PART FOUR

BALTIMORE, U.S.A., _July 16, 1916_.

MY DEAR OLD MAN,

Isn’t it absurd that after two years’ interval I should again be passing the 14th of July in the United States? Only, this time you aren’t here and there’s not the slightest chance of our running into each other. I wonder if I should find you changed after all this time! Perhaps I shouldn’t know you any more now that you have shaved off your moustache in order to be like your brother-officers--you must have done it for swank, old man, since you got into the Navy List, but it won’t go down with me! Nor am I the skinny little chap you used to knock about to see if I could keep my end up. I have a beard like a missionary and my fiancée says that I have got stouter and that now I look like a man. So much for my appearance. As for the rest, it’s even worse. You can well believe that two years of hard labour like that we have had on the _Pamir_--and all that we have seen and all that we have heard--such things steady the head. At La Rochelle they listened to me as if I were an oracle, even the old people, which is quite different from what it was two years ago. Look here! I’ve pondered a little, and I now have my own opinions! Before, I was just happy-go-lucky, I didn’t care a hang for anything, I found everything perfectly simple as long as I had something to eat and my feet high and dry on the bridge if we were shipping heavy seas. Now I see more clearly the whys and the wherefores. I find life’s more complicated, and there are even times when I really think I might be quite at sea if I had to run the war myself. It’s age coming--maturity, as they call it. And so, alas, I realize that the more it goes on the more things will multiply and increase in difficulty until, if I ever have any real responsibilities, I shall be much too ancient and too concerned with a lot of considerations which will hinder me from acting. After two years of war, there is one conclusion of which I am sure: All the top men and Grand Panjandrums are too old, and what disgusts me is that it’s ten to one I’ll become like them. Everyone isn’t like Fourgues, who will soon be fifty and who can decide in five seconds because he is willing to take responsibility. But for one like that there are a hundred nonentities, and the country is suffering from it.

You will wonder if I am having the blues because I tell you this nonsense instead of the story of the _Pamir_, which, you say, amuses you. The 14th of July far from France, without a chum with whom to yarn--it gives me the hump. Fourgues and Villiers--who are really good fellows--tried to distract me at a music-hall in Baltimore, but I was bored. And then, hang it all----But I won’t go on. Let’s get back to the subject.

I was able to get to La Rochelle. We sent you a card, my fiancée and I. After two weeks at Bilbao, the _Pamir_ was sent to Boucau to unload her ore. It’s a rotten port where the least swell sets the ship rolling like the deuce and where the anchorage is bad. Seeing that we should be long in unloading, as there was no proper plant, Fourgues let me hook it for La Rochelle and I didn’t stop to ask for details. I was glad that the train went fast, though I did wonder how long they were going to keep up this levity of burning coal for people on pleasure-trips instead of saving it for the soldiers and the armies. When I said that, I was told that the country would grouse if there were restrictions. That’s a wretched argument. They will have to come to it sooner or later, and then the Government will seem to have been forced and not to have foreseen anything; whereas, if it began at once, no one would be astonished. There have been other surprises since the war began and the country can stand being told there are strict orders. Only, to say that all’s for the best and that we shall never be obliged to do as the Boches do! At home I saw a lot of friends who told me stories about the censored papers, saying that things are going well and that we have all we need and that it will all be over in three or four months. What sort of fools can such writers be?

* * * * *

They have only to come and see and they’ll see. It’s like the Boche submarines. On that subject, old man, we of the sea have only to keep our mouths shut. Everybody knows more about it than we. During the first two or three days that I was at home, I said what I thought, but after a while I stopped because they demonstrated to me mathematically that the submarines were all bluff. All the stories I told of the sea, of my trips and what I had seen, they listened to attentively and it was flattering. Even the story of the _Mer-Morte_ was considered very interesting. Really, it was exactly like servants reading a novel and asking for sensational details! But when I said that the _Provence_, the _Ville-de-la-Ciotat_, the _Lusitania_, and the rest were only the beginning, they called me a pessimist, and told me we were sinking a lot of submarines, that it was officially stated the Germans wouldn’t have any more, and, anyway, that only a thousandth of the trade had been lost, which didn’t amount to anything. The stupidest part of it was that I was obliged to say the same to my fiancée or she would have been worried to death. She made me swear to note that submarines weren’t dangerous and to keep my life-belt on all the time. I swore all she wanted. When she cries I am helpless. I didn’t tell her that the _Pamir_ has neither wireless nor guns and isn’t likely to have them, and that if we run into a submarine all we can do is to blow on it to see if it will sneeze. As I stayed only five days the papers were not ready and we couldn’t be married. We decided that it will come off next time even if I get only forty-eight hours’ leave. I had put aside fifteen hundred francs, which I gave to her, and she will arrange everything, furniture and outfit, to set us up in a little house two or three hundred yards from her parents. Well, old man, though it was hard to say good-bye at the station, we shall be married before the year is up, I hope. Fourgues told me that I could count on eight days, but the unloading was done very quickly at Boucau because the weather cleared up, and I received a telegram the fifth day, ordering me to rejoin at Saint-Nazaire double quick. The _Pamir_ was to call there two days after and would probably sail for America. I was rather astonished at the destination because the _Pamir_ has the habit now of tubbing it around Europe; but sailors must be ready for anything.

Marguerite stuffed my bag full of preserves and made a big parcel of collars and handkerchiefs, socks and shirts. She has embroidered lovely initials on all of them and added some little silk pocket handkerchiefs, some coloured braces, and some absolutely ripping neckties. Dandy Dick, that’s me, old man! Villiers, who puts in all his spare time at the haberdashers’ collecting multicoloured hosiery, is dying of envy.

I couldn’t find anybody at Saint-Nazaire; only a letter at the company’s agency, in which Fourgues told me to report at Boulogne, the _Pamir_ having been sent there, and that he would expect me the following Sunday. You can imagine what a mug I felt to have run away from La Rochelle without having had time to draw breath--and all the more so as it only gave me forty-eight more hours, not long enough for me to go home. So I stopped a day in Paris. A bobby hauled me up at the Nantes station and another in the Paris Tube, to inquire about my military status. I was in mufti. If I had only known, I should have made the entire trip in the Company’s uniform, for everyone in France looks at you askance and says disagreeable things if you’re not in uniform.

I found the _Pamir_ at Boulogne in the Loubet dock, taking on a cargo of scrapped _matériel_ from the British front here: wagons, guns, motor-cars, sheds, and scrap iron, to be repaired in England. Fourgues explained that the _Pamir_ should have gone to America to get steel bars for the manufacture of shells in France, but as that order wouldn’t be ready for a month, they had seized the opportunity to have us potter around a little in the English Channel. For “pottering” it was rather important work, seeing that we made two trips each way and that both times in England we took on from two hundred to two hundred and fifty brand-new chassis for motor-cars and trolleys for the Flanders front. The English are beginning to get under way seriously. They were slow about it, but it’s not the same now as it was when we were there during the first year of the war. I don’t know how long it’s going to take them to train their new army and to make soldiers and officers, but as far as munitions go, there’s no question. You have no idea of the traffic between England and France. It is coming into all the ports--Calais, Boulogne, Fécamp, Le Tréport, Dieppe, Le Havre, Rouen, Caen--without counting the little ones. They are all crowded. As soon as we arrived in England they got to work, the _Pamir_ was made fast to a wharf, and they pulled out her cargo and shoved in another. It took longer in France, although that, too, is a little better now than last year. Oh, it’s not ideal yet, and one often wonders what all the empty boats and cars are doing. In four or five years, maybe the officials and the office-Johnnies will look at their watches instead of piling up Forms--and Forms--and Forms.

At last we got off for Baltimore with some dozens of cases of French exports--fabrics, Parisian specialities--nothing much. When I think that the Germans continue to send their catalogues and merchandise over the whole world by way of the neutrals, and that the three-thousand-ton _Pamir_ was sent out with scarcely two or three hundred tons of cheap stuff, it seems hardly worth while to talk in the papers about economizing. This little Atlantic trip will have cost the country some twenty-five thousand francs, some of which she ought to have recovered. And it’s like that everywhere. They can issue a new loan, but Fourgues says it’s saving the pennies and wasting billions of pounds.

Villiers and Fourgues have spent their time during the voyage squabbling at meals, arguing about all that has happened during the last two or three months: the Irish rebellion, the retreat in Mesopotamia, the Jutland battle, and the death of Kitchener--to say nothing of our own troubles.

