The Arabs were as good as gold in their coarse yellow and blue uniforms and they didn’t care a damn about anything. For officers they have toughs who drink hard and give a man cells if he so much as looks like grumbling. They wanted to go to Champagne to see what is happening there and are pretty sick to be heading for the desert to fight camels.

But they, too, don’t care a damn about anything, and as long as they fight somebody the place doesn’t matter. The Touaregs will find their match!

As a harbour, Cabes is not ideal and it was hot enough to make the very pebbles sweat. I wonder how the Arabs endure it with their clothing of wool and camel’s hair. But they claim that the thicker it is, the cooler. I preferred to take their word for it, and, as I was half-melted, found it simply overpowering to stay there four days waiting for orders. Not one of us set foot on land, not even Fourgues, who loves to stretch his legs wherever we go. The mere idea of moving about in that furnace made everyone prefer to remain half-naked on board. Finally we got an order to make for Brest. Fourgues thought it was a joke and that the telegram had been wrongly transmitted; but it was Brest all right. He thinks the owner is behind it all, trying to have the _Pamir_ sent from one weird place to another because that increases the money he draws. I believe he is right.

So we were off for Brest and very glad to leave the Mediterranean in the hot season. Moreover, it was a long time since we had been home or read the papers: everybody thought perhaps we might stay awhile, with the chance of getting into touch with things again and of getting news. You can’t imagine how after a time it weighs on one not to know what’s going on. On the _Auvergne_ you get wireless messages from France and elsewhere and there are telegrams passing around all the time which explain things. But on the _Pamir_ we are as stupid as can be because the papers never say anything about Naval affairs anyway. Of course, there is the heading “Marine,” and then--a blank! So the people at home think we are doing nothing. As they are absolutely ignorant about the sea, it’s impossibly to make them understand how we work on boats like yours and the _Pamir_. The Navy is spoken of a little now, but the only time that we of the Mercantile Marine get into the news-sheets is when a cargo-boat runs aground or collides with another or founders. So the public imagines that merchant vessels pass their time in port or in adding to catastrophes; whereas they are at least as useful as the postmen, railwaymen, munition makers, and the like, of whom the papers and the Ministers are talking all the time. It’s just that those fellows are on the spot and can make themselves heard. As for us, they are dead sure they won’t see us arriving with our boats in the Place de la Concorde, so they suppress the things that concern us. Really, it’s not fair. But here I am, talking politics! I get that from Fourgues, but it’s also because I haven’t been to La Rochelle.

We had barely arrived in Brest, when they crammed us full of rifles for the Russians, who it seems are fighting in Poland with wooden sticks. I never saw so many rifles in my life, and there are whole cargoes like that, going from England and other places. The _Pamir_ also carried revolvers, machine-guns--all the small arms, in short. The cartridges went in another boat.

The authorities were hustling us and came on board every few minutes to see if we were ready to start, as we had to go with all speed to Trondhjem, in Norway, and await cargo boats from America and England in order to make the voyage to Russia with them under the protection of British cruisers. In short, it was deuced urgent--the Russians were waiting for their rifles and it was a question of minutes! Not one of us had time in the midst of all this to go ashore, except Fourgues, on matters of business. The more we loaded, the more came. We put the cases everywhere, on the deck, in the fo’c’sle, in all the empty cabins, till there was hardly room to move. If fire had broken out ... my word, with all those wooden cases and well-oiled implements! But Fourgues says he was born under a lucky star and that I must admit it.

The _Pamir_ left without my having needed to buy a railroad time-table and it made my heart ache to pass the Goulet. My fiancée will think that it was because I didn’t want to, for she is like all civilians, who imagines that one does as one pleases.... But you know how it is--after two or three days you get into harness again and you tell yourself that it will come out all right some day. As the Channel isn’t safe, they ordered us to go to Trondhjem by way of the Irish Channel, and we saw some English destroyers cruising on the very spot where a year ago they broke the war news to us.

“Perhaps they are the same!” said Fourgues. “Eh, my boy, we have blown around some miles since that time and the _Pamir_ is still going strong!” And that’s the truth.