* * * * *

At first Fourgues was a little overbearing toward Villiers because he believed Villiers contradicted him just to get his dander up, and two or three times he told Villiers that that was enough, that he wouldn’t have him take that tone with him. But this was in the Mediterranean when Villiers first joined with his neckties and his manicured hands. But when he put the engine right before you had time to sneeze and now that everything is going like a dream, Fourgues knows that he can’t be treated that way because it’s pretty good to have an officer on whom one can depend. So he asks Villiers’ advice on a lot of technical matters. But when it comes to their grand discussions of Naval questions and the politics of the war, they go it hammer and tongs. At bottom they hold the same views and I am beginning to believe that they wrangle for fun. Old Villiers has a little way of arguing in a calm voice, as though he were afraid of disarranging his collar or the parting of his hair. Fourgues tries to follow suit and says:

“Look here, Villiers, let’s talk this over calmly. We’re not of the same opinion, but it will do this boy good to hear your arguments.”

The “boy” is I! Ever since Villiers arrived, Fourgues has made me take a back seat because I haven’t the guts to hold my own with him. And also at present Fourgues is sick With me for not having got married at La Rochelle. He says that I am a laggard in love and that next time he will go to La Rochelle with me and march me straight to the registry from the train. If that will get me back sooner, I shall be delighted!

So, then, I listen without being obliged to take part. When Villiers is optimistic, Fourgues says that everything is going to the dogs. When Villiers is pessimistic, Fourgues says that the Allies haven’t made a single mistake and that as the Boches haven’t got us yet, we’ve got them beat and are going to wade right into them. Only, he shouts all this at the top of his voice because he can’t hold out more than five minutes in the face of Villiers’ durned coolness.

I believe they have discussed the Jutland affair at every meal, trying to find out who was beaten, what the results were, etc. Villiers is friendly with a lot of engineer officers, who, like himself, passed through the School of the Arts et Métiers and he is also accustomed to dealing with figures and is very exact. He says that things like the Jutland affair kick up a dust in the newspapers and in speeches, but that in fact they are of absolutely no use whatsoever. Fourgues is for hitting the Germans every time there is a chance, and he says that if the English had been able to smash the whole German fleet the war would be almost over. Villiers maintains that this is not true at all, that even if the big German ships were at the bottom of the sea, their coasts would still be just as well defended by guns, mines, submarines, and Zeppelins, and that the English could not get any nearer than now; he also says that if the Germans had lost all their big ships, under-sea warfare would not be changed one little bit and the submarines would give us just as much trouble. Battleships, he says, are as much ancient history as muzzle-loading cannon; in the future there won’t be anything but submarines, mines, and light boats to carry on the real work, as this war has demonstrated.

* * * * *

Although I know Fourgues really agrees, he would reply--just to keep things going--that as long as one side builds big ships, the other is obliged to. But Villiers didn’t catch on. He asked by what means the _Gambetta_, the _Ocean_, the _Cressy_, the _Hogue_, the _Aboukir_, the _Bouvet_, the _Hampshire_, and all the other big ships were sunk? Not by big ships, but by torpedoes which cost twenty thousand francs at most, but which can send battleships costing fifty millions and more to the bottom. So if for each ship worth fifty millions, twenty-five submarine torpedo-boats or mine-layers were built, the Allies would have a thousand, perhaps, and the Germans, with all the Dreadnoughts in the world, would not dare put their noses out of doors. But inversely, if the Germans had five hundred or a thousand submarines instead of big ships, they would make the sea untenable for us. As they are not people who stick to a thing when they find it’s a dud, they soon tumbled to it that submarines and mines are the weapons for war at sea and are going to turn them out like hot cakes. Fourgues repeated this conversation to me so often that I knew Villiers had shut him up completely, but he wanted to quibble, so one evening Villiers said to him: “To-morrow I’m going to bring you an estimate of the cost of the Battle of Jutland according to official accounts in England at the time we left, and you will see if it’s worth while to build big ships.”

He came to luncheon next day with his estimate and Fourgues shut up. Villiers gave me permission to make a copy to send you. He brought all the figures up to date with the latest information received in America and you simply can’t get away from it--it’s statistics. Here is the schedule. I shall copy it for you just as he put it down:

COST OF THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND

The sum-total of the money lost in the Battle of Jutland comes under five heads:--

1. English and German ships sunk;

2. Repair of damaged ships;

3. Cost of artillery;

4. Cost of coal and extras;

5. Capital represented by the men drowned and the pensions paid to their dependents.

I. SUNKEN SHIPS

_German_ _Francs._ Derfflinger 60 million Lützow 60 ” Kaiser 60 ” Hindenburg 60 ” Pommern 30 ” Elbing 10 ” Wiesbaden 10 ” Rostock 10 ” Frauenlob 6 ” Nine destroyers (in all) about 27 ” One submarine 2 ” --- German total 335 million

_English_ Invincible 50 million Indefatigable 50 ” Queen Mary 60 ” Black Prince 30 ” Warrior 30 ” Defence 35 ” Eight light vessels (in all) about 25 ” --- English total 280 million Total value of all ships sunk 615 million

II. REPAIR OF DAMAGED SHIPS.

The number of ships damaged is much greater than that of ships destroyed. Some are certainly no longer available and represent a dead loss. It is impossible to determine the cost of the repair of the others, but one cannot be far from the truth in estimating under this head almost a third of what comes under the head of total destruction, or about 200 million, which, added to the first total, makes about 800 millions.

III. COST OF ARTILLERY.

There were about fifty big ships engaged in the battle, armed with guns of 305, 340, or 380 millimetres, in varying numbers. Admitting the average number per ship to be ten guns firing two shots a minute at an average cost of 3,000 francs a shot, we have: 50 × 10 × 2 × 3,000 = 3 million francs a minute. Summing up the minutes of firing and admitting 45 as the total, we have 3 × 45 = 135 million francs. Adding the fire of the secondary armament, and guns which burst or which must be changed, the total for the artillery can be given as about 150 million, which, added to the others, makes 950 million.

IV. COST OF COAL AND EXTRAS.

A big ship going at top speed burns about 1,000 tons a day at 50 francs a ton (if not more), making 50,000 francs a day. Admitting the total of the operations at top speed and under full steam to have lasted at least one day, put down two and a half million for the big ships alone. Adding the coal for the smaller boats will bring it up to three million. The wear and tear of boilers, dynamos, and machinery, other than the damage due to the actual fighting, would make this amount up to 20 million, which, added to the preceding 950 and rounding it out with things we may not have accounted for, would constitute a total of about forty million pounds sterling for the material alone.

V. CAPITAL REPRESENTED BY THE OFFICERS AND CREWS.

Certain ships had only one or a few men saved. The total number of dead certainly exceeds 10,000 men. There were also many wounded, some permanently disabled, others only partly crippled. Admitting a total of 20,000 persons for whom the State must pay pensions, either to them or to their dependants, and taking an average of 10,000 francs for the annual pension, we get a sum of 20 millions as a yearly charge, which at five per cent. represents a capital of 400 million francs. It is impossible to appreciate the value represented by these 10,000 killed and 10,000 wounded, all taken from among the most fit of both nations, nor the ruin brought by their death to their families. But it is not far from the truth to put 500 millions as the total of the human loss, which, added to the preceding billion, makes the cost of the few hours of the Battle of Jutland about sixty million pounds sterling.

So there you have Villiers’ estimate. For the sake of appearances, Fourgues wished to quibble over every article, but Villiers could not be shaken because he had made his calculations according to some technical reviews he got in France and England and he said his figures were, if anything, below the actual losses. Ships always cost more than is officially stated and in time of war, coal, shells, and the rest go up from week to week, and, he said, it was very moderate of him to have reckoned 5 per cent. instead of 9 per cent. for the pensions.

“But, skipper, it’s not worth while to wrangle over a hundred millions more or less. Take any sum between one and two billions of francs. Do you mean to tell me that it made a difference of so much as a quarter of a second to the duration of the war?”

“But if they could have overwhelmed the Boches and bashed their fleet to blazes----”

“That would have cost three or four or five billions because the English would have suffered as well, and what then?”

“Then the English would only have to go back to port and warm their toes instead of being on tenterhooks all the time, leading a dog’s life on account of the big German ships.”

“That’s just what I wanted to make you say, skipper. I make every allowance. I admit that the German fleet would be destroyed. But would that diminish by one the number of their submarines? Would their mines, batteries, or torpedoes hinder us any the less from approaching their coast? Should we have one more merchant vessel on the sea or one less sunk?”

“Yes, yes; but as long as they have big ships we must have others to match.”

“I don’t agree with you. It would be sufficient for us to have hundreds of submarines in order to keep them from getting out and to hunt them down, as they do us.”

“But then their battleships would sink our cargoes?”

“Where have you seen battleships and battlecruisers becoming commerce destroyers? They are too easily damaged and they can’t take coal enough to keep at sea for long. Only light boats or submarines can destroy commerce.”

“Well, what are you driving at?”

“This: that the big ships are of no use any more except to make us spend billions in a few hours without any one being the better or the worse. That seems clear as day to me. Whereas a good submarine costing two million francs, which would carry six or eight torpedoes, and would have guns, could sink her eight or ten cargo-ships a month with a little luck. Even if the submarine is lost, it has done its work, because twenty or thirty thousand tons of wheat, coal, steel, or rubber are at the bottom of the sea. That’s what annoys the enemy! It would make less noise in the newspapers, but it’s the real work of the war. In this war the victory will fall to the one who can do the most damage to the other in the shortest time. It’s always like that and I can’t think why we haven’t seen it this time.”

I should never end if I told you all their discussions on this subject. There is something in it--the question is worth discussing, and I wish you would tell me what you think about it. Maybe you, who are on a Dreadnought, think it thundering cheek of me to write you things running down your show; but you and I don’t need to be polite to each other. Honestly, I expect an answer.

NAPLES, _September 23._

DEAR OLD MAN,

Since my last the _Pamir_ has called at Baltimore, New York, Brest, Cardiff, Genoa, and Naples. We haven’t lost any time, you see. We almost went back to America to carry steel and shells again, but at the last moment we were ordered to carry food to Italy. So here we are under Vesuvius, and there’s nothing left for us now but to die, as the saying is. But I am not anxious to do that, for Fourgues has just written a strong letter to the Company saying that the _Pamir_ must go into dry-dock considering how long she has been knocking about, especially as we hit something hard off the coast of England and he wants to know what happened, as we are getting water into the hold to the tune of about a foot a day and have to keep pumping all the time. So I hope we are going back to France to be careened. As that will take eight or ten days, Fourgues has promised that I shall be free for the civil registry and the church. So there’s something good. We didn’t take our steel from Baltimore after all. It hadn’t arrived. Depend on the Boches to organize strikes in factories, accidents on railroads, and cars gone astray! Anyway, Fourgues learned, knocking around here and there--but _not_ from the Consular authorities--that, although there was no steel for us at Baltimore, there was heaps of it in New York rusting on the wharves waiting for someone to take it. So he upped and went and the _Pamir_ anchored near Brooklyn Bridge and we took in three thousand tons of steel and a bit more piled on the deck. Fourgues, you may bet your neck, didn’t go at it by halves and only regretted that he couldn’t carry ten thousand tons. The _Pamir_ was as full as she could safely stick it, and crawled like a tortoise in a nasty summer sea, which was anything but pleasant. However, we didn’t care a damn because this time we really were being of some use.

In New York, during a beano round Broadway and the swell district with Villiers, Fourgues ran into old Flannigan. I told you about meeting him in Norway last year. They all came on board in the middle of the night, a bit the worse for wear, making noise enough to waken the dead, carrying a gramophone they had pinched in a bar. They set to playing cake-walks and nigger-songs on the records which they had also pinched, and I got up at two o’clock because sleep was no longer possible. As Flannigan was to leave the next morning for the Scandinavian countries, or, as he said, going to make a trip in _Bochie_, he stayed on board until six or seven, drinking Dubonnet and seltzer by way of swabbing down his throat and relating his campaigns to Fourgues and Villiers, who poured down quarts and quarts of Vichy to wash out all the drugs they had put away in the saloons.

Flannigan denies it, but we are sure that he knocks around the Boches and that it’s not from hearsay that he learns all he tells. But, of course, you can’t blame him since he’s a neutral and as long as the official policy of the Entente is to let the Boches carry on their little games while the papers say the blockade is perfect, and that the Germans are tightening their belts, and that they’ll rush out presently crying “Kamerad” with their mouths open for us to shove food in. That’s not Flannigan’s opinion, nor ours either, nor that of anyone on our job. But I’ll go on with what Flannigan said:

“The Boches are not eating as much as before, that’s certain, but everybody knows that people always eat too much, and a lot of good things to eat are allowed to get in by way of Switzerland, Holland, and the Scandinavian countries.

“The land is also still there. It produces less because the fit men are at the front, but even if it produced only half as much as formerly, there would still be no famine. The Germans make a great fuss about it for the benefit of foreigners, but they are easy in their minds, and they know that England has only two-tenths of her territory under cultivation for food, and that if her provisions are cut off, it is she who will tighten her belt. They also know that they have torn the best coal-mines from France and Russia; that Italy, Russia, and France depend on what is sent to them by sea. To meet that situation the Boches are preparing something decisive in the way of submarine warfare. In 1915 they drew up a programme of construction, and when that programme is carried out they will declare submarine war to the death. They were not at all ready for U-boat warfare at the outbreak of war, as they had only twenty or thirty submarines. You may safely bet they would not have neglected the idea beforehand if they had believed it worth while.

“As they soon saw that it was their best chance, they went to work with determination, and submarines will be turned out like anything. They will be armed with big guns, will run faster than merchant-ships, and be able to stay out twenty or thirty days without difficulty. There will be others for mine-laying, to sow all the good routes with mines. All will be able to cut nets and to rest on the bottom.”

Flannigan says this is common talk in Germany, and that even if the official people in France and England don’t believe what they say publicly--that is, that it’s all bluff--they had better get ready for something nasty, for when the Germans once let loose they will go it as hard as they did when they let loose on land. Flannigan embroidered this theme for three or four hours and I can’t remember all the figures he gave. Villiers wrote down some at the time to pass on to chums in France, which will be of no use in the world, he says, as the accepted thing is to say that there aren’t any submarines.

The _Pamir_ left New York the same day that Flannigan sailed. We took on there a fellow from the Munitions Department, a civil engineer who had gone over to America to take charge of orders for munitions, steel, etc., and who seized the chance to accompany the steel bars whose manufacture he had been supervising in the factory. His name is Mousseaux. He had had nothing to do with the sea before the war, but has now made several trips, to Serbia, Russia, Spain, and America, so is not altogether a mug. He told us a lot of scandals about munitions, the markets, orders, and the Boches, and I reckon that Mousseaux also thinks that if we are victorious it will be in spite of ourselves. He’s a sharp one, a big, blond, blue-eyed Norman. In short, what he says, goes.

He looked a bit scared when he saw that the _Pamir_ had neither wireless, guns, nor anything else against submarines. But as he had telegraphed from inland that he would take passage with us and as he arrived the morning we sailed, he wouldn’t back out, but took things as he found them, especially as he was going to gain four or five days thereby. Ships don’t sail every day to France now. Moreover, it was his twelfth voyage since the beginning of the war and he had been on boats without wireless or guns eight times. Like all those who roll around at sea, he thinks as we do, and we soon agreed that the Merchant Service of the Allies is practically offered at present to the Boche submarines and that it can’t go on for ever. He, who is an engineer, assures us that the cost of fitting wireless on all the boats would be slight and that the price of one big well-loaded ship, sunk because it had no warning, would cover the cost of wireless for at least a hundred and fifty or two hundred cargo-steamers. Mousseaux adds that what’s wanted is a man of push and go to compel the owners, the chiefs of the Admiralty, and everybody else to agree and that then it would take only about a month. But now, no one dares to act on his own responsibility and it’s going to cost the country tens of millions.

Fourgues and Mousseaux almost fell out when Mousseaux asked what was the use of putting guns aft and none forward on the cargo boats that had them. Fourgues asked him what he meant by that.

“Yes,” answered Mousseaux, “I have been on several boats which had one gun--behind.”

“Well,” said Fourgues; “they couldn’t have asked the advice of the captain. But if they ever give me a gun, it will be surrounded by a lot of jossers from the Navy who will put it aft because the policy of the Entente is to be on the defensive as regards submarines.”

“But, skipper, the only way to bash them is to attack--fight them the moment you meet them.”

“That’s your idea and we all think so too. Please tell that in Paris to whomever it may concern. You’ll make one more to be told to shut his mouth and mind his own business, for the order is to run away--yes, sir--to run away from the U-boats--and to fire the stern gun if one has time. As for attacking--strictly forbidden, by gum! not on the programme!”

“But how can we say that we rule the waves if our ships must run and never show fight?”

“Quite so, that’s just what I want to know. They cram millions of tons of merchandise into us. They say, ‘Carry them to Europe, my son, you have nothing to fear!’ Every day we learn of a friend who has gone down before a U-boat, but it seems that didn’t count, and if we are lucky enough to meet a submarine, we mustn’t hurt it. We must leave it alone or turn our backs, like ----!