It is never very smooth around Norway, but the _Pamir_ was so heavily laden that the seas went over her without her ever flinching. She was, of course, as slow as a tortoise, but in spite of that we got to Trondhjem ahead of time. As we are still without wireless, Fourgues couldn’t know whether we were ahead of the convoy or behind it, so, after rolling for a day in sight of the coast, he put into the fjord, for it seemed hardly worth while burning coal and wearing out the boat for nothing. The semaphore signalled us that the convoy had not been sighted at sea and that we should be notified. So Fourgues was relieved and proceeded to anchor at the farther end, amongst the other ships waiting there.

We waited two days and should have been rather bored, in spite of the bright nights, the midnight sun, the calm waters, and all those things which land-lubbers tell about who have only made one voyage in their lives and have never experienced dirty weather, except that this fellow Fourgues can’t drop anchor anywhere without running up against an old acquaintance. At Trondhjem it was an American with whom he had knocked around once upon a time on the coast of Chili and who, since the war, was plying between the United States, Norway, and Russia. They recognized one another through their field-glasses and the American--Flamigan or Flannigan--came over in his cutter. The two old cronies fell on each other’s necks--it was ten or twelve years since they had met--and all the time we stayed in the fjord, Fourgues, Flannigan and I were as thick as thieves. There was also Flannigan’s mate, who smoked his pipe, drank his whiskey, and said nothing. If you ever meet Flannigan, go right at him without mincing things. He would talk a dog’s hind leg off and is not afraid of saying what he thinks.

Fourgues asked him at once if he had been to Germany, but he swore by all the gods that he hadn’t, though he carries merchandise wherever his Company orders him without feeling obliged to ask to whom it goes. He claimed that he had not been beyond Holland or Denmark, but that’s not quite certain. He might have said it so as not to hurt us, for he loves France, England a little less--having an Irish father--but above all is an American, and told us a lot of things which people in France might take to heart. It was amusing, all the same, to hear someone on affairs in the North, after having listened to Plantat--I believe I told you of him--on those of the East, with an interval of only four months. In this way one gets ideas about the side-shows of the war and what is being thought here, there and elsewhere.

You won’t mind if I tell you what I hear in one place and another, will you? You aren’t obliged to believe any of it, although I write nothing but what I see or hear. And then, you know, fellows such as Plantat and Flannigan are like uncensored newspapers, so there is more chance of their speaking the truth.

Flannigan assures us that the Germans don’t go to sea now much because they won’t risk their merchant vessels in waters where the Allies are sure to nab them sooner or later; but that, in the main, it’s a clever trick to keep for after the war ships that are not worn out, that are in a way almost new, in order to take over the carrying trade everywhere when peace comes and all our merchant vessels are done for. And at bottom, Flannigan can’t be wrong, for if all the ships are made to slog around like the _Pamir_, they will last as long as they do last, but those of the Boches will be in quite a different condition. Fourgues adds that it’s not worth while trying to deny it, as the Allied nations aren’t building a single ship, and anyway a ship can’t be put together in five minutes like a regiment.

So from that side, if we don’t do something in advance, we’re sure to be skinned by the Boches when peace first comes, for they’ll immediately take up all their former trade as well as all that we have lost. The Germans are saying this among the neutrals, and what is more, according to Flannigan, their big commercial and industrial firms in Saxony or Westphalia are at present sending all over the world catalogues of goods to be delivered during the war, from four to six months after the order. Isn’t that the limit? Fourgues told Flannigan it was German bluff! But, no indeed! Flannigan went over to his ship to look for bills of lading of merchandise taken aboard at Rotterdam, Bergen, or elsewhere in the neutral countries, and proved to us, evidence in hand, that he had transported cargoes of products made in Germany since the war and that he was not the only one. It was going to Brazil, the United States, or wherever there were purchasers. He even stated that there had come into France by way of the neutral countries certain hundreds of thousands of tons for which we had paid with our good money. What are we to believe, old man, when the newspapers and the Ministers and the rest keep yelling to us that Germany is economically ruined and dying of starvation? Flannigan can’t be lying, for the neutrals have to get merchandise from somewhere while France is producing nothing and England is beginning to have all she can do to look after herself. As to food, Flannigan says that famine in Germany makes a good story, but that we had better tighten the blockade if we want them to tighten their belts. All this is not very pleasant to hear, but when the person who says it is sincere and has seen things, one can only regret that it’s not known at home and, in any case, that nothing is done to remedy it. This is not to say that they are going to beat us, but just that we ought to prevent them making fools of us.

And they know they’re doing so, as we saw clearly in the German papers Flannigan brought from his boat and which he translated to us by the hour, as neither Fourgues nor I know the language. I’ll not tell all that, because you must know what they are saying from the wireless communications received on the _Auvergne_. But there are a lot of little details by which one can see how they pull the strings and how we move accordingly. For instance, we are forbidden to say where the English fleet is. Well, the illustrated halfpenny papers present the Germans with photographs of the English fleet, the names of all the ships, their anchorage, the number of their guns, and everything. No one in France knows the names of the French generals in command of the armies nor the official description of sectors, but the German papers serve this up to their readers every morning. As to Naval espionage, Flannigan repeated a hundred times that the Germans know more than no matter what high Admiral of the Entente, and that before the news of the movement of an Allied cargo-boat or warship reaches Paris or London it is known in Berlin and corresponding orders have been given.

It would be nothing if they stopped there, but Flannigan says they have understood that the maritime problem will be solved for them by the submarine. He gave us details of such precision that we saw very well he had been in there and had heard the Germans talk at home. Then he recollected himself. But one thing is certain, the Germans are constructing a formidable type of submarine with guns, mines, etc., and though time is needed to manufacture a series of such craft, within a definite period they will have something thoroughly ugly ready in the way of under-sea warfare.

Fourgues repeated to Flannigan how he had been made fun of at the Admiralty in Paris when he talked of submarines, and Flannigan answered that it was our business if we waited till the Huns started; that the Germans didn’t hesitate to say what they meant to do and that when we were once in the soup it wouldn’t do any good to call them pirates while they simply went on sinking our ships. In regard to piracy, Flannigan, who, being a neutral, is above all a partisan of the freedom of the seas, says that everybody is laughing at the Allies with our scrupulous observance of the Hague Convention and that the Germans won’t be more scrupulous at sea than they are on land, if they have the means, because the new international laws will be made by the victor and because, with their submarines, they will soon show us that the old ones no longer count. Flannigan reasoned well:

“You established your German frontier by the Treaty of Frankfort and you announced this diplomatically to the world. Did that hinder Germany from invading you where she wanted to, or you from entering Alsace which you had recognized as a German possession? Therefore, in the stress of war treaties no longer mean anything, for your first effort is to destroy them. And so what’s the good of yelping about international laws? Germany doesn’t care a damn and is counting on victory to change them to her advantage. Why don’t you do the same? Everything that links you with Germany is destroyed. Her signature is no longer worth the paper it’s written on, yet you continue to embarrass yourselves with it till the whole world believes that it is Germany who makes war while you follow after, six months or a year behind. It’s like their cards for meat, sugar, the national register, and all that, at which your papers poke fun, saying that Germany is at the end of her strength and that next winter she will be dead--you will come to that, too, if the war goes on. But Germany, who prepared for war during peace, is preparing for peace during war. She does at once, without seeming to be forced to it, that which you will be forced and constrained to do by circumstances. The same with asphyxiating gas, liquid fire, and all the horrors she employs; when your _poilus_ have had enough of dying like flies, you will understand that it is as natural to kill with fire and poison as with shells and bullets. In short, my boys, if you don’t want to have it go on for years and if you want victory, get a move on, for Germany is not going to omit a single means of annoying you.”

I should never finish telling you all that Flannigan said, and all was confirmed during a walk we took with him on shore. We talked with Norwegians who had been in Germany. They told us about the Zeppelins that are going up and down the North Sea and the Baltic every day, whereas there is not a single balloon around England or France.