“And if we get a dose of it? Look at my masts--we haven’t even four wires to send a wireless to comrades in the neighbourhood! It doesn’t need a genius to discover what merchant-ships need! The Skippers’ Association keeps asking for it again and again and it’s as plain as the nose on your face! But everybody knows that we shan’t go on strike, and the big bugs say either that we’re afraid or else that we are rebels. So it’s go ahead or bust! And we go ahead--and every one of us knows that his turn is bound to come.”

“Besides which, skipper--though I don’t wish to criticize the Merchant Service--the passengers are sure to be drowned if the ships are torpedoed. On the _Pamir_ you have two lifeboats, which might be enough for your forty men. But I have crossed on ships with a thousand or twelve hundred in the crew and no means of saving more than four or five hundred. As a rule, half the lifeboats--all those on the side which goes up in the air after the torpedoing--are of no use; so you can see that it takes courage to go to sea and that it’s folly to send whole regiments without protection. After so many months of war the civilians still find it amusing. If things were like that on land, the parliaments or the newspapers would have had them changed long ago. But knowing nothing of seafaring, the country swallows any story it’s told. And you’re in luck that it doesn’t understand anything about it.”

“Thunder and blazes!” answered Fourgues. “You call that luck? You mean, it’s enough to make one bash one’s head against the binnacle! It’s worse than you think. After all, I don’t care a damn, we’re among friends and can speak plainly. Will you believe that the Navy has not yet given orders for notices to be posted up on mail and other steamers, telling passengers what to do in case of submarines? So they go on board like sheep, carrying the latest newspaper in which is printed that U-boats are all rot. And when they are torpedoed, it’s butchery, sir, it’s massacre; and there’s nothing to say because if it’s that way, well--that’s the way they want it! And what do you expect them to do, these hundreds of land-lubbers, when the ship begins to rock? No one has told them anything. They don’t know anything. They run around, squealing like pigs, jumping into lifeboats, cutting ropes--and that’s so many drowned to shove down on the account. If a single general treated our soldiers like that, he would be suspended first and then court-martialled.”

Do you get Fourgues’ tone? We don’t bother on the _Pamir_ with land affairs and politics. The sea is enough for us. We feel that we are being hunted from day to day and that it comes closer with each voyage, but we can say nothing, do nothing. That’s forbidden!... Oh, I forgot something that Flannigan told us in New York about the crews of the German submarines. The newspapers and the French authorities say that the good German crews have long since been destroyed and that submarine crews can’t be turned out in a day like hot cakes, so we can be easy on that score. Flannigan says that’s all humbug. In the first place, with money one can get what one wants in any country and the Germans pay their submarine crews royally. And then everybody knows that on a submarine there are only two fellows who have to understand the whole business--the captain and the second in command who have charge of the diving and steering. As to the crew, they have mechanics’ jobs, they look after levers, and valves, and so on, just as in any factory, and merely carry out the orders of the two chiefs; they have to turn this, turn that, and so forth. It wouldn’t take forever to learn that! Any mechanic can learn all there is to know in a month and so they have first-rate crews like those on the Zeppelins. There’s only the risk. But I’d like to know in what country danger stops the fellows with nerve? Neither in France nor in _Bochie_! Moreover, Flannigan said, after the submarine crews have drudged for fifteen or twenty days at sea, they are given leave ashore and spend a week or two with their families while other mechanics put the machinery in order. And they are treated like heroes and fêted everywhere, as well as given their part in the prize-money, so that there are more volunteers for the job than they require, just as in the French aviation service--where, of course, you get smashed up, but only after having had a smack at the enemy.

And Flannigan also said that the German Admiralty doesn’t tie up the submarine commanders on the pretext that they are young. It gives them a free rein, sends them out with full power to act and doesn’t bother any more about what they do nor about the Forms they fill up. When things are run like that we can expect a rotten time from the U-boats. If a quarter of that were done for the French, I believe we could pinch the moon.

At Brest our steel was not unloaded very fast, but that’s what you expect. And what a splendid harbour! It would hold all the ships of Europe and America and as it’s the nearest to the United States, from twelve to twenty-four hours could be saved on all trans-Atlantic voyages. Fourgues says you need to be French not to use such a port. It’s because we are too rich, he says. If the Germans or the English or the Yankees had Brest, they would make the first trans-Atlantic port of the world out of it, beating Hamburg, Rotterdam, London, Liverpool, and New York all together to a frazzle. But the Navy won’t make a move so the Atlantic trade and our good money go elsewhere.

At Brest there were a lot of boats starting for Archangel with material which will probably be wasted in Manchuria or Thibet as Flannigan has told us that the Czar is surrounded by a whole clique who are working for the Boches. Fourgues would have liked the _Pamir_ to make the little Russian trip last year all over again, but they sent us to Cardiff with orders to take on coal and we sailed in ballast according to custom. It annoys Fourgues now to carry coal as it’s some time since the _Pamir_ has carried any but clean cargoes, but we knew why when we reached Cardiff--the owner is behind this. I understand nowadays why there jolly well is a profit in coal and the _Pamir_ will have paid for herself with this voyage. She can sink now! Fourgues and I have pulled our weight--the owner will be able to smoke dollar cigars.

We almost did get sunk off Sallys on leaving Cardiff for Genoa. It was between two and three in the afternoon, during Fourgues’ watch. The _Pamir_ struck something which shook her from keel to truck, but whatever it was, it didn’t explode. Perhaps it was a submarine which will know we passed (let’s hope for the best!). Or perhaps a mine that didn’t go off. Nothing happened to us except that we have forty tons of water a day in the hold and must keep the pump going all the time. As we still have coal on board I can’t tell you what’s the matter, but it’s something pretty stiff. Fourgues and Villiers think that we can manage to get to France in order to get into dock there, but the day after to-morrow when we get rid of our coal, we shall know what has been smashed. From Cardiff to Genoa we fairly slopped. Never have we had such a wet passage. Fine weather, too. Not a single patrol-boat except at Gibraltar. We aren’t astonished to find no patrol-boats, but why say the routes are guarded?

At Genoa we loafed around for four days. There was a mistake regarding the destination of the coal, which was for factories at Naples and Rome. Visited the city and neighbourhood. They’re not overdoing things in Italy. Fact is, old man, France is the only country that is really pulling her full weight in this war--in men, territory, money and effort.

We cleared from Genoa for Naples, where they are worrying even less. There’s no doubt about it, but there are several classes not yet mobilized. Of course it’s none of my business. I know where I am in the Merchant Service, but when it comes to other things, people can always say I’m talking rot. We anchored in the port, between two warships which are _not_ in the Strait of Otranto. Our coal was unloaded at a gentle pace.

To speak of other matters, they say that Rumania is going to come into the game and there is talk of Italy declaring war on Germany. Fourgues says that means at least six months more of war, which is to say the more Allies there are, the longer it will last, what?...

And now, old man, I must say good-bye. Fourgues and Villiers are going to take me to a music-hall in Toledo Street this evening to see if I am a real _incorruptible_ fiancé, as they call it. I shall be awfully bored. If we go into dry-dock at home, I will send you a wire c/o the Navy Department and if the _Auvergne_ is in France, come to La Rochelle right away, so that I can embrace you the first after my wife.

MARSEILLES, _October, 1916_.

BEST OF FRIENDS,

Happy people have no history. You left for Argostoli or Piræus and I got your wire on my wedding-day. My wife, who is with me at Marseilles, sends you warm greetings with her regrets that you were not there. Fourgues came. He made a little speech which literally doubled us up, and presented me with a fine lamp of wrought-iron. Villiers gave me a love of a hookah with two tubes, to soothe my wife and me if we quarrel. Thanks for the present which is on the way. The _Pamir_ is in dock and will be ready in four or five days. Here’s to our next merry meeting, old man, I am as happy as a king and I wish you the same luck when your turn comes.

MARSEILLES, _October 30, 1916_.

DEAR OLD CHAP,

My wife left yesterday for La Rochelle, as the _Pamir_ was to have left Marseilles yesterday evening. But we were delayed, as Fourgues thinks we are going to ship a cargo. So I am writing again, as I only sent you a short letter and have received a long one from you. I don’t want to seem to preach, but--get married! Find a woman you like and then go right ahead. Take my word for it, for fellows like us, who live lives very different from those sheltered land-lubbers, it’s a revelation and it’s true happiness. I am no longer the same, and this is not an exaggeration. If it were otherwise I should tell you. Well, here am I utterly wretched because Marguerite left yesterday and because the _Pamir_ must get under way so soon. To have a girl all to yourself, to listen to the things she says, that no one has ever heard before, and then to go away to sea--it’s something that can’t be described.