So, of course, it is not worth while saying that we shall smash the Germans at sea.

As soon as an English destroyer arrives in the North Sea, the Zeppelins announce it in the ports and nothing is left outside but submarines and mines. Seriously, Naval warfare is not what it was, old man, but the Boches are the only ones who seem to have found it out. The Norwegians and the Swedes who were there did not say much--out of politeness, because we were French, but we understood that they think Germany has the advantage, and that, after having chosen to make war, she fights better than we.

Fourgues and I remembered all this when we left and we discussed it till we got to Archangel. The _Pamir_ picked up the convoy at sea ten miles from Trondhjem and we went around Norway together. There were two English cruisers and four destroyers to escort fourteen merchant vessels. It was a fine convoy and all those ships together looked like a naval squadron, but the people who decide the formation of convoys would do well not to group boats going fifteen knots with those which can make seven or eight only by going full speed ahead. After two days’ sailing, the _Pamir_, which was about in the middle, began to lose sight of those farthest in advance, as well as of those farthest behind. The convoying ships kept tearing up and down to keep us together. We did get together somehow or other, but after the North Cape there was a little spell of choppy seas and rolling and pitching and as much visibility as in a tunnel. It lasted twenty hours, and when the weather cleared there were only six of us out of the fourteen. The fast ones had run ahead; the cripples had simply disappeared. Naturally none of the absent had wireless and the warships spent three days hunting for them. There was one with a damaged rudder that had jammed itself on the jagged reefs they have up there and split in two. The people were fished out, but there’s no fear of the cargo getting to the Russian front.

Finally our convoy dribbled in to Archangel in bunches of three or four. It is the best time up here. After a month and a half or two months, everything will be frozen out, literally and figuratively. But it’s not with fourteen cargoes nor fifty nor a hundred that one could give the Russians what they need! The fleet of the whole world would not be enough, but it is well to give them all we can. It will serve them right--and us too--for letting the Germans get in everywhere! It seems that at the declaration of war three-fourths of their factories were stopped because it was the Germans who ran them. Mechanics can’t be taught in forty-eight hours, as I know after my experience with the shaft of the _Pamir_; and if you add that the Boches simply appropriated all their factories in Poland, you can see why the _Pamir_ and her consorts must fly to Archangel with war-material. They loaded us at Brest without even giving me forty-eight hours to go to La Rochelle, under pretext that the Russians were waiting for us as for the Messiah. But, Lor’ love you, here there’s no hurry. They have already taken twenty days to unload a part of the fourteen ships and are not nearly through. At the time of writing, the _Pamir_ has had only her forward hold emptied--the aft hold can wait! They sent us away from the docks because of another convoy which had arrived in the meantime and which they began to unload. When all these boats are half emptied they are sure they can’t get away and they let them rot in a corner of the docks.

And whether they hurry or not, it’s all the same. The things lie on the docks in heaps in the rain and the wind. From time to time a train comes along in a leisurely manner, loads up a little pile without hurrying itself, and starts away again in two or three days. If it ever reaches the Carpathians it will be because the track goes downhill. Everywhere it’s the same thing. They say that Russia is great, that she is invincible, that it will take ten years, that the Boches will get to Moscow.... _Nitchevo!_ Napoleon went away again and the Russian-Japanese business wasn’t a defeat. Such, old man, is the country where I find myself at present!

Fourgues could hardly hold himself in at first to see the _Pamir_ lying by idle. Now he has found some friends, Russian Naval and Military officers who come on board and with whom he lunches ashore. When I ask him how much longer we are going to stay here, he answers, “_Nitchevo!_” in his Provence accent and the Russians roar with laughter. They drink hard and try to get him to do the same, but Fourgues is determined not to drink more than is good and uses the occasion to beat them at poker. Since they will poison themselves up here, he seizes the opportunity to increase his income, the old fox. Mornings, during the cleaning, he tells me what they said when they were half full. Not a few of them are pro-German, especially among the nobility. It seems that there have been formidable scandals at court and in the Ministries. When I try to pump him, Fourgues answers that he ought not to say anything, but that he is glad he is French, for, although at home we do all sorts of stupid things, at least no one is working for the King of Prussia. As Fourgues never jokes about such matters, I believe he must have been hearing some pretty raw stories--about the railways in particular. Cars are lost in Russia, and even whole trains, without anyone knowing what has become of them. And what will they say in Brest when they know that we lay here more than twenty days with their rifles!

Finally, yesterday, Fourgues said that he had had his bellyful of Archangel, vodka, and poker--perhaps he had been losing!--and he got hold of an officer of the port who came along talking hot air, and was promised that the _Pamir_ will be unloaded to-morrow. I dare say that means eight days, but, at any rate, as one of the English cruisers will sail this evening for _Youmanie_,[1] I shall give her this letter, having finished my twenty pages. You can’t call yourself neglected--eh, old chap? But you are good, too, sending me as much news as you can and your books. I have finished the first volume of the Naval History. I will write about it if I remember. Except for reading, I am bored to death, for at the rate at which the _Pamir_ has been going, I wonder where on earth they will send us next, and in the meantime, what is to become of La Rochelle? Let us hope that by the end of the year, we shall have peace or the wedding! Don’t laugh at me, old boy. I have had about all I can stand.

[1] England.

MUDROS, _December 18, 1915_.

Here we are again in the Levant after all, but not without adventures, and it’s really no joke to have wandered all round Europe from Archangel to the Dardanelles only to fall into our present scrape. At Toulon I received your letter of the end of September in answer to mine from Archangel. Thanks very much. I shall speak of it if I have time, but for the moment I am going to tell you the adventures of the old _Pamir_ for the last three months. You might indeed call us the Wandering Jews! The longer it lasts, the more they grab merchant ships wherever they find them, putting no matter what on the deck provided it goes away--and to Hell with it!

Fourgues finally did get his stuff unloaded at Archangel and succeeded in sailing without a convoy. He said it wasn’t worth while losing time with boats that can’t get up any speed, and that when there are too many hookers and not enough convoying ships it’s just a little bit too good a target for submarines. Wherever we called I noticed that Fourgues had not been far wrong when he said, at the beginning, that the submarines were going to count later on. The officials are beginning to find them a nuisance. What would happen if all those bureaucrats had to go to sea! They might then find something to say besides: “Pshaw! Don’t believe everything you hear, and, anyway, we sink so many that soon there won’t be any more!” Of course, after that one can only shut up. Mum’s the word in the newspapers and everywhere else!... I will tell you all my little notions as occasion arises.

The _Pamir_ was told to go to Newcastle for orders and, in case there were none, to take aboard coal. We were pretty well shaken up as we were empty. On the return trip we met a good many boats going to Archangel. They needed to hurry, for the ice will soon begin, and if the Russians do not set themselves seriously to work, they can’t smash the Germans with the stuff they received this summer. What good does it do not to tell the public the truth, when sooner or later it is sure to come out? They tell us that in two weeks or in three months everything will go like greased lightning, and then, three months later, things are just the same or a little bit worse. And on whom shall the public lay the blame? On those who have deceived it! For they knew that things would go badly and it was not worth while to say they would go well, and the public is obliged to believe the leaders are to blame, because they didn’t know how to get out of the scrape. You can’t deny it, it’s those who govern who are on the wrong track.

At Newcastle they told us to go to Southampton to ship equipment for the English Expeditionary Forces in France. We had just enough coal to get us across and the _Pamir_ went down the North Sea and the Channel, the papers everywhere saying that the Channel is completely closed to German submarines by means of nets and a host of ingenious devices; saying too, that to reach the Atlantic or the Mediterranean, they will have to go around by way of Scotland, and as they haven’t sufficient radius of action there is nothing further to be feared from them. I don’t know much about it, but having seen what the Germans have done elsewhere, I expect them to find some way of getting through those ingenious devices and also of constructing submarines that will go to the ends of the earth. It’s as plain as the nose on your face and to say the contrary is to act the ostrich. Fourgues says there will be a painful awakening, but that everybody will blame it on the Boches instead of recognizing that we did not make proper provision for the danger. He gets into awful rages, but as far as I’m concerned, if I can only go to La Rochelle I ask for nothing more.