Add to this the war and the mines and the submarines! Fourgues is quite right--no man knows what he has in him till he gets a wife, a real one, and leaves her. What a profession ours is! Life seems so beautiful--one launches into it like a ship on the sea. But when, to support a wife you adore, you have to earn a living at the price of never being with her, it’s the worst of all. Yesterday, at the station, she went and I was left on the platform. She had implored me to be prudent, to save myself if the _Pamir_ should go down, to forget my self-respect and that I am an officer, and to think of her. I swore! But you know what professional honour is. I knew I was lying. I knew that if the catastrophe came, the mariner would conquer the married man. What a terrible last day! We love each other so much that we did not dare speak: the sea was between us. I suffered the tortures of the damned. Was I right to marry her during the war. Later, there would have been no torpedoes or submarines--we could have accepted our separation with more patience. But now! Now I am afraid for my skin! If it were only my skin! But she! My body will go, but all the rest stays with her. And if I go down, what will be my last thoughts? I shall see her at La Rochelle, waiting for me and wringing her hands, and she will never know whether I am dead or not. It is atrocious. Don’t marry before peace. I swore to her that the submarines were all rot. But you and I know well that they are there--and everywhere--and that we’ve nothing against them on the _Pamir_. The people on land are sending us to the slaughter. Have they no mothers, no wives or daughters or sisters--those who refuse us guns and wireless? They sing the glory of France and they choke Frenchmen like that fellow in the Bible who offered up his son. The sea and the torpedoes make me afraid, my poor chap. I am afraid--afraid.

MARSEILLES, _November 2, 1916_.

Forgive me, my dear old man, for my letter of the day before yesterday. I was going through a crisis. I hope you will never have to experience anything similar. But one sees what life means when one has adopted a second self for life and desires her happiness. It’s all over now. The _Pamir_ is taking on stuff for the Army of the East and for the Fleet which is at Salonica. So shop claims me and calms me. My wife writes delightful letters. She is not as anxious now as when she was here. I’m getting along, old man. I went through a rotten gale, but it’s over now. You must have laughed at me. Didn’t you?

I read Fourgues and Villiers your answer about the Battle of Jutland and the matter of the big warships. It pleased them. They understood very well when you said that all the young men in the Navy know that big Dreadnoughts are of no use except to train men for promotion to the higher commands. That’s plain. Villiers says that it’s a matter of psychology, but that it’s necessary to be on the inside to understand it. You, who are on the inside, explain it very well. In this Naval war there are the young who do the daily work, just like merchant vessels, but they don’t count. And then there are the big bugs who hold together so that each may get promotions, pay or orders. It’s very simple; thanks for your account of it. The _Pamir_ now knows how the land lies, and that’s all we want as long as we don’t go down!

We carry flour, shells, guns--perishable and non-perishable material--the whole caboodle. At this moment, my dear old chap, my pen is writing to you, my body is here, but my heart is at La Rochelle and I know that it’s all up with me now, that I would give the whole war for one trip down there. Of course, I wish for our victory. But if the _Pamir_ is ever torpedoed and sinks, you can believe that I shall go to the bottom cursing eternally all those whom I did not know, who left us without defence.

Good luck, old man.

ARGOSTOLI, _December 16, 1916_.

DEAR OLD CHAP,

Going from Marseilles to Salonica before reaching Matapan, the _Pamir_ was torpedoed--fired upon and missed--by a Boche submarine. The truth is, we shouldn’t mind being sent down if we could hit back and if all precautions had been taken. When a _poilu_ stops a bullet in an attack, if he has time to know about it before he dies he sees that his pals are delivering the goods and that gives him heart when he’s about to cast off. But as for us, old man, it’s not our fault nor that of the submarine if I am writing you to-day. Some are unlucky and some are lucky, and that’s the way things are! It was early morning, during my watch, when the shells began to fall. The weather was like the Last Judgment, and I was looking at the rollers which fell _smack_ on our stem and rushed away foaming. All of a sudden there were columns of foam, which shot up like tufts of feathers on the port side at about three hundred yards. They rose as high as our funnels. I said “Hell! We’re near a reef and the sea is breaking over it!” I put the helm over and went to look at the chart. There were no more rocks charted than in the white of my eye. So I righted the helm after having sent word to Fourgues that there was something funny on the sea, and just as he reached the bridge a bunch of shells fell twenty yards to starboard. There was no doubt about it--there was a submarine squirting at us and we with our arms folded, unable to answer back! But anyway, we should have been at a loss, for it was almost ten minutes before we knew from where or from what they came. The _Pamir_ was rolling like a log and the sea was as choppy as could be. It must have been that which worried the submarine, for the shots fell in front, behind, to port, and to starboard.

Finally, during a calm moment, we saw puffs of smoke three or four miles ahead and spray breaking about the Boche. Then we turned our backs and hooked it as fast as we could. I couldn’t possibly tell you how many “thunders and blazes” Fourgues let out! I didn’t count them. He stamped and pulled at his beard:

“Look at that devil sending us his shells while we sit here like impotents! But then, if they _had_ given us guns they would have been pea shooters or cocktail-straws and we couldn’t have fired more than four or five thousand yards. Look at her! She’s at least seven thousand yards away and is missing us only because of the swell. If it were calm we should be done for already!”

At the end of a quarter of an hour we had counted about forty shells and the submarine stopped wasting her pills and bore down on us at full speed, and you can guess, old man, that she gained on us hand over hand.

The _Pamir_, loaded with about three thousand five hundred tons, was down into the trough of the sea like a lump of lead and couldn’t make more than seven knots doing her damnedest. The Boche shot through the water like a fish. They must have closed her hatches and, of course, she didn’t mind the waves breaking over her, being built to navigate with water on all sides. She must have gained three or four knots on us, for after giving chase for three-quarters of an hour, she was only a thousand yards away. We saw her slow up a bit and open the hatches and the gunners came to fire from the deck! The first two shots fell twenty yards short and fifty too far. Fourgues said to himself that the third was going to hit and he put the helm hard aport so that we should rot up their aim. Just at that moment a hollow sea came along and shook us from stem to stern. Everything stowed on the deck began to slide and fouled the port tiller-rope, which jammed. Steering became impossible. The _Pamir_ kept turning around to port, only she couldn’t turn fast on account of the heavy seas, but the submarine doubtless believed that it was in order to run her down that we headed that way, so the Boche gunners scrambled through the hatches and shut them and they submerged on the spot. After that, not a thing to be seen! While our crew was hauling the packing cases around on the deck, trying to clear the tiller-rope, the _Pamir_ went round and round like a horse working a merry-go-round, and rolled and pitched without stopping. Then the submarine must have come nearer, for we saw the wakes of two torpedoes, one forward at about thirty yards and another which missed us aft. The second was well aimed and came straight at us. We could move neither hand nor foot, nor do anything but make the sign of the Cross and think of our families. But this torpedo couldn’t have been set to go very deep. As the _Pamir_ is not armoured, a hole at the water-line would be enough to finish her. Well, the torpedo got caught in the trough of a wave which made it leap into the air like a carp about a hundred yards from us and fall back into the water at right angles to its course. It passed behind us and we all breathed again.

The Boche must have been disgusted at losing two torpedoes and nearly fifty shells in one hour on a boat that steered like a cork. She came to the surface again at two or three thousand yards without sending us anything more and hooked it towards another ship coming from the west, the _Worthminster_, a big English tramp loaded with munitions, which had put in at Marseilles and had left the same hour as we, but which had fallen behind so that we lost sight of her the night before. I believe the _Worthminster_ went down. Salonica was her destination and she didn’t arrive there. We asked for news, but mum’s the word everywhere, and when the moon is made of green cheese we shall know, perhaps, if our mates of the _Worthminster_ are feeding the crabs.

You can be sure Fourgues made a hell of a row because the _Pamir_ had not been able to send a wireless message to the _Worthminster_, which had wireless, as we had seen at Marseilles. To see a submarine running after a friendly ship and not to be able to say, “Turn back to the west! Shells and torpedoes are coming!”--you’ll admit that’s enough to make one groan with despair! If only our tiller-rope hadn’t jammed, Fourgues would have chased after the Boche at the risk of being shelled, because the _Worthminster_ would have seen that something was up and would have disappeared. But it took two hours to clear the tiller-rope and repair it and stop turning round and round. So Fourgues went on his way signalling that he had seen a Boche submarine near Matapan and all the boats we met bore south. Those who came behind us were sunk, I suppose, without anyone being able to warn them.