At Southampton we took on motor-cars and tractors for the English Army and carried them to Havre. I had time in England to make a trip on land where there are posters everywhere, begging folks to enlist. It really does look as if the English were bestirring themselves more than last year when they regarded this as a mere Colonial war. That’s not to say they have as yet been affected as seriously as we. They still leave swarms of Boches at liberty, their business firms continue to ship cargoes to the neutral neighbours of Germany, and of course, they can’t with one stroke of the pen re-form an army ready for active service. The majority of their regular officers have already been killed and they are obliged to make captains and first lieutenants out of good cricket and golf players. It will take time for them to train. As to equipment, it’s the same thing--they have hardly begun to mobilize their factories for war production because they did not want to stop British foreign trade. But we can’t say much, for we did the same and it’s hardly a matter of weeks since France began to go to England, America, and Spain for materials--where there are plenty. The Germans went to work early and we’re a year behind them.

There is an awful confusion at Havre and they say Rouen is the same. Really it’s astonishing how the responsible people let cars and war-material pile up in the ports. That comes doubtless from the general ignorance in France as regards all maritime matters and also from the fact that the high Naval officers who are in command at the commercial ports know nothing about traffic. Anyway, Fourgues has to fight to get his stuff unloaded at Havre. They piled it in a heap on the dock, and when we left it was still there in the rain.

While we were there we got orders to go to Marseilles, to get a cargo for the army of the East. The _Pamir_ could have taken from the wharf at Havre some hundreds of tons destined for Toulon or Marseilles; in this way the freightage would have cost less. But it was officially arranged for to go by rail and we left in ballast. Once more we went around Spain without paying for our trip, and even so arrived ahead of time, as our cargo had not all reached Marseilles--because the trains were held up as usual. The papers may talk what rot they like about the preparations made and all the success that will attend us on all the fronts next spring, but we who do the work of transporting the necessary material see plainly that we shan’t outstrip the Boches at our present rate of going.

You know I’ve no excess of admiration for the Boches, and if there were no other reason I should have a grudge against them for the dog’s life they have made us lead for a year and a half, and because of them I don’t see when I can go home. But you know, there are things they do better than we and which we should learn from them if we don’t want to lose months and years. How does it help us to refuse to imitate them in such matters? What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. We shan’t become savages because we forestall them in their tricks. Much good it will do us to wait till we’re compelled to imitate them. In the Naval History you lent me I read recently that the Coalition only beat Napoleon when by dint of being beaten, they learnt to copy him. And it took them fifteen or twenty years, and if they had caught on sooner it wouldn’t have taken so long. Why is it that in France we still run the limited and express trains which I saw arriving in Havre and Marseilles? The Norwegians and Swedes told us that for a long time the Germans have been running all their trains at the same speed, the passengers in between the goods. In that way traffic is not delayed, whereas in France, with the idea of making people behind the lines believe that the war is being won as easily as a game of cards, they put on a lot of fast trains which are only of use to the shirkers and which hold up the shells and war-material at all the stations. So how can you expect things to happen?

I pondered all this when the _Pamir_ was ordered to anchor at Estaque, near Marseilles, for five or six days, as there wasn’t a single foot of unencumbered dock in the port of Marseilles and all because of the congestion on the railways. One day twenty-four of us were rolling and pitching in the mistral; another day there were thirty-two, empty and loaded, each earning a thousand or two thousand francs a day doing nothing.

I tell you, if a Boche submarine came into this road, which is open and without protection, about one or two in the morning, she could send a good half-dozen of craft like the _Pamir_ to the bottom and get away before anyone had time to say “Jack Robinson!” But the land-lubbers, civilians or service men, said the idea was really too funny and that submarines wouldn’t dare come near the coast of France, either here or on the Atlantic! After that, all we can do is to pull ourselves together and await the torpedo with arms folded.