At Salonica the Naval authorities asked Fourgues a pack of questions about the show. As the _Pamir_ had received no damage in the hull or upper works they tried to make Fourgues say he had dreamed it all and that he had seen no more submarine than in my eye. He was so indignant that he didn’t even get into a rage.

“Very well,” he said. “If it’s necessary to let yourself be sent to the bottom in order to prove that you have seen a submarine, next time I will stop and wait for it and then perhaps you’ll believe me. In any case you will get confirmation from the _Worthminster_ which----”

When he mentioned the _Worthminster_ the others looked odd and that makes us sure that she is lost. But they wouldn’t give any information. They merely questioned Fourgues:

“Why didn’t you warn the _Worthminster_?”

“No wireless.”

“Why didn’t you try to ram the submarine?”

“Tiller-rope jammed and damaged.”

“Why didn’t you attack the submarine?”

“No guns and a high sea.”

“Why didn’t you signal the _Worthminster_?”

“She was on the horizon and it was raining. You couldn’t have seen a signal at five hundred yards.”

And so on and so forth. Fourgues left abruptly, filing a written statement, and saying that as the folks who are drowned are blamed and the landsmen find fault with them, he would wash his hands of the whole business, and the next time he would let the submarine go about its job in order to settle the account and shut them up. But that, old man, was just the bad temper of the moment, for he doesn’t want the _Pamir_ to rot at the bottom of the sea any more than I do.

While we were unloading our stuff for the Army of the East, there were not a few cargo boats in the harbour, and one day Fourgues invited the skippers of all of them to a luncheon. As he is very popular, there were fifteen or twenty of us at table, all men of brawn and nerve who have knocked about from north to south ever since the beginning of the war, with millions of tons of merchandise in the hold, and any number of soldiers. It was a treat to hear such conversation from these men who really work and who aren’t afraid of anything. And then, between sailors, there’s no side. And Fourgues, who presided, isn’t easily gulled. So each spun his little yarn when his turn came, without trying to stuff anybody. All had been more or less attacked, torpedoed, or shelled, but they had obviously escaped since they were there! They said, though, that the Germans were settling seriously to the game, and that sooner or later no one would get through without damage. There were some who had wireless and guns; only, their guns were outranged by those of the submarines which had attacked them, and when they called for hours by wireless to warn others of danger, no one answered. There were some with wireless and no guns, and as they had only one operator and one man is only one man and can’t stay with the receiver at his ear twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four without going crazy, their ships were not kept constantly informed of danger and had some narrow squeaks. There were others who had guns and no wireless, but their guns were duds which jammed at the third shot, so they might as well have had none. And then there were those who had neither guns nor wireless, like the _Pamir_. These were in the majority and the only reply they can make to a submarine is to make their wills. To talk about such a state of things is not exactly merry, and without Fourgues, who was in fine form that day, it might have turned into a regular funeral service, especially as they also spoke of their lifeboats, which are insufficient everywhere; of their engines, which are at their last gasp as the result of overwork; of their ships, which hold together only because they’re good-natured, but which are sprung all over the shop; in short, old man, all the little worries which you have known in the past, but which were a joke compared with the present mess.

During coffee, Fourgues summed up by saying that since no one cared a damn about cargo boats and tramps as long as the sailors kept quiet, perhaps it was time for the officers and captains of the Merchant Service to say what should be done and get together so as to discuss and decide on some line of action. They all agreed and drew up a programme, which they bound themselves to ask their colleagues to sign wherever they went, and also arranged to send a deputation to Paris as soon as possible. But you can understand, old man, how it is they haven’t much hope of its coming to anything. They will be told to go and get themselves sunk, and that no one asked for their advice, and what the deuce do the people who do the work mean by daring to give their opinion about it? As the country knows nothing about the Merchant Service and as it is being assured that all goes well at sea, the only satisfaction the captains will have will be to know they were right, and when they arrive in port they’ll be able to count how many of their chums have gone to Davy Jones’s locker. Amen and glory be to those who are torpedoed!

If I had the time and knew how, I could tell you a lot of interesting things about Salonica that happened while we were there: Venizelos, the movement forward towards Monastir, the National Government, etc. You bet there’s plenty happening and lots of rumours. But I should need whole logs to tell about it, and then, outside my profession, I am afraid of putting my foot in it. Anyway, the Army of the East was glad to get our cargo from Marseilles--material for the railroad, tractors, tyres, gun-carriages, and petrol. When ships are late, operations are retarded by so much. If a ship is sunk, they have to wait for its substitute before they can go ahead. The stock must be collected again in France, sent to Marseilles, another boat found and loaded, which makes a month’s delay besides which something is always missing from the second shipment, some trifle that is enough to keep a vehicle or a gun or a railroad at a standstill. This kind of thing never happens at the front in France. There, they have only to telephone to the base in order to get what they want. Here, when you haven’t a thing, you haven’t got it and that’s all there is about it. But the French papers are howling that the Commander at Salonica is letting the grass grow under his feet! I’m only the mate on the _Pamir_, but I’d rather have my job than Sarrail’s.

From Salonica we went to the Piræus, Salamis, and all around there to deliver spare stores and supplies to the ships of the Fleet: screws, boiler-tubes, electric cables, torpedoes, sheet-iron, and tools--a regular hardware shop! We went from one anchorage to another, spitting out a few tons here and a few there, and picking up scraps of stories about the 1st of December at Athens, first-hand, all of them. Don’t expect, though, that I will blab any of it to you. The mails aren’t safe. But it isn’t the things that really happen that count--it’s what is said officially. Fourgues maintains that it’s very philosophical: only the official folks have any interest in telling lies for their own protection and they’re the only people who are believed. He adds that this war, no matter where you turn, is the Triumph of the Lie! He’s got a way of hitting things off just so! While the _Pamir_ was making her little Odyssey (Villiers’ expression) in the Greek ports, we three asked ourselves again of what use those great warships were, with their thousands of crew and their enormous guns. If it’s for our prestige in the East, one day like the 1st of December can wipe out the effect of a thousand battleships. If it’s for a Naval battle, then against whom? The Austrians? In that case there’s no need to keep more than twice as many ships as the Austrians have, and it would be better to dismantle the other French ships which are devouring coal and stupefying tens of thousands of sailors with idleness who would be much better on trawlers and little patrol-boats. With one great useless ship they could arm ten or fifteen that would be of some use. If all they want is to give the Boches targets worth shooting at when the big ships go for refit to France or Bizerta--why not Kamchatka?--when Italy is close by, we can understand. But it doesn’t concern me, of course, and, indeed, I have enough with the _Pamir_ and navigation.

At Argostoli, where they sent us to empty our holds for the battleships which were there, we kept on thinking the same things. Crews and young officers are bored to death and eating their hearts out in their longing for active service, the only service possible nowadays for men in the Navy--submarine-chasing in little boats! Ah, well, you bet that wouldn’t suit everybody. So, to make it look as though they were doing something, they keep up a lot of drill, as in time of peace. There it is! But what do you expect? There isn’t any war for them except that perhaps they may be torpedoed, and, of course, they must look as though they were of some use! So here is another French force lying bottled up and one of prime quality--nothing but beefy great chaps who ask only to leave their ships and go into danger! They aren’t like the fellows who want to get out of the trenches in order to make money far from the madding shells. Sailors would like to go on the real sea and just be paid as much as before. But whether they want to or not, it’s all the same. Communications are cut off between them and France, where no one knows a thing about the Navy and cares as little about it as the moon.

You should have seen how they fairly rushed us at Argostoli to get the latest news of Athens and the Fleet, from which we had come, straight! They know nothing here, or almost nothing. So at first, Fourgues, Villiers, and I began to roll off our first-hand information, believing that they asked questions in order to know. Not at all, old chap. All the Brass Hats opened their eyes as big as saucers and then told us to hold our tongues about it. France can let a hundred men and six officers be killed like rats in a trap, but no one must say how it was done. So Fourgues and the two of us shut up tight, and we replied to the young’uns, who knew bits of the story, that we had not the right to tell what we knew. So there you have us playing the censor, old man! It fits us about as well as gloves on a turtle! But as adventures are the forming influence of youth, after this business I understand the censorship, though I never understood it before, and used to ask myself why a country like France should not be told the truth. The censorship, old man, is to keep people from developing heart disease. Not the people at the front or on the sea, who couldn’t be any sicker after hearing the truth than they are after a shell or a torpedo, but the jacks-in-office who get advancement or a reputation through the war and who don’t want to have their noses rubbed in their little mishaps. But to think that a country like ours, where everyone goes laughing to the slaughter, should be treated like that to cover the tracks of a pack of incompetents! It’s enough to make you laugh till the Day of Judgment!