Finally they towed us from Estaque to Marseilles, and then, as the authorities had made us lie around for nearly a week without doing a thing, we must take on board three thousand tons of cargo right off, at one go. The country would be in danger if the _Pamir_ hadn’t slung her hook in forty-eight hours! They made us roll down into our hold the contents of thirty trains, which came in solemn procession, night and day, without stopping. The _Pamir_ was away off to “Hell and gone” in the basin of Arenc and all the stuff was for Mudros--carriages, provisions, shells, guns, shoes--everything, I tell you.

They were tumbled in as they came and I had to stow them. You can imagine how easy it was. Fourgues never ceased cursing, saying that if we had bad weather the cargo would shift to blazes. But they told him to shut his mouth, and they didn’t pick their words. There was one train which came with cases from Milo. There had been a mistake, and they turned out not to be for the _Pamir_, but for another boat. They arrived about midnight of the second night, and I said to the military officer in charge that it must be a mistake. I didn’t half catch it. He fairly wiped his feet on me, saying that Mudros, Milo, and the whole caboodle, they were all in the East, and that he was ordered to pack into the _Pamir_ all the trains that came and that I was not going to send that one back when they were already late. That Johnny wouldn’t get through a geography exam.

So I shipped the things because the Army bloke ordered me to, but when I informed Fourgues in the morning, he told the Navy bloke, who had come to give us our sailing orders. And the Navy bloke was furious, and said that we were idiotic to load on stuff for Milo when the rest of the material was for Mudros. The military bloke had gone to breakfast. The Navy bloke went after him and they said a few pleasant things to each other. At last it was agreed that the _Pamir_ should stop at Milo and unload the cases and then go on to Mudros. We closed the holds and battened down the hatches and were ready to leave our moorings when another train with a dozen cases of aeroplanes pulled in and came alongside. The non-commissioned officer in charge jumped on board and asked for the skipper:

“Are you the _Pamir_?”

“Looks like it,” said Fourgues.

“All right; here are twelve aeroplanes for you to take.”

“Well, old fellow, we can tow them if you wish, but as for taking twelve aeroplanes on board, it’s now too late, our hold is full.”

“Not at all! I’ve been waiting at Miramar for two days and I just got the order to-night to send them by the _Pamir_. The matter is one of the utmost urgency.”

“Oh, yes. And how long ago did your utmostly urgent train leave Paris?”

“Twenty-three days ago!”

What can one do, old man? Such things simply disarm one! When Fourgues heard that the poor devil had been knocking about the main lines of France for twenty-three days with twelve aeroplanes to look after he said we would take all we could. We found places for six, three forward and three aft. The cases are regular monuments, and when they dangle at the end of the cable you have to look out so as not to get your jaw stove in. And to make all that fast! The deck was just broad enough to take them, however, and we served lines over them and lashed them to starboard and port. They rose as high as the bridge.

At this point our old friend the Army bloke paid us another visit and said that, as the _Pamir_ was ordered to take all twelve cases, we must load the remaining six in a second tier on top of the first. Then Fourgues fairly let rip. He produced cusses that I had never heard before and I assure you they were great! He said that his boat was as full as an egg; that it was not the custom to pile cargo higher than the masts; that he had to see to navigate; that he was not sure the six cases we had already wouldn’t pitch overboard with the first good blow, and that the other six might go by the air-route, perhaps, but certainly not on the _Pamir_. Thereupon he gave the order to sail and we skipped out, leaving the three blokes, the railway man, the Army officer, and the sailor, discussing each other’s characters on the quay.

Fortunately we had no really bad weather from Marseilles to Milo--nothing but moderate rolling and pitching, just enough to get the wind up us about the stowage of our cargo. We could hear hollow sounds of boxes knocking around the hold and some of the stuff must be in a nice state. We didn’t open it up, but it will be lovely and we are the ones that will catch it! However, Fourgues will give as good as he gets, for he can’t stand being blamed when it’s somebody else’s fault. I don’t know what the aeroplanes in their cases will look like. As they were on the deck they swung about a good deal, and no matter how much we tightened the lines with which they were lashed, every time the boat rolled they shifted a little with a “Bang!”