All the same, it’s more or less funny to see how the natives of this country have made game of us behind our backs ever since the 1st of December. What are we waiting for--to make them sweat ten times the blood of those French sailors? To hell with “outside influences”! What the devil do we care that this Power or that doesn’t want to hurt their darling Tino! But French blood is French business, and we could say to all the rest, “Hands off! Let _me_ settle this score!” Besides, with lubbers who admire nothing but the big stick, as you see from the way they go down on their knees with their mouths open before the Boches, it’s absurd to be considerate. But we keep on talking rot about memories of ancient days and all these Helleno-Boches, who are well aware of our stupidity, harp on that string and take advantage of us. Are we really such born fools as to be taken in by such humbug? Fourgues explained it all to me in very few words, as he can:

“Listen to this, my boy. There are adventurers, crooks who intend to marry the lady with the money-bags. So they recite poetry, mouth, and strike romantic poses. The good woman lets herself be taken in and goes before the registrar with her money-bags behind. And what does she get? He, the tender heart, beats her, makes off with the money, and then laughs at her into the bargain. Well, it’s the same thing with the Greek government and the Allies. They harp on their great ancestors, Themistocles and Canaris, and when we come with assurances of friendship we get a hundred bluejackets murdered. If we gave them tit for tat, things might be better. But we say ‘Let’s talk it over!’ So everybody sits down in a circle on the corpses and it’s French blood that makes the council table! If instead of this we said to them, ‘Constantine or bread!’ and sealed their ports with ships which are doing nothing, in a week we should be rid of those lads who fire in our backs, cut our bridges, and get their instructions from Potsdam every morning. But what do you expect, my boy? The Frenchman lets himself be killed and then says, ‘Pardon me!’ At least, that’s what it looks like.”

Well, old man, I don’t know just who Themistocles and Canaris were--humbugs, no doubt, but the rest is as plain as day. What lies can they be telling about it in France? Even here, only two days from the Piræus, we, of the _Pamir_, who were there, can’t get people to listen to us. What must it be at home?

And boredom! The _Pamir_ is waiting for orders. It’s a habit now! Fourgues is afraid they will make us take coal, seeing that that commodity is now dearer than meat. But I don’t care a whoop nor a damn nor a double-damn! And if you aren’t like me, your stripes have indeed changed you. Cheery-oh!

NORWAY, _February 18, 1917_.

GODFATHER!

I am sure you are stunned by the above form of address. However, it’s not so far wrong. There’s going to be a little conscript--or a little mamma--for the class of 1937 who will look like me, I hope, and you are ex-officio godfather. Now, no objections! I heard about it only the other day on our arrival in Bergen. The letter had been chasing around after me for two months, but we have rolled about so during that time--and then, too, the censor held up the letters in Greece--that it’s a brand-new future papa who sends you this announcement. If you don’t congratulate me, you are no friend of mine!

That will do for family history. But you know such a thing doesn’t happen every day in a man’s life. Don’t think I’m bragging because there’s going to be a little post-card for which I made the design. No, old man, I’m not trying to come it over you. Just do the same when you can--and if you can--and we’ll call it square. And if you have the luck to be the first to see my little beggar, male or female, embrace the mother and the baby for me. You know that I mean it with all my heart.

It’s so long since I wrote you last, that I can’t remember where I posted the letter. I believe you were in dry-dock at Bizerta and I was waiting at Argostoli. If I repeat myself, pass over that part and begin where I left off.

Here is where we have been: Argostoli, Messina, Ajaccio (but that was extra as you shall see), Lisbon, Bilbao, Brest, Liverpool, Bergen, and the Norwegian ports where the _Pamir_ is collecting wood. And we’ve wasted no time either at sea or in port, as you will find. This time our work has been useful, and except for the German blockade which catches us in Norway, everything is going well. But I will do as Villiers does when he argues--take one thing at a time!

At Argostoli there were three other merchant-ships which were clearing at the same time as the _Pamir_, or very nearly, and we were told to travel together to join a big cruiser west of Cerigo in order to make up a convoy with other boats which the cruiser had collected at Salonica, Salamis, and elsewhere. There was one destroyer, the _Revolver_, to escort the lot of us. As you might guess, the convoy was composed of hookers, of which some made eight knots and others fourteen, and as we all met towards night, the next morning some were lost over the horizon ahead and others behind. We managed as best we could and followed the secret route. Near morning of the second day, the cruiser hoisted a lot of signals to tell us to head south because a submarine had been at work on the secret route during the night. So we all stampeded for the south, the fastest ahead, the lumberers behind, and the _Pamir_ well in the middle. It was worth paying for to see that obstacle race! The cruiser had orders to call at Messina or somewhere along that coast, but neglected to tell us, so she collected us somehow or other and conducted us into the Straits of Messina where we found ourselves all in a bunch about noon. And if there had been a submarine looking on, she couldn’t have missed us any more than she could have missed an elephant in a window. There the cruiser and the destroyer signalled good-bye and ordered us to follow the secret route as far as Marseilles from where each should proceed to his destination along the secret routes. But as there was no police, the fast boats put on speed, the others dragged, and on arriving before Bonifacio, the _Pamir_ had no one in sight but a big steamer which disappeared off the horizon ahead that night. We kept on all night and the next morning what did Fourgues see? The same big steamer disabled, having received a torpedo in the rudder and screw, and asking to be towed. As she had a gun, Fourgues thought she must have peppered the submarine, which had probably hooked it to wait for the others who were coming along the same course. The submarine had perhaps missed us by an hour or an hour and a half at most, but we saw nothing of her while we were over-hauling the steamer _Sainte Eulalie_, nor while we were towing her into Ajaccio. It wasn’t easy to pass the tow-rope, for there was still a touch of mistral about and the _Sainte Eulalie_ had broached to. One of our men had his hand smashed by the first hawser, which broke. The second held, and the _Pamir_ towed the cripple to Ajaccio at five knots speed. There we unloaded our wounded man. The convoy being dispersed, there was no need to go to Marseilles, so Fourgues lit out straight for Lisbon, where he had been told to call at Argostoli, but he permitted himself the luxury of sailing outside the secret route. When I say outside, I mean about fifty miles off, except at Gibraltar, where, of course, everybody has to pass. But if the Navy can’t guard Gibraltar, there’s nothing to do but pull up the ladder and order the funeral wreath.

Fourgues said that voyages at sea were beginning to offer a little too much variety for him to follow secret routes, and as long as he was not absolutely forced to do so, he would look a little farther and avoid submarines. So he struck the Spanish coast a little south of the Balearic Isles and we hugged it as far as Lisbon.

He said that, perhaps, it made him lose a day, but that there is less danger near the coast, for if you are torpedoed, you may have time to beach the ship and save it later, or, at any rate, the crew and lifeboats are almost sure to be saved, having only to row a bit to reach land. Fourgues added that this ought to be the general rule.

At Lisbon we coaled, and the _Pamir_ took the stuff the Portuguese Navy gave us for the Expeditionary Corps Portugal is forming in France. We were well received in Lisbon--not as in other Allied countries, where people are jolly lukewarm. The Portuguese are all out. They aren’t rich and their army is not huge, but all they ask for is to have a smack at the Germans and bash them in, which ought to be the ideal of all the Allies, instead of going in for shady diplomacy like some.

We filled only our aft hold at Lisbon with Portuguese war-material, going on to Bilbao to stuff the forward hold with steel. We fairly rushed it in. The Spanish--I mean the Spanish ship-owners--have begun to hang fire a bit about shipping us ore; for they say the Boches are going to send all ships to the bottom, and Spain doesn’t want to lose her fleet. So they ask enormous prices, and that means endless bargaining, while the ore piles up on the docks. That’s why the _Pamir_ loaded so fast.

I’m writing this as quickly as I can because I want to get to what we’re at now and the Norwegian rumours, and the mail-boat leaves the day after to-morrow. We lit out for Brest where the _Pamir_ left the Portuguese stuff and the Spanish metal. During the passage we sailed near a wreck, or rather fifty bits of wreck--wood, logs, buoys, etc.--scattered over half-a-mile of the sea. Fourgues made us search all the afternoon to see if we could find a raft or the lifeboats of the torpedoed ship. But it must have been as it was with the _Suffren_, which left nothing but her absence as proof of shipwreck. We were unsuccessful. When you come upon a tragedy like that and tell yourself that your turn may come, perhaps in a quarter of an hour--well, you are not so chirpy about the success of our Naval strategy as they are in Paris.

When they had emptied out our stuff at Brest, the _Pamir_ waited a day at the outside and was sent to Norway to look for wood in the shape of planks and joists. I guess there aren’t any boats to spare now, although the papers say that there are a hundred thousand arrivals and departures each week and that the submarine war has proved a fiasco for the Boches. At the beginning of the war they never minded letting the _Pamir_ slack it in port for eight or ten days. But now we’re on the go all the time. All the other fellows we have seen are hard at it, too. It will go on as long as it can and then, at some given moment, the whole show will stop. And then they’ll begin to cut down the food and coal of the country a bit, and then a bit more, and a bit more still, while we shall continue to be sent to the bottom. If this would open their eyes at home to the importance of the Merchant Service and the need of giving it protection, that would be something! But you’ll see they’ll make the people swallow some fresh lie! France is not a maritime country and will always let herself be humbugged about the sea. But I am anticipating and talking as though the Boche blockade had already been declared at that time, whereas it has only come about since we reached Norway.

So then, we left Brest. We were ordered to sail by way of the Irish Channel, an old acquaintance of ours since the war. In the English Channel, about ten o’clock in the morning, straight ahead of the _Pamir_ I saw a mine which must have become detached from the bottom and which was drifting like a dam’ log. If this had happened at night, old man, I should not be writing to you nor would any of the rest on board, because it was enough to blow up four _Pamirs_ put together. I put the helm over. We looked at the mine and admired it and that was all. No gun to send it to the bottom! No wireless with which to inform the authorities at Liverpool of the existence of said mine! But as we had to take aboard some “spares” at Birkenhead we anchored in the Mersey.

Unfortunately, Fourgues telegraphed the owner that he was in Liverpool, and the owner, who never loses a chance to feather his nest, answered that he must wait forty-eight hours in order to take freight that was urgently needed in Norway. This feverishly awaited freight, old man, was wagon-loads and mountains of sugar, preserves, and jams. It seems that in Norway they aren’t afraid to buy things that are worth their weight in gold in France. If you want my opinion, I will say that thin Norwegians won’t get any stouter on that cargo. Farther south there are gaping mouths and it’s for them we shall have worked! You can fool some people _all_ the time! The Allies’ blockade is like a net with broken meshes, here just as in Greece and other places. But that’s another story.

During the crossing from Liverpool to Bergen--which I recommend if you like gymnastics, for we never for one moment ceased rolling like the very deuce--Villiers amused himself making calculations according to the ship’s log to see how many miles the _Pamir_ has travelled and how much merchandise she has transported during the thirty months of war. He found that we have been round the world three and a half times and carried between eighty and a hundred million tons of stuff! We might have exceeded the latter figure if we had not made so many voyages in ballast. But, anyway, such as it is, Fourgues said that the _Pamir_ had done her bit. When you think that the biggest cargo boats can double and treble that record and that France needs it all, you can say that the Merchant Service has deserved well of her. Dear old chap, you know that I am not saying this to brag and make out that we are wonderful fellows! All that is very well for Mummy’s darlings who have their photographs taken to put in the papers or for the old buffers who spread themselves in the pubs in Paris. You know the sort who do as little as they can and make the most of it. But we who trudge up and down the earth and carry on without anyone knowing anything about it and who get more kicks than half-pence, without counting torpedoes and mines--and not more than eight days’ leave in port--I wonder what the Allies would have done if we hadn’t been there, right on the job and with our mouths shut? After this if the French people do not come to understand what the Merchant Service represents, all I can say is, their brains need a surgical operation, and there’s nothing for it but to let all our ships rip, and take to agriculture instead. Look at it any way you like: France needs the whole world to help her if she is to win the war, and as there are no railroads to Australia or Argentine or the United States, or to any of the countries which furnish us with raw material, she’d be in the soup without the Merchant Service. But a fat lot she cares about us. There’s no fear of anyone in Paris bothering, and we shall keep on just the same while those gentlemen go right on hypnotising themselves, some with words and the others with bank-notes enough to burst their pockets.

At Bergen we emptied out the grub destined for the Boches, and I have the honour to inform you that our men smashed just as many cases as possible, firing them out on to the wharf. The owner will lose nothing by it, though, for you may be perfectly sure that he took all precautions; but at least there’s that much less for the Boches to cram into their bellies. And while the _Pamir_ was in Bergen, news came of the submarine war which the Boches are going to carry on mercilessly--blockade, forbidden zones, no warnings, and all the rest of it. Of course, nobody on the _Pamir_ was a bit surprised by this business which makes all the Allied big bugs and the papers yell so. We and all the fellows who blow around at sea, and hear the talk everywhere, have felt the storm coming for ever so long. Only, as we aren’t officials, of course, we must have been mistaken! Well, the bomb has burst! Who is going to suffer? First, the ships that go sailing by; and then France, who will have to draw in her belt. What will they be in for at home in the way of high prices for coal, flour, butter, and the rest?

We who are used to transporting all that sort of thing, know what such a catastrophe means. But the dear public that buys at the corner grocery, and believes those things come there of themselves like the rain and the air they breathe, will be somewhat annoyed. Of course, they won’t be told how it came about, and they won’t know they are paying double or treble the former prices because ships go down at sea. As usual, they will have a lot of rotten reasons dished up for them, because it’s forbidden to give the real reason for anything. All the same, the Censor can’t prohibit the cutting-off of the gas, the electricity, the railroads, the restaurants, and everything that makes life comfy. For you may be sure the Boches aren’t going to do things by halves. Here, where we’re near them, people have information, and we have picked up a good deal at Bergen and Christiansund, where I am writing while our planks and joists are being loaded. It’s a good thing that the _Pamir_ is here to take the wood, for all the Norwegian boats have orders to lie low wherever they may be without stirring, on account of the blockade, and I beg you to believe there are millions of tons of building timber held up. Whatever will they do? It was short already! The worst is that the Dutch, the Spanish, and the other neutrals are also going to suspend their traffic because they aren’t keen either about losing their ships. Well, the _Pamir_ will have from three thousand to thirty-two hundred tons of wood which will serve to build the barracks of the _poilus_, railways, and pit-props for at least one Army Corps. This is at least as useful as shells and coal and we are pleased with our cargo.

To return to the information we have gathered here, it seems that things are boiling in Russia. A lot of people think that at Petrograd and other places up there they’re about fed up with Hun influence. The Germans are putting spokes in their wheels even at Court and in the Imperial family itself. Some say that it can end only by a separate peace or a Revolution. In fact, matters look pretty dark in the opinion of those who have been there.

In Germany they talk of nothing but the submarines, and the public expect wonders. The Norwegians say that the Germans have been turning out several submarines a week for the last few months and that there are many mine-sowers among them. So, as you can believe the Boches will keep their word, navigation is going to be the devil and we shall be blown up without knowing why or how. The _Pamir_ is nicely fixed for the first voyage after the blockade. She has to sail the entire length of the forbidden zone and our sort of patrol will be little protection. That has not changed at all in thirty months of war! But Fourgues says the Allies are rich enough to pretend that they can stand for it. Let a thousand or five thousand tons a month be sunk and still they will state in the papers that it’s all humbug, he says. But in the end the public will pay. Whether we get copped or not is of no importance at all. All that we shall have for our funeral oration will be silence everywhere. But this is nonsense. I am going to the movies to-night with Villiers, who is standing me a treat in honour of my paternity. We shall dine ashore. In three days we shall get under way for an Atlantic port which is not yet fixed. What luck if it were La Rochelle or Saint-Nazaire! I could go and embrace the little mother. Well, who lives, learns! Sailors were not meant to be with their families, and as the proverb says, “Sailor’s bride, sorrow’s bride!” I am sending you my photograph which I had taken at Bergen and which I am also sending to my wife so that she can look at me while she is waiting for the baby. You will see that I am well and that the war agrees with me. You know that I mean what I have written on the photo. Good luck, old friend, and here’s till we meet again.

* * * * *

OFFICIAL STATEMENT (end of February, 1917)

_The German wireless reports the sinking of the_ Pamir, _which is overdue._

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND

Transcriber’s notes.

Obvious typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected silently. Ambiguous hyphenation has been removed or retained according to the prevailing style for the period. Inconsistent hyphenation has been normalised.

A half-title page (blank except for the book title) and a title reiteration have been omitted from the front matter.