At Milo no one wanted to unload the cases we had taken from the wrong train because the Head of the military unit to whom they were consigned, who should have been there, had gone away several days before. We haven’t yet been able to ascertain his whereabouts. It’s the same old story over and over--enough to make one wild!

In the harbour at Milo there were a lot of war-vessels--French, English, Russian, and Italian--for it seems we are ready to fall upon the Greeks if they keep on keeping on. The English, who got here first, didn’t lose any time before installing nets and a barrier against submarines. It’s very nice to say in the papers and on the platforms that submarines don’t exist, but it’s better to take measures, for they are beginning to sink ships a little bit everywhere. Fourgues says he would have preferred to be wrong, but that everything he had thought is beginning to come true and that it doesn’t amuse him to act the part of Cassandra quite so successfully.

All this time the _Pamir_ continues to be without wireless or guns or anything to protect her, and she is not the only one. At Milo and at Mudros, where we are now, out of every ten ships seven or eight have no wireless, and by gum, you should hear the skippers and officers of those cargo boats! But all they say and all they think, what difference does it make? Everybody knows they will keep on just the same! If they are done in by a submarine the paper will say, “Hun piracy!! Such and such a boat sunk! There were no military on board!” Damn! It’s simply too idiotic the way things at sea are run.

The _Pamir_ went straight on to Mudros without unloading anything. You can have no idea of the moving that’s going on all over the country. They are evacuating everywhere. Good-bye, Constantinople! Good-bye, end of Turkey! Good-bye, Gallipoli, the Dardanelles, the coast of Asia! Good-bye, everything! All the munitions and men that are not too badly damaged are going to Salonica. We are going to save Serbia if it isn’t too late. Suvla is evacuated. The English left millions of francs worth of material which they set on fire. Seddul-Bahr, Kum-Kalé, and Gaba are being rolled into one to make an army of the East, and it’s not a bit too soon to think of putting troops at Salonica, for where, I wonder, are the Boches going to be stopped? It seems that this was an idea of our _Président du Conseil_. It’s a jolly good thing he put his finger on the spot, for the Dardanelles business was done for several months ago. With an army in Salonica and a Franco-British army at that, we can keep the Boches from getting down any farther. What couldn’t they do in the Mediterranean, I wonder, if they had Greece and the Peloponnesus? But all that is politics again.

The _Pamir_ is waiting at Mudros. All the empty vessels are taken to hasten the evacuation. We are as full as an oyster, and we are left here because there’s no room at Salonica. Where the deuce shall we unload our different sorts of merchandise, our aeroplanes, and our victuals? I don’t know any more than you! But one thing I do know--nothing of all we have brought from Marseilles will ever reach its destination! Oh, it will be used somewhere or other, but everything in this country is upside down and all the _Pamir_ can do is to empty her hold on to the wharf she’s ordered to without troubling about what becomes of it. All this is not funny, old man!

And how long are we going to stay here? Fourgues raises Hell, but that doesn’t help matters. The other ships come and go, but the _Pamir_ receives no orders. I hope she will go to Salonica because I want a squint at what is going on there, but ever since the beginning of the war nothing we have expected has happened, so I don’t care much what it is as long as it can’t be La Rochelle.

So long, old man. I got your last from Bizerta when the _Auvergne_ was in dry-dock. You gave me a good bit of Navy gossip and I should like to comment on it, but a boat is about to leave for Malta and I want to get this letter off. All I can say is that it seems to me not much better on the warships than on hookers like the _Pamir_. May God grant that on land, in politics, and the diplomatic service they are cleverer than our Naval chiefs! My sole consolation is that the Germans seem to be more fat-headed than we; else, with their preparation and our mistakes at the beginning, they would have mopped us up long since. Not having done so, they won’t be able to. With this consoling thought I wish you a happy New Year and hope that we shall meet in 1916. _Je t’embrasse